At Brilliant Read Media, it is our constant endeavour to identify and share some of the unique and compelling stories from the startup ecosystem. As part of this, we invited Shashi Sarda for an interview with Brilliant Read Media. To say further, Shashi is a Yoga Instructor, Therapist, Counsellor & Specialises in Spine health through Yoga treatment and Founder at Yoga Central. Let’s learn more about her background, inspiring journey so far and his advice for our growing community!
Excerpts from our exclusive interview with Shashi:
Tell us a little bit about your background and your journey.
I am from a Marwari family. I have a graduate degree in Commerce. I got married early, at the age of 21, and was a homemaker with various hobbies for some years. Then, around 2010, I developed an interest in yoga. I did a Yoga Teachers Training Course from The Yoga Institute: I learnt Ashtanga and Vinayasa Yoga from The Yoga Institute, Santa Cruz East. Thereafter, I also trained in Iyengar and Hatha Yoga techniques.
As I became more aware and interested in the mind-body connection, I decided to train to be a counsellor, undergoing a two-year counselling course with a leading Mumbai psychiatrist.
I have also trained in therapeutic yoga, where we use yoga postures, pranayama, kriyas and breathing techniques to treat illnesses and help people. I have been in the field of yoga for over 14 years now.
I have two websites, https://yogacentral.in, which is about my yoga class, and is also home to my yoga blog. My other website is https://shashisarda.com, which is specifically about back pain relief, where people can check out some case studies as well.
How did you discover your passion?
My passion? Well, I had various health issues when I was in my early 30s. Since I am someone who looks for alternative healing rather than quick-fix allopathic treatments, I went looking for natural solutions for the health conditions that I was suffering from.
Over the course of a couple of years, I underwent a lot of hormonal imbalances, I had borderline sugar, borderline thyroid, cholesterol, and so on. Now, the reason I didn’t want to go down the road of allopathy is because I knew that this would mean hormone supplements and medications, with a possibility of having to take medications lifelong.
I examined alternative treatments like Ayurveda and homoeopathy, and found my way to yoga for my own well-being. I became really interested in yoga since I was determined to help my body heal naturally. I then went on to train as a yoga teacher. So over the course of a year and a half, I was training to be a yoga teacher, and was also helping myself heal with the help of Homoeopathy, Ayurveda, Panchkarma, detox and so on.
It took two years for my body to revert to its healthy hormone levels and to normalise my other health parameters. It was two years of dedication: learning and applying that learning in practical ways. This is when I realised how important alternative treatment, and yoga in particular, is for holistic healing, for rejuvenating all of the body’s organs. I realised that yoga is vital for physiological and psychological health.
I realised that a lot of people live with a lot of pain and discomfort, not knowing that it is possible to cure, to heal the disorder, the pain, naturally and beautifully. So I started to have workshops and other events to raise awareness about this. I want people to know about yoga beyond just a means of fitness.
I want people to know about its therapeutic and healing properties, its ability to cure disease and help organs rejuvenate themselves. I started to really love yoga and the many ways that it helped me, the many ways it has helped me help others. I went from healing my own body to helping others heal.
How are your treatment and methods different from other treatments?
I learned that with yoga, the body is to be approached as a whole, not just the physical body and not just a specific organ. The body is to be viewed as being connected to the mind, as being impacted by the mind. And by now, research has also shown us how the mind and body are related; how physical ailments are a result of certain beliefs and patterns of thinking. Our health is cumulative: our eating habits, our posture, our day-to-day activities, our emotional wellbeing, all contribute to it.
So while a lot of treatments are aimed only at the physical aspect of health, for instance, someone with unhealthy cholesterol levels will go out for a walk or to the gym. While these things definitely help, we tend to forget that stress is an important contributor to the problem. Stress management often doesn’t figure in the treatment.
And what exactly is stress management? It is a rather loosely used term. Stress management isn’t just about diverting the mind. It is also about changing our thought patterns. Certain thought patterns lead to stress and it is these thought patterns that are important to change, to break. Otherwise, we are simply learning to live with our tensions all our lives.
