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Couple finds balance in two worlds

Waupaca native Hope Rajasinghe is an international yoga instructor that divides her time between Sri Lanka and Wisconsin. She currently teaches in-person at EveryBODY Fitness in Waupaca as well as online classes. Submitted Photo

Teaching yoga in Waupaca, Sri Lanka

By James Card

There is a limited window of time to train in-person with a world-class yoga instructor in Waupaca.

But if this opportunity is missed, an online option is available. Hope Rajasinghe teaches yoga classes from 6 to 7 p.m. Thursdays at EveryBODY Fitness located 455 Industrial Dr.

In the near future she will depart Waupaca to resume her other life in Sri Lanka.

Hope and her husband, Jason Rajasinghe, are in the process of building two separate lives in two very faraway places. The goal is to have a foothold in each place to spend time with both of their families: Hope has family in Waupaca and Jason’s family is in Sri Lanka.

This dual international life is reflected in some of her yoga videos: in one she is stretching near a cozy woodstove (Waupaca) and in another video she strikes a pose at a tropical retreat (Sri Lanka). She has lived abroad since 2013 and this is her longest stay back in Wisconsin.

“Part of being back home is finding that balance. About finding that family balance, of where to spend your time? How do you find that balance between those two worlds? How do they converge and how do you work as an international couple? It’s one reason why we’ve come here now very intentionally to establish our businesses so we can be more back and forth for family and set down roots for the rest of our lives,” said Rajasinghe.

They run a film production company in Sri Lanka called iFilm Sri Lanka where they produce documentaries and commercials and in the U.S., they established RAD Productions USA where they did similar work sometimes involving travel in different states.

Besides leading the Waupaca in-person class, she teaches classes online to clients in Sri Lanka and the United States. Her most notable client is Nike and she has been teaching their employees since 2018.

She hosts a dancing yoga retreat company that she formed with a partner.

“It’s just exactly what it is: dancing yoga in a retreat. You get dance sessions, you get yoga sessions, and the beautiful beaches and rice and curry all packaged into one,” she said.

Global perspective

Rajasinghe grew up in New London and her parents moved to Waupaca in 2009. She studied for a couple years at UW-Stevens Point and later graduated from Hope College in Holland, Mich. where she studied psychology and dance.

After college she taught English in South Korea for three years and used that as a base camp to explore Asia. She studied at the Vinyasa Yoga School in Rishikesh, a city in the Himalayan foothills and considered the yoga capitol of the world and there she earned her teaching certification.

“I thought I’d have this short stint of backpacking around and teaching yoga and then I fell in love with the yoga practice,” said Rajasinghe.

After some more travelling, she ended up back in Waupaca but the pull to go back and explore Asia some more was strong. She jetted off to Sri Lanka and there she met her husband in 2016. They live in Colombo, the capital and the country’s largest city.

“That was funny Skype call. Before I left, my mom would joke with me: ‘You better not run off and get married over there and I’ll never see you again.’ No, that’s never going to happen and then . . . here we are,” she said.

Yoga equals home

They expect to be in Waupaca for another couple months or so. Their goal is to bounce between the two countries based on filming, to create “shooting seasons,” as in, line up some assignments in one country and later head to the other country for another season of work.

At a recent class at EveryBODY Fitness she was asked if she was heading back to Sri Lanka and this was their last class together. It wasn’t but Rajasinghe pointed out that they could practice together online (www.yoga-withhope.com) and they could follow her on her YouTube channel Yoga with Hope.

“So people can practice with me from all over the world, that’s the beauty of that. As I transition through life and find that I’ve living in two difference cultures, well, like I say, I’m an adopted Korean-American now living between Sri Lanka and Wisconsin and that is very vastly different. I’ve found that movement and this yoga practice is what helped me find home. That is a place deep within that I hold onto from across cultures and wherever I am,” said Rajasinghe.

“I want people to know that movement is a place where you can find home. That is a constant. As I’m all over the place or as our minds are all over the place or all the different conditions that we deal with, that is how I stay rooted,” she said.

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