00:00I was bouncing around in what I should do with my life.
00:04I somehow ended up in LaSalle and when I met the founders of parkour and I experienced parkour,
00:08somehow it just made sense.
00:16I'm Sri Boon. I'm 33 this year. I teach parkour to seniors for a living.
00:20I was introduced to parkour nine years ago and I have been teaching parkour to seniors for seven years.
00:26I was in LaSalle studying a diploma in dance and then the founders of parkour came to LaSalle to teach a workshop.
00:35That was how I got to know parkour.
00:37I felt really good when I was practicing the movements.
00:41It gave me a sense of aliveness and freedom that I crave but could not experience so far in my life.
00:56Some of them have been following me for a few years so they have done this more than a hundred times so their bodies have adapted.
01:04Today we have done the conditioning. That is the very first part where we crawl and do all kinds of things.
01:10Usually that will take the part of our whole session.
01:15Then after that we do flow. That is the one that you see when we jump around.
01:18Over here I think I have me too quite a bit.
01:22Okay lah. Not too bad. So I can jump a little bit better now.
01:27It's a myth that is dangerous.
01:29You do things that you don't know that you could do.
01:31You fall easily. You don't worry about falling.
01:35They are very helpful to each other.
01:36Whenever somebody gets injured, everybody will come to help.
01:38And they will have their sambak or hot oil and sweets.
01:44Or they know all the motherly things.
01:46I'm very lucky to experience this.
01:49The essence of this entire community of motherly love, right?
01:51Most of them are mothers. I think all of them are mothers.
01:53And my own mum is in the class as well.
01:58Very nice. We have fun.
02:00I think we normally come and we encourage each other.
02:02Then we have fun together.
02:04And sometimes after class we will go out for makan.
02:07Yeah, then some of us will meet, you know, other than parkour session lah.
02:12We will meet outside lah.
02:21I was teaching young adults.
02:23This was, I believe, seven years ago.
02:26I was having supper with my students at a food court at Bishan.
02:30An old lady, she's probably about near 70 now.
02:34She approached me and she asked what I did for a living.
02:39I told her that I teach parkour for a living.
02:41I showed her some videos.
02:43And interestingly, she took interest.
02:45She told me that she falls very often.
02:49So the next day, I met her in the morning.
02:51And I started teaching her for about two months, twice a week.
02:55Her strength improved.
02:56Her balancing issues were better.
02:57I had a colleague then who helped me with a coverage of what happened.
03:02It got caught on by Straits Times.
03:04And then that was how more people came in.
03:06When I went to Xiaoliu Chiu, I cycled around the island with my family.
03:23And I fell.
03:24I fell along the road.
03:26And instinctively, I discarded my bicycle and did a road.
03:31And nothing happened.
03:32I wasn't injured at all.
03:33I was like, oh, thank God.
03:35Thank, thank Parkour.
03:41I was actually quite good in games compared to my peers.
03:46Whereas they were, they were better in studies than I am.
03:49I think at some point, I asked myself, why can't life be more like a game?
03:55Whereby doing things just feel natural and exciting.
04:00You look forward to the next level in game.
04:02The next new monsters to fight.
04:05New achievements in a game.
04:07Why can't life be more like that?
04:09Back then, I was depressed because I felt like life was increasingly difficult.
04:16In a way whereby nothing felt natural, nothing felt desirable.
04:20My experience in school made me feel like things are not very community-driven.
04:26And I didn't get the sense of wanting to help my classmates in academics.
04:31And I felt like there was a lack of humanity growing up.
04:34I think that contributes to me feeling very down and depressed as well.
04:38Over time, everything felt very competitive and selfish.
04:41And so I think Parkour was salvation because it was the first thing that talked about
04:46I guess, the essence of humanity.
04:48And that made me feel very human again.
04:55To want to try Parkour is already a courageous step.
05:00And to do it for a long time and to practice diligently and safely is another achievement.
05:08I have this long-standing dream that one day my students would perform an NDP.
05:18It's just, this thought just doesn't go away.
05:20That would mean that the Singaporean society would have been, as a whole, open-minded enough to embrace Parkour as a very good way of life.
05:29And I would be very happy because the impression of Parkour is so, it can be quite negative.
05:33So I think if my students were to represent Parkour on a national stage, I think a lot of good things would come to Singapore often.
05:42This thing got lost.
05:42This thing got lost.
05:42This thing got lost.
06:12This thing got lost.
06:13This thing got lost.
06:14This thing got lost.
06:23This thing got lost.
06:27About the life thathält does revealing ourselves.
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