The Yoga Journey Begins….

Hello! My name is Amit and welcome to my blog. I’m 25 years old and I live in London. I’m an inflexible Yogi and love rock climbing. As you have probably read from the title I am about to embark on a journey of Yoga in my homelands, India.

First, let me tell you a bit about myself. Like with most people, I have lived a sedentary lifestyle working in an office, 4 years to be precise. Having been conditioned by the expectations of society, the state of my mental and physical health slowly deteriorated over time. My mantra is to live in balance with nature however my life was definitely in imbalance. I often used to ask myself why I choose to live like this? The standard answer, usually, was money. While I think everyone has his or her own take on financial income, I wanted to prioritise a healthy balanced life above income. So, I decided to quit my job and book a one-way ticket to India with one main goal- to learn the ancient art of Yoga.

Before I came out to India I did a lot of research on the physical Yogic transformations, particularly from a starting point of an average person like me. After scouring the internet, I couldn’t find anything that documented a yogic progression from a beginner to intermediate/advanced level. So I thought, gap in the internet and created a blog to fix this. Before setting off I made a long list of all my nuisances and general info:

• Heavy Anterior Pelvic Tilt. Only found out a week ago and desk-sitters often get this. Probably my biggest priority to fix over the immediate future.
• Strain and stiffness in left side of the body
• Cannot fully straighten right elbow as I dislocated my elbow 6 months ago.
• Tight nerve pain in right leg when stretching hamstrings, maybe sciatica.
• Strength – able to do 10 pull ups before collapsing. 6 minute plank.
• High cholesterol, 5.16 mmol/L. This is definitely down to consistent snacking of McCoy’s chip shop salt & vinegar crisps.
• Low Red Blood Cell count, 5.99 x 10^12/L. This means my blood is more prone to clotting and heart related diseases. Probably the bloody McCoy’s too.
• Insufficient Vitamin D, 41.6 nmol/L.
• Low blood pressure.
• BPM – 61
• Mental health – 6/10. I have a really bad memory.
• Sleep quality – 7/10.
• Energy levels – 5/10.
• Weight – 68 kg

Whilst I know that Yoga may not help some of the above issues, I think it’s good to be aware of some of these problems and try figure out ways to sort them out – fixing my vitamin d insufficiency should be easy enough out here in India. Each week I will hopefully post 2 key progress indicators. They are the number of hours practicing Yoga and something I call Selfisio. Selfisio involves any exercise that directly tries to fix some of my nuances above; this can involve stretches, resistance bands, massage balls, acupressure and other exercises. Yoga of course involves a sequence of postures with meditation before and after the session.

I hope you enjoyed my intro post enough to come back next week and hear about my first taste of India as an aspiring Yogi. Until then stay cool and eat broccoli x.