Before I began teaching yoga, I knew what it was like to move through corporate life while carrying more stress than I realised.

Looking back, what stays with me is not only what I was thinking during those periods, but what my body was quietly doing alongside me. The shoulders that had crept upwards. The breath I had barely noticed. The strange tiredness that seemed to arrive before the working day was over.

I find the moment between meetings revealing. You click “Leave”, open the next invitation and realise there has barely been a pause. The calendar tells you where to be; it says very little about how you arrive. For anyone exploring breathwork in Singapore, I would begin here: with the breathing that accompanies the ordinary rush of a working day.

If you arrange wellbeing sessions for colleagues, you may recognise this pattern in your own diary.

I wonder how often we bring an invisible marking scheme into meditation. A few quiet breaths earn our approval; a thought about an unanswered email loses us a point. Even here, we can find ourselves trying to perform.

If you are looking for a meditation course in Singapore, perhaps this is the first expectation to question. What if learning begins with noticing your thoughts, without treating each one as a mistake?

I sometimes wonder whether we postpone a pause because we have made the beginning feel bigger than it needs to be. We know we would welcome a quieter moment, yet find ourselves waiting for a clearer diary or a better idea of where to start.

Perhaps you have a meditation class saved on your phone, intending to return to it when the timing feels right.

For me, a pause is not the same as having nothing to say. It is a chance to hear what is about to speak: the concern itself, or the rush to defend against it. Before teaching yoga, I knew the strain of corporate life first-hand; yoga and mindfulness became part of learning to listen to myself again.

That is the possibility I want to explore through yoga for stress management: a little more choice in a moment that seems to demand an immediate response.