Yoga becomes the exercise of choice for Ranchiites

Looking forward to getting healthy this year? Every year, a lot of us make resolutions to work hard and become healthy. We even begin fancy new diets and enroll on gyms before every resolve falls apart and we go back to our old ways even before January ends.
So, is every New Year resolution a failure? No. A dedication to whatever form of exercise one chooses is important. But before doing so, one must understand how acquainted their bodies are to physical strain and choose accordingly.
Manjusha Jha, a certified yoga instructor and a media student, had gone through this circle no less than half a dozen times. As an overweight child, she always had the feeling of being different from others and was bullied. “I tried several exercise regimes over the years. I pursued crash diets that would result in an abnormal drop in weight and leave me in a daze. It even affected my eyesight and I was forced to wear glasses. In my pursuit to lose weight, I ended up not only making my body weaker, but also drove my mind to depression,” she says.
But choosing yoga six months ago changed her life. “I was suffering from extreme depression and my health was failing. I would gain a lot of weight in a few months and then shed all of it in less than one. This was affecting my studies and the way I interacted with people because I thought I was losing my sense of identity. It was then that my father pushed me to take up yoga, asking me to dedicate a small portion of my time to it,” Manjusha adds.
Now, Manjusha is not only happier and healthier, but hasn’t quit either. She recently spent time at a residential yoga certification camp in Bengaluru, training to become a yoga instructor herself.
“I think I continued with yoga because I found a certain sense of peace in it. Yoga helped me become physically active and reduced my dependence on extreme crash diets to lose weight. But I probably did it because there wasn’t some target I was trying to achieve, but a simple task that I did over and over again,” she adds.
But Manjusha isn’t the only person from the city who believes simple exercise regimes are the key to stay fit. Shalini Bhagat spent the past decade as a teacher, spending six to eight hours on her feet. It affected her so much that she was finding it extremely difficult to even sit down. “Let alone exercise, I couldn’t even sit down without a shooting pain in my back. After a lot of consideration, I decided to take up yoga instead. I took everything slow and spent months before moving to a higher difficulty level,” Shalini said.
Two years on, Shalini who visits Army Public School in Deepatoli to teach weekly classes to primary students, believes yoga has given her a new lease on life.
"After I completed my Masters, I never took care of my health. I exerted my body more than I should have and ended up hurting my back. Even when I began yoga, I quit for one month because sitting down for asanas was something I thought I couldn’t do. But yoga was definitely the best choice for me, given that I needed a healing exercise. Anything else would drain me further,” Shalini said.
Be it the easy-to-do postures or the added benefit of meditation, beginners can take it easy and steady with yoga. Biswajay Chowdhury, who has been teaching yoga in Ranchi for over four decades now, agrees. He believes regular yoga, with its variety of postures and poses, is the perfect way for any newbie to begin working out.
“See, every day we come across one new exercise or the other. Power yoga for instance, is a very intense form of yoga. Not only it is too much for beginners, even seasoned practitioners need a lot of strength and determination to stick to a power yoga routine. Youngsters don’t understand that and their fitness resolutions fail,” Biswajay said.
Anil Kumar Rai, another yoga enthusiast, believes that keeping it simple is the key. “Until 2017, every year, I would get inspired by my bulked-up friends and begin working out before I dropped out of sheer exhaustion. I switched to yoga two years ago and it helped me slowly convert into a fit person. I can even spend time in gym now without hurting myself as I have understood the limits of my body,” Anil said.