For someone who just turned 25, I felt ancient and saggy from motherhood already. As I became a mum, not to one but two babies simultaneously, they appeared to have become my world and they literally sucked up my entire time. I had no me time, forget any time to exercise. Anyways exercise was the last thing on my mind.
However, I happened to go out with my girlfriends who were not married and found out that they felt so young and alive, they still had a fresh perspective towards life while I was all sad and negative about life. That is when I realized I might be getting sucked into depression slowly and once a self realization struck me, I decided to pull myself out of it. This is the exact moment I knew that I needed exercise or some sort of physical activity to help me with this process, along with controlling the calories that I used to intake in a day. Every breastfeeding mother has the excuse of hunger pangs to support her for her excess eating.

How to choose the right form of exercise?

With this realization in place I knew the exercise I choose should help me both spiritually and physically, as I did not have much time separately for both activities. That was when I decided to return to yoga. I had been irregularly practicing yoga since my fourth grade. I was good at it but never really found the time to improve my skills.
My dad believed in yoga, and he was sure it would help me in bounds as I was always over weight and was suffering from PCOS. Every time I tried regularizing myself with yoga, I was able to see a good difference in my weight. However, as life moved and became more hectic, I never really had a chance to make it a habit. But today when I realized that my health was going downhill because of my sedentary life style and unhealthy eating habits, yoga came to my rescue and I will swear by it for making my life better.

Where to start?

THE ART OF LIVING was a group that is world-famous for teaching yoga to anyone who is interested in learning yoga. I started my first yoga class from them and I must accolade them for a fabulous job that they do. They just take a one time, nominal fees from anyone enrolling for their courses. After that they can attend any number of courses free of cost through out their lifetime.
Taking up yoga does not require much prior knowledge, all it takes is grit and determination. Once a yogi, will also be yogi, or so I believe. That is how my life has been after starting yoga. I was more flexible even though I rarely practised yoga. It took me hardly one day to get back into form. I could go back to where I left just after a few days of practice.

Sudarsan Kriya by The Art of Living

Here the first form of exercise begins with breathing. This Kriya is all about a rhythmic form of breathing which helps in harmonizing the body and the mind. This technique is useful for reducing stress, frustration, depression and anger. It helps in rejuvenating the body by refilling energy and makes the body relaxed.
Breathing is the most essential point in life. Very breath you take helps in sustaining life from within. The second this breath stops life becomes dead in us. Sudarsan Kriya is all about using this breath to purify and sanctify our body. It helps us to experience infinity and thereby attain a peace from within and joys from around. This Kriya harmonizes the rhythm of the body which was out of place and puts it back in rhythm with that of nature.

Where was I and where am I now?

I was at a whooping 83kgs, as I walked into my preterm labour. After my delivery, I had lost 11kgs and was back at where I had started my pregnancy. However, when I was leaving the hospital after a staycation of 14 days, I was slowly gaining weight. I was up by 4kgs already then. As all Indian women are forced to believe that after delivery, ghee is the main course especially if you want to have a good milk supply.
Over a period of two months I was back to 80kgs. The more I tried to skip some food, I was forced to eat more of it and my hunger pangs weren’t helping at all. All the high fat foods and the frequent eating made me gain weight. After exclusively feeding my twins for 6 months I slowly started modifying my food habits.
So now with a less frequent yoga session and a limited proportion diet of home-made foods, I was able to achieve 70kgs. I have a long way to go but then this is a start that I do not regret one bit and one that I plan on keeping up for a long time.

How I benefited out of it?

I must say yoga has done numerous things to help me through my life. It has helped physically by making me flexible. It has helped me to reduce weight in my teens and post post-partum. It has helped me deal with depression in general and was most helpful with my post post-partum depression.
I am sure if I start religiously practising yoga I will be able to reach milestones which I can’t even imagine these days. More than losing a few kilos, yoga is all about the joy it gives you after a session of being at peace with your body. Unlike other physical activities, yoga will hurt you in the mildest of ways only for the initial few days. After which will your body will attune itself and make you achieve more targets with minimal pain.

Why should you try?

Not because I said so, but because your body is different and to know what suits your body best, trial and error is the best technique. Only if you try something will you be able to know if it worked for you or not.
I strongly recommend you to give it a try, if it doesn’t work at least you can be sure to eliminate yoga from your list of things to shed weight, which I am sure wouldn’t be the case because it is tested and tried by some of the greatest men of our times.