A fighter on the mat: Sam Tharoth tries yoga at Kep West
She has spent close to twenty years learning to move fast and hold firm. At the Kep West Wellness Center, Sam Tharoth spent an hour doing the opposite. It was her third yoga class. It was the first one that changed something.
Sam Tharoth is one of the best-known fighters in Cambodia. A practitioner of bokator, the Khmer martial art listed by UNESCO in 2022, she went on to fight professionally in Kun Khmer and in mixed martial arts, and to act in Jailbreak and in First They Killed My Father. In the ring she is Little Frog. Off it, she is patient, funny and precise about her own body, the way athletes tend to be.
She came to Kep for a few days. Yoga was on the programme. She had tried it twice before and had not thought much of it.
Positions a fighter never takes
"It was new to me, even though it was the third time trying yoga," she says. "The difference is the positions. They put me in a spot I had never put myself in."
That is the part she keeps coming back to. Fighting trains the body in one direction. Explosive, forward, braced. Mobility is not the priority, and the years pile up.
"All fighters are like this. I do fighting sport, so it is always fast and stiff," she says. "This one helped me so much with the mobility."
The class is held in the open wooden sala, doors folded back on the garden. Bolsters, blocks and cushions do a lot of the work. Each posture is propped so the body can be held in it for minutes rather than seconds, which is exactly where a stiff joint has no choice but to give a little.
Being taught how to breathe
The second thing she noticed was the instruction. Not the postures — the breathing.
"Everybody knows how to breathe," she says. "But the time and the rhythm you take to breathe, that is different. That is why you need someone to tell you how to relax."
She stops for a moment, looking for the word in English, and laughs about it. "I wish I knew English better." Then she finds it: "It makes you enjoy the moment. You let yourself slow down. It feels really good."
For someone whose working life is timed in rounds, slowing down on purpose is not a small thing.
A clear mind, and the wind
What stayed with her afterwards was physical first. "My body was really relaxing. I could feel the blood circulation."
Then the rest of it. "It made my mind very clear. That is a special moment, when you can clear your mind and connect with the wind and the nature around you."
In Kep that part comes for free. The sea is a few steps away, the wind moves straight through the sala, and there is very little noise to compete with.
Yoga in Kep, for bodies that work hard
Sam Tharoth is an extreme case — a professional athlete with two decades of impact in her joints. But the complaint is a common one. Long hours, repeated movements, a body that gradually stops going where it used to.
Classes at the Kep West Wellness Center are led by Lana Yang and are open to guests and to visitors, including the sunrise session on the pier. The centre also takes part in World Wellness Weekend, from 18 to 20 September, across Knai Bang Chatt, The Wave and The Strand.
Sam Tharoth says she will do it again. Coming from a fighter, that counts as a review.
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