“Yoga se hi hoga?” More like, “Yoga se bhi hoga”.

If someone came and told me, “Yoga is just for the physical benefits” I would totally disagree and say, ‘It’s a complete package’.

The common perception about yoga is that it is for the body but let me tell you that it is for the mind as well.

Well, I wouldn’t blame you entirely for it because even me in my 21's was thinking the same. I had(have) PCOD and having tried all the natural methods possible, I was struggling to find a method to cure it. I even went to the allopathy methodology but one piece of advice I would give all the young girls with PCOD is to never use allopathy medicines. The hormonal medicines they give do cure you but your body becomes addicted to it so much that if you don’t take them your body wouldn’t do the functions naturally that it should regularly do.

Yoga is an effective discipline. I want to use the word ‘discipline’ here as it is not something you do to cure something and you can leave it like the course of an antibiotic. It has to be incorporated in your lifestyle and when you do this, I’m sure you won’t regret it.

We often want results quicker. When results are quicker, they quickly go away too. Any natural process takes time and whenever it happens naturally it means it’ll stay longer and also, prevent you from all the side effects as well. It took me 8 months of doing yoga to regulate my hormones back to form. For some people, it takes years too. Consistency is what helps here.

I personally find it very easy to do yoga as a regime as it is not expensive, does not need complex equipments, does not need any special room or space to practice, a small space to accommodate your body is fine and very effective in the long run.

My journey with yoga began in my late 21s when I had no choice but to join a class and do something, otherwise my PCOD was spiking like crazy. I was putting on weight even by sniffing food, I was getting pimples, losing a lot of hair and growing excessive hair on my other parts of the body. These kinds of issues made me body conscious, and I would be apprehensive in wearing tight clothes, short clothes and anything that made me feel like exposing my real shape. I terribly wanted to be out of this situation and be confident in my own skin and wear whatever I wanted to wear. So, I started yoga with the pure motive to lose weight and get back on track.

We often forget to realize the mental toll a physical imbalance can have. What I had was just PCOD which approximately 6 out of 10 girls have these days. But, what I got along with it was low self-esteem, body consciousness and body shaming from my friends, irritating and painful cycles and most importantly, low confidence in myself.

This needed to be addressed. I was in my 21s and this is the youth of my life. I want to travel, wear whatever I feel like and make mistakes. Somehow, PCOD was stopping me from doing some of the things.

We finally landed into yoga. I now go to a yoga class suggested and found out by my mom and started going regularly making up my mind that this will bring back my confidence. Please don’t think I didn’t do anything before yoga. I did try out aerobics, gym, regular walking and stuff.

Gym is something you have to keep doing and it’s super expensive to get gym memberships these days.

Walking itself is not enough, although it is good cardio you need something much more if you want to regulate your hormones, lose weight or get back into shape.

Aerobics, to be honest, I found very boring. This is a personal thing, some people might find it interesting as well. I don’t know maybe it is the class I joined that gave me the impression but I hated every minute of doing it.

The final resort was to bite my teeth and do yoga.

The first day was obviously tough. Your body is not used to all these exercises and one day you give it all these movements and your body goes “whaaaaattt!”. I couldn’t move after the yoga sesh and that’s when my ma’am suggested some counter exercises to relax the muscles.

As time goes by, even the worst of the worst things can get better. The exercises that took the life out of me were quite easy and became my comfort zone.

Now, in the beginning of this article I mentioned that yoga is not just for the body but for the mind as well.

I haven’t justified that yet as many of you have been patiently reading. I am going to share my personal experience here.

Story time:

We are a bunch of 4 people in your Yoga class, all ladies, an entertaining group of tamil speaking women. All the women there except me are in their mid 30s or early 40s with growing children, husbands and a stable life.

I am the only 20 year old there and never once a day have I felt secluded because of my age difference. I work for the IT sector and sometimes, our jobs can get hectic. In those times, my yoga class is like therapy for me as we women just talk, talk about stuff that matters to us, that entertains us and that keeps us laughing.

Most of the women there share their household problems, their children troubling them or even their achievements. Let me tell you that our yoga class is an international team😛 as two of the women are from abroad, one from Japan and other from Malaysia. It really feels good to share all your stuff. Mostly my yoga ma’am entertains us with topics that are so interesting to listen to like her home shifting stories, her husband’s WFH shenanigans and her children’s trials of school and tuitions.

We also share our achievements and failures as well. We usually clap and encourage our team mates if they crack some of the tough poses in yoga.

One of our mates in Japan has started to take her Japanese class and in her class, they had arranged an event for all the students and she successfully delivered an entire speech in Japanese.

Being an Indian and from the South of India, it’s a pretty good achievement to go to a foreign land, learn a new language and confidently deliver a speech to the folks in there.

She was very nervous the previous day. That is when she came to us and we gave her the boost of confidence she needs. The next day, she was very elated to say that her speech went well and she even cooked some Indian dishes to share with the Japanese people and even taught them to drape a saree. She also shared how the foreigners were surprised to taste a different cuisine, some liked it and some did not.

Some time back, I had saved enough money to buy diamond earrings. I used to wear it everyday because I liked how it looked and the glitter it gave and also, because it gave me a sense of pride.

One day, when I came back after a brisk walk from the park, my mom freaked out when she couldnt one ear ring. We looked around the entire park but luck did not favor us. Returning sadly, completely finding ourselves hopeless we slept on it and the next day I shared it with my yoga mates.

I was surprised by the support the entire team had on us and the entire while they were giving me hope that I would find my earring in some days. They also told me that hard earned money will never go to waste. It might sound cinematic but after about 15 days, a lady comes to our house and says that she has the other pair and will bring it tomorrow and the next day she does. I was eager to share this happy news with my yoga mates as they were the ones who gave me hope in the tough time and like they told, it happened exactly like that.

Like these, I have a lot of stories to share but this blog wouldn’t be enough. In short, we have conversations about mother-in-law problems, children not listening to them, current affairs, issues about grooms not able to find brides these days, their house marriages, dowry systems in the society, my impending wedding which they force to get married while I’m still young.

Please don’t mind that the topics are not very intellectual or newspaperish but we are not there to improve our knowledge.

We are there to share each other’s stories, lighten our mind and do yoga as well.

My doctor always tells me, the mind has to be happy for the body to be happy as well. For there is exercise for the body to heal but none for the mind.

My yoga class helped me do this and I can never imagine a day (except for the weekends) to pass by without doing yoga.

I have become way flexible than before, I can do ardha chakra asana, halasana and my goal this year is to master shirshasana which is the head stand that most people do. Just as we speak, I have sprained my neck badly trying to do it without proper guidance :P

Thank you for staying so long. After all this, what I would like to convey in this article is that everyone should start doing yoga. All women irrespective of whether you have PCOD or no, all men irrespective of their health problems and even children from a younger age.

Ending this article with my slightly moderated version of the famous quote “Yoga se hi hoga” by saying “Yoga se bhi hoga”.