Changing those thought patterns is part of my treatment, a part of how we get to the root of the problem. Working with spinal issues over the years, it has become clear to me that every bodily issue is related to some mental or emotional issue. These emotional or mental issues then manifest in the form of back pain, spondylosis, knee pain and so on.
Most often, people with cervical pain have a lot of burden on their minds. They are overthinkers. These are people that have taken on responsibilities beyond their capabilities, trying to please others at their own expense.
Similarly, people with lower back pain are sedentary people who know that they need to be more active and are in turn stressed about this. They are insecure of certain things and this leads to lower back pain. Being too active can also lead to lower back pain, so it is often a matter of finding the right balance, of treating the mind as much as the body.
My own journey of regaining my health and restoring my hormonal balance was also about changing my thought patterns, my behaviour. It was about learning to get over my panic response to certain situations. Had I not changed these, I would not have regained my health. Understanding the emotional roots of physical ailments is a vital part of my treatments.
Hence, I work on all four parameters: physical, physiological, mental and emotional. This helps the person eat correctly, exercise correctly, work correctly and actually overcome those health issues.
What made you specialise in spine-related health issues?
I myself had a lot of spinal issues, such as cervical spondylosis and severe vertigo because of that. I have had a muscle tear in my bacḳ, I have had a slipped disc, a sciatica problem, plantar fasciitis, and also knee pain. When I was trying to overcome these issues, I was viewing them as physical problems.
I did neck stretches and physiotherapy for my cervical spondylosis and this did help me, but temporarily. I thought about this and I realised that some of my attitudes were holding me back. There were thought patterns that were preventing me from being cured. Certain fears and insecurities were connected to my sciatica and slipped disc problems. Unfulfilled desires can trigger emotional issues.
I started to work on my issues at an emotional level, at a mental level. This is when I started to see complete and lasting recovery, and today I have none of the issues that I had earlier.
It is thanks to yoga that I was able to actually cure myself as opposed to simply relieving some symptoms temporarily. I did this by changing my thought processes, by working on strengthening my muscles, my body, and my spine. It was a combination of the physiological and the mental that helped me.
I realised that it is possible to get back to your regular life, your sport, your normal activities, even high-intensity activity. We tend to get stuck with certain behaviours and thoughts because of pain. We cannot lift things, cannot play with our kids, cannot sit or stand for long durations, cannot travel… our lives become restricted because of the pain. By making simple changes to our thought processes, workouts and food intake, we can recover completely. I have seen this repeatedly – people getting completely cured and returning to a full, normal, fulfilled life. And spinal health is so central to all of this, which is why I started to specialise in spine-related issues.
What keeps you going, despite challenges?
All of us face challenges in our lives. Yoga teachers are no exception. It isn’t as if we are always calm or that we don’t face problems in our lives. I’ve had tough times, but I’ve had to power through. I’ve been tired but have had to take my classes.
There are other challenges, such as trying to make people understand exactly what this spine health program is all about. The traditional thinking is that yoga cannot cure problems, but can only help to manage them; that it is doctors and physiotherapists who cure problems. It is difficult for people to grasp the concept that there are emotional and mental triggers for pain, that these also impact the body.
I want to continue to help as many people as possible and I thank the Almighty that I have the ability to do so. I have gone through my own health problems and as I have learned to overcome them, I would love to be able to help others do the same.
What are the 3 important lessons you have learned in your life or that you would like to share?
The 3 most important lessons I’ve learned are Patience, Perseverance and Humility. Yoga teaches us a lot of patience. As I was dealing with my health issues, I realised that nothing comes overnight. If you want results, you have to be prepared to make the effort, do the work.
One must prepare for the possibility that a full recovery may take months, even years, and even after that, we have to be consistent in our practice. The patience we learn from this process also applies to other areas of life; we are able to face challenges calmly and patiently.
