Welcome to Made in Asia, Lifestyle Asia’s podcast series that aims to connect the cultural dots and communities across Southeast Asia through storytelling. In collaboration with CelcomDigi | One™ Plan, we explore the theme ‘Meaningful Connections’ that extends from the theme of ‘Community’ in the pilot episodes. We discuss what it means to build strong, trusted connections with the community and also what it’s like to stay ‘connected’, especially in today’s ever-changing and fast-paced lifestyle. In this episode, we are joined by Teo Yi Ping, one of the minds behind the well-known community-driven fitness studio, PWRHOUSE.
As soon as she arrives at Four Siblings, the rooftop bar of Kimpton Naluria Kuala Lumpur, Yi Ping is giving ‘classy chic’: a white twist knot top paired with satin pants, and a pair of black mesh flats. She is radiant, glowing; in part due to the fact that she’s currently eight months pregnant. When Yi Ping first posted the announcement on Instagram back in March, it had garnered a lot of emotional reactions and support from her friends as well as the community. Following that, she continued to document her ongoing pregnancy journey, taking us along for the ride. And through it all, she keeps it real, showing us the highs and lows of it all while still staying true to herself.
So, who is Yi Ping, truly? What she can tell you is that she’s been a tough cookie from the start. She is not only the eldest child of her family, she also grew up as the only girl among three brothers. “We have this unspoken expectation that we have to lead by example,” she says of her experiences growing up. “So, that comes with a lot of pressure, right? And also, being the first child, your parents kind of throw you into things where they just want to explore your different possibilities and not knowing if it would work for you as a child. But I think that’s kind of what made me who I am today because it really taught me how to lead, how to mentor, and also how to adapt to different environments.”
It’s how her fitness business would eventually come about. Yi Ping notes that she’s “not the type of person to just stick to one thing”, just as she had been raised. “So, I love creating,” she adds. “I think that’s what has stayed consistent about me, hence the reason why I started PWRHOUSE.” Fitness has always been a part of her, Yi Ping affirms, but making the leap from doing PR and marketing a decade ago, to becoming an instructor and opening her own studio, was pretty huge for her. She had already been among the pioneers of indoor cycling—or spin—for a while then.
PWRHOUSE later helped establish Yi Ping as a community leader and fitness enthusiast, and she affirms that just because she’s sailing on her current journey, it doesn’t mean that it has to stop. In this episode, we speak about Yi Ping’s journey with the fitness studio PWRHOUSE right to the end, the painstaking process of building a trustworthy team, and channelling that trust back into the fitness community, and of course, her new, new journey into motherhood. PWRHOUSE was founded with the intention to create a safe space for everyone, even beyond the fitness community, to grow and to feel empowered. It was built to make them feel welcome and like they were a part of something — a space to connect likeminded people together.
In that similar vein, CelcomDigi this year introduced its newest flagship plan: the CelcomDigi One™ Plan, meticulously built around the idea of having everything a modern household relies on consolidated into a single plan — connectivity, convenience, entertainment, and 3 unlimited 4G/5G mobile lines for everyone in the family, all under one roof.
Completing Her Journey with PWRHOUSE
PWRHOUSE began with four friends — Yi Ping, Han Pin Ma and their friends Jeremiah Tan and Chao Way Lee — banding together with the idea of creating a fitness studio. “We discussed about [things like], ‘Okay, where do we wanna go from here? What do we actually wanna do? If we were to open our own studio, what could we do differently?’” Yi Ping shares. “Because we didn’t want to do the same thing, you know, like, what would be the point in that, right? And then at the time, there wasn’t much competition. So, if we were to come into this industry, we would have to make a really huge impact. And so, we decided we didn’t want to just build a studio. We wanted to build people first.”
As soon as their idea was starting to take real shape, COVID-19 hit. But the team had worked around this pretty well, by connecting with people in a lot of other ways. That eventually gave them the boost and the confidence to properly kick-start PWRHOUSE.
“We all just knew that we wanted something bigger than ourselves,” Yi Ping muses, when we ask what she thinks the ‘secret sauce’ is that made PWRHOUSE work the way it did. “And we also wanted to just bring confidence out of each and every one [of them]. The only way to do that was to spin. And I think for us, spin is a workout, it’s a platform. But what you do around it is what makes it work.”
Towards the end of its journey, PWRHOUSE remains one of the proudest things that Yi Ping has achieved in her life. And her biggest takeaway is this: “You can’t control what has happened, but you can control what happens next. Go with the flow, take the lessons and take those setbacks as a way for you to just learn, experience and pivot.”
What It Means to Create a ‘Safe Space’ for the Community
This idea of creating a ‘safe space’ was the core of PWRHOUSE’s values, and continues to be among of the driving forces for Yi Ping even after the studio’s closure. “I think having a safe space is allowing people to be themselves, authentically themselves, as well as being confident about who they are about to become,” she opens up. “It’s a place where you don’t want people to feel judged. Where they can also make mistakes and learn as they go. But a safe space isn’t just built by the founders of a company, it’s also built around the people you have with you. And that’s how, in the end, the community will just take care of itself.”
After having spoken to a few fitness instructors, it has become clear that there’s a common thread between a lot of people, especially newcomers, when it comes to frequenting a space. A lot of us can relate — no one really likes to be perceived on their first day or first week of working out; they’re just getting the hang of it, or they haven’t yet achieved the figure that they desire and actually want to be seen for. But the whole point of a safe space, as described by Yi Ping, is to allow you to embrace your own journey.
“I think when you first come, you’re really unsure about… not just yourself but your body as well, and what it’s capable of doing,” Yi Ping says, empathising with the newcomers, “until you come and do a few more rounds, then maybe you’ll start taking off your top and you’re in your sports bra and you’re, like, confident again and suddenly you say your first words to the person next to you. Those moments also have an impact on how the community grows over time.”
Embracing Her New Journey into Motherhood
These days, her focus is on her journey into motherhood. As the eldest child—and also the only girl among her brothers—Yi Ping takes a lot of pride in being the first one to grant her parents their first grandchild. And lo and behold, she’s also having a girl! But as she documents her own personal journey, she affirms her efforts to continue connecting with her community.
“Motherhood is a new chapter for me,” Yi Ping says, smiling. “I think there’s so many ways you can connect with people. It doesn’t necessarily have to be just about fitness. And especially because I’m entering a new chapter now, I think there are still also a way where you can connect differently by maybe talking about this chapter of my life, which is motherhood. I think it’s more so pushing out the idea that even though you’re pregnant, it doesn’t mean that it stops here. I kind of want to share the idea that you should just keep doing what you want to do.”
Hosted by Martin Teo, Editor-in-Chief of Lifestyle Asia KL & SG, Made in Asia headlines ‘Community’ for its pilot season and ‘Live Your Peak’ for the second season, now followed by the theme ‘Meaningful Connections’ in its third season. Stay tuned as we bring you fresh conversations with some of the brightest trailblazers and voices in Malaysia and Singapore.
Special thanks: Four Siblings, Kimpton Naluria Kuala Lumpur by IHG
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Note : The information in this article is accurate as of the date of publication.
