“I’ve always wanted to know the truth,” Lim says. “In my mind, there is more to life than what we understand life is … So from a very young age, I was already asking, what is the truth? Why am I here? What is life? Do I exist?”

The lawyer, who began her career at global law firm Linklaters, had always been Buddhist due to her family’s influence, but it was in 2000 that she felt an overwhelming need to search for something more beyond her life in Hong Kong. She had just experienced a difficult break-up, and was still reeling from the effects of her mother’s death in 1997.

“I wanted to break free from this cycle of endless suffering,” she says.

So Lim jetted off to Nepal, hoping to find solace in the Himalayas.

“It was a very deep calling that was undeniable,” she says. “Even with all this seemingly outer material success [and] with a lot of potential at the time, it was not enough.”

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Lim’s visit to Nepal changed her world forever. After serendipitously meeting a stranger in Durbar Square, in Kathmandu, that stranger took her to the Jamchen Lhakhang Monastery in the city, where she met the man who would become her first guru, Chogye Trichen Rinpoche.

During their brief meeting, he gave her a picture of a Buddha, which symbolised his wish for her to live a long life. As she was leaving the monastery, she was overcome with emotion. She knew that the person she had met would become one of “the masters of her life”.

“I had goosebumps, I had tears running down my eyes,” she says. “I ran back in and I grabbed onto his feet, and I said, ‘Rinpoche, I don’t know who you are, but I know you’re my teacher.’”

That day, she also met Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche, who would become her second guru after her first guru died.

After that trip, Lim returned to Hong Kong for three years before she decided to quit her job as Yahoo Asia’s corporate counsel for Greater China. She returned to Nepal for a longer stay.

There, she began studying Buddhist philosophy and Tibetan, and also practised meditation. She embarked on several solitary retreats – first for one month, then two stints of three months each – during which she did not have any contact with the outside world, and spent most of her time reciting mantras. Across seven months in solitude, Lim recited about 2 million of them.

Each time, she stayed in a guest room with an attached bathroom, and had a cook and attendant deliver meals.

A big takeaway from her time in solitude was that her feelings and reactions all related back to the mind.

“I could sit there [alone] and suddenly I would be angry,” Lim says. “Where did that anger come from? You can’t blame anyone, right? Sometimes when you’re out in the world, when you’re upset about something, you blame someone.

“[But] I realised it was my perception. It was my memory that was making me angry. It was all me,” she adds. “My perception is dependent upon my past experiences … and the seeds that I have planted in myself.”

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For Lim, engaging in meditation and spiritual practice daily meant that she finally felt that she was being true to herself.

“To a lot of people, if you look at me from the eyes of worldly life, I’m very weird or eccentric,” she says. “If there is a norm, I don’t really quite fit, so I call myself [a] common person, but I’m leading an uncommon path.

“Not a lot of people can really understand that, and I think it’s been a struggle for me to be me. But I am who I am.”

After two fruitful years in Nepal, Lim returned to Hong Kong for her family. Wanting to be a dutiful daughter and to incorporate what she had learned into her life, she went back to being a lawyer – “to normalise my abnormality”, she says.

She was a full-time lawyer, including a stint as chief legal counsel at the luxury goods company Richemont, until 2015.

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After quitting her job, Lim had a series of adventures while still working as a part-time lawyer.

She went to Amsterdam in the Netherlands to get a macrobiotic chef certificate; the major principles of macrobiotic diets are to reduce animal products, eat locally grown foods that are in season, and to eat in moderation.

She dissected a cadaver in Germany to learn more about the human body. She also got her yoga teacher certification after a friend asked for lessons.

When Lim returned to Hong Kong in 2017, she officially launched “Heal with May” and became a well-being coach.

In a high-pressure city like Hong Kong, many people don’t realise that they are stressed, Lim says.

“It’s almost like we are addicted to the stress, and then it makes us very grumpy and aggressive.”

When people face continuous stress and pressure that is left unaddressed, it can lead to an amygdala hijack – an overwhelming emotional response disproportionate to the circumstance – that triggers the fight-or-flight response, Lim says.

“If you’re on that mode all the time without a break, so you’re shaking all the time, you will break down,” she says.

Lim has three stress-relieving tips that can be easily employed in daily life.

First, she recommends sitting in silence for a few minutes before you start your day, to focus on breathing, set your day with an intention, to “remember your why” and to achieve peace of mind.

Like many others, she also recommends exercising or daily movement, though it should be tailored to your abilities and desires. “Sitting is the new smoking,” she says.

“I believe that we have the power to self-heal,” she says. “We just don’t give it enough time and space.”