The second lesson is perseverance, and there is a yoga sutra relating to this: “Sa tu dirgha-kala-nairantarya-satkara-sevito dridha-bhumih”
“When we strive to do something consistently over and over, over a long period, with full commitment, it becomes firmly established and gives results.”
I had my share of doubts during my own journey, whether what I was doing was right for me, but I realised that sticking to the right path and persevering is very important. Follow what your gut says. Persevering helps in the long run.
The third, which actually should be the first, is humility. When one is into a spiritual pursuit such as yoga, it is very easy to develop ego. This actually pulls you down. It is important to remember that what you achieve is not just due to you. A lot of things came together to help you.
In a sense, the fates conspired to make you achieve what you set out to. If that egotistical thought comes up that, “I have done it,” remember that the world will still go on without each of us; we are all very small cogs in a very big wheel.
According to you, what are the keys to success?
First and foremost, I think it is a passion for your chosen field. That is the most important constituent of success. You can grow and become better at something only if you love what you do. If you don’t enjoy or even like what you do, you will be doing the bare minimum, or you may be doing what you do just to get that paycheck at the end of the month. Of course, everyone doesn’t have the luxury of a choice, but as far as possible, do what you truly want to do.
The second key to success is to keep tuned in to your intuition, your gut feeling. With social media and the information overload all around us, we tend to lose touch with this gut feeling of ours. We tend to lose sight of whether something is right for us, whether its going to work for us.
We tend to silence that gut feeling when it tells us what is right and what is wrong. A lot of decisions that I have taken in my life have been as a result of listening to my own gut feeling. I don’t overthink things; rather, I tend to go with the voice within, and this has served me well.
What makes one doctor better than another? What makes one yoga teacher better than another? It has to do with being attuned to intuition, that gut feeling. If you wake up at 3 AM, what is the thing that comes to mind? That is what your intuition is telling you to do and that is most likely the best option.
If you were to give one piece of advice to students, what would that be?
To young professionals and students who are into yoga, I would say, understand the philosophy of yoga, the Yoga Sutras. I often tell some of the young teachers and students that you’re going to be very good teachers of asanas, but I don’t know whether you will be good yoga teachers.
This is because yoga isn’t just the physical asanas. Those are just a very small part of yoga. Out of a total of 196 Yoga Sutras, only three relate to the physical asanas and five relate to Pranayama. The rest are about managing the mind. Until we learn to deal with our Kalesh (conflicts), our negative emotions, our wrong attitudes, our Bhavas (mindfulness), it is difficult to be successful.
All of us have our individual journeys, and we all remain lifelong students of yoga. However, along that journey, we must imbibe the Sutras, the philosophy of yoga. The Sutras have all the answers, all the ways to overcome the roadblocks along our journey.
Any other piece of advice you would like to share?
I would also advise students not to become disappointed or to give up on something too easily. One may not experience success right away, but it is important to follow through and to follow one’s passion.
Success is never obtained overnight. Everything takes time, and in the end, it is worth the wait and the effort.
What has been the most exciting and satisfying part of your journey?
The most exciting and satisfying part of my journey is being able to help people. I see people who came to me in pain and then, after working with them, after they undergo yoga therapy for a few months, I see them becoming pain-free, enjoying their lives, playing sports, dancing and doing whatever they weren’t able to, whatever they were scared to do. And after this, they forget me. This is also satisfying because it means that they no longer need me; it means that they are no longer in pain.
The fact that people have been cured, that they have been able to return to their normal lives, and once again lead pain-free lives – this is exciting and satisfying for me. I am glad and humbled, I feel blessed that I am a medium for something that is life-changing for so many people.
To be able to remove someone’s pain, to be the medium that facilitates this, is a deeply satisfying thing for me. I am thankful to the Almighty for this. Getting a new case, zeroing in on the real problem, and then working with that person to slowly bring about improvement, to create lasting change – that is hugely exciting for me!
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