I have always hated to exercise, but I really love eating food (preferably from restaurants), I love staying awake at night and sleeping in the mornings. I usually blame my long career doing night-shifts, but in reality, I always loved these things even as a teenager. Sometime in the past year, I began to realize that I am now on the wrong side of 35. Even worse, my teenage son was beginning to emulate my habits and I found myself very concerned that I may need to change my ways to be a better mother, partner, daughter and friend.
I still hate to exercise. It is painful, and sweaty and almost always needs to be done at the crack of dawn. In the past I would just walk rigorously for an hour (aargh!) and eat a lot of sprouts and oats (oh misery!), to lose weight and get my cholesterol and uric acid levels under control.
This time around though no matter what I tried it just wouldn’t work. I should be honest; I am actually on the wrong side of 40. And the fact of the matter is, that I have to work harder and eat better (worse) to survive the next 30 years. I started going into depression I think and that just made me bloat up even more, with water retention and what not.
I happened to bump into Bhushan Ji at the DDA sports complex one day when I was huffing and puffing down the jogging track and he had completed 3 rounds by the time I was ¾ done. I looked at him with a glare and made some snarky comment about how nice it must be to be so young, and he smiled and said, “Thank you! Yoga keeps me young”. So obviously I now wanted to know how old he was, which I am not at liberty to reveal here, but seriously not in his twenties for sure!
He introduced me to Shiva Urja Yoga and I have a long arduous road ahead of me, however as my instructor he always smiles, encourages, never judges and pushes only as far as I can go. I have been working with him as my Yoga Protocol Instructor for the past month and a half. I have more energy than before. I go to sleep on time and waking up in the morning is no longer torture. I haven’t lost any weight yet but I don’t feel like a lump of aches and pains anymore.
The good news is that I have made up my mind to keep at it. The bad news is that Bhushan Ji wants to discuss a nutrition plan starting next month (diet alert!). Stay tuned as I tell you more about how that goes.