By Shamim Najjingo,
YOGA COACH
With time you get to realize that all you know is that you have seen, heard or experienced. Yoga is one of the things I had never thought could exist in the world. Until 7 years ago, the word yoga never existed in my dictionary. And with that experience I know most ugandans are just the same. Upon the news of this article, I couldn’t stop thinking about what to write, how detailed It should be for the reader to understand what exactly this is about. Yet again it took me 7 years to know what I know about it. What makes me think one could grasp it in just a page or two. I decided to answer a question about yoga. One I have never gotten an opportunity to answer with no particular excuse.
Statistics shows that 40%of Ugandans have heard about yoga and 10% know what exactly yoga is. It’s meditation. A student confidently said one day when I handed him my business card. Atleast that was part of yoga. Imagine being asked if you were now part of a cult from India Buda something! Well that was my father. Shamim, does yoga bring nyashi? Bukirwa, afriend of mine posed a question after listening to my explanation of how people do exercises on a mat something that didn’t make sense to her. This question was going to be the most frequent question I would receive about yoga and everytime like then I would find myself smiling. Yes, yoga does bring nyashi but it can also take the nyashi if you don’t want it.
We all have that one friend who goes to the gym everyday runs usually, eats salads and still has belly fat. You can’t help but wonder what exactly is wrong with this guy? Why is he or she wasting money. Probably gym things don’t work. But that’s not the case. Those things work and so does yoga. The only reason as to why you are not getting the results you want is because you haven’t committed to getting them. And that’s why we need experts who can help us understand our bodies and how we can work on them in order to get what we are comfortable with.
With general exercises you can get flexibility, mobility, strength and even lose weight, but is that all you want? Is it what you need? What tones my nyaashi could probably take away yours depending on the type of body you have. What makes me strong could just wear you out with no results achieved. Be careful about your nyashi, and any of your body parts before you start any kind of workout.
When you come to us, the first question is what do you want? Upon answering that, we have to find out what type of body do you have. Some people have big bodies with zero fat and others small bodies with tons of fat. You can’t be giving them the same dose of course one will be drained. Depending on your body and what you want out of it we get to choose the exercises you are going to be doing for the next month. Then another and another. That too changes with time according to the progress made.
Let’s say you want more nyashi, we have to shade the waist fat off, back fat off, belly fat off. Trust me no matter how small the nyashi was before it couldn’t look the same. And if you wanted the belly fat off, why not start with eating at least an hour before sleeping, that would be of great help before you even get to start the real part.
Nothing is impossible, we just don’t know where, how or when to look for what we want. It is only strange when you haven’t tried it. The perfect body is on you are comfortable in. Do not try looking like people you see on TV. You can only be best at being you.
By Shamim Najjingo, the writer is a Yoga Coach in Kampala Uganda
