Review: Bharat Thakur Yoga

After having my personal trainer for a few months, I was up for a change. I was paying a lot for something I thought I could do myself at that point. I am always one for changing up my fitness routine anyway.

I thought, I should bring the horses closer to home and try yoga. The most marketed classes in these parts of the world is Bharat Thakur Yoga. I checked the schedule, they had some mildly convenient options. My mother was around at that time, I took her to a morning class with me to Tecom.

It was a weight-loss class so was quite intense with multiple surya namaskars and intense cardio. My mom couldn't do it all but she was observing happily. I was suprisingly okay with a lot of the exercises.

It was a fun class with Shreyas, a young male teacher. It was impressive to see a young teacher dedicated to yoga which one doesn't see so often. I didn't know at that time but the classes are ALWAYS on offer. I got pushed into committing to 3 months of classes for AED 1,400 (3 times a week) at the Tecom centre. The only downside was that the centres don't have showers (!), so I had to drive from Marina to Tecom and then back to Marina after the class. I would get ready and then drive to Bur Dubai!

I thought I could do it and was all set to finally lose the extra weight! I went to the Tecom class next week and guess what, the teacher was different! It was a girl who had just learnt yoga for 2 months and now become a teacher. She had no sensitivity to the student's needs. I thought I will give her a second chance but the second class was even worse.

I was losing my patience for doing the morning driving routine plus tolerating a bad teacher. I called the centre and asked them to change my centre to Bur Dubai which was closer to work and had showers. They gave me a lot of grief and then I decided to review them honsetly on Facebook. Things changed after this and how :p

The regional CEO called me and gave a one hour long sales pitch. In the end my centre was changed. The teacher at this centre was Gurpreet Singh, who I knew from previous classes in Marina anyway. He was a very cool, friendly teacher.

I did the classes for 2.5 months regularly before started with Rujuta. Meanwhile, we had been to Coimbatore and learnt to do surya namaskar in detail and slowly like it should be done. I was completely put off the classes now and left.

Since then, I get a lot of messages about renewing memberships or new offers but their numbers are blocked on my phone.

I would not suggest these classes to anyone, wherever they may be held.

Royal Ascot Hotel, Bur Dubai center

Rujuta Diwekar: During

So I decided to take the plunge today, the price was quite high at ~AED 5,000 for two months for personal nutrition coaching with Rujuta's team member.

Since my Isha Inner Engineering homework just ended today, I decided to start with this immediately after.

It started a few days ago with me filling out an excel sheet with my measurements, background and other details. Also with all food that I ate for 3 days (combination of weekdays and weekend).

I was put in touch with my nutritionist - Somya and started with an hour long Skype conversation about my food habits and changes I need to make. Her precription seems quite easy to follow. Below is an example.

My main concerns and the reason that helped me justify this huge investment were:

• Personalised for my situation - living with husband outside India, with minimal domestic help, cooking by self
• Tight schedule with full time work, kathak dance and workouts
• Despite high levels of determination, something wasn't working since two years and I want to make it work before 2016!

Note: This is built keeping my background, diet and routine in mind.

Teaser of what I am aiming at

Hair Botox

Since I was a kid, I have struggled with having unmanageable and curly hair. During my teenage, my mother breathed sense into me and made me use her homemade shampoo. Yes you heard it right - made of herbs called Aritha, Shikakai and Amla. There was a very long procedure before actually using this mixture as a shampoo and the downside was that the herbs sometimes left granules in my hair.

As I grew and moved away from home, I also moved away from this healthy shampoo. I moved to UK and rediscovered my curls and for the first time made efforts to manage them better. I think I got the hang of it within the year and then it was time to move away to Dubai soon.

Dubai has been weird to my hair, they seem to have lost the curls. They dry either poker straight or in weird waves. This meant I had to use some heated styling constantly. The front of my hair though is not responsive at all. I have always had baby hair at the front which just stand on their ends.

Having tried rebonding earlier, I wanted to know if there was a healthier option to straighten my hair so that I wasn't damaging them. I was told about Hair Botox at Dollhouse Dubai. I decided to go ahead with the treatment in Oct 2014 and on my shoulder length hair, it lasted for the next 6 months.

It remains to be seen how my hair react in the future but while I had it, it felt really strong and soft. Totally recommend it over Keratin and definitely over rebonding.

PS: the post is in no way sponsored by Dollhouse, even though I wish it was :)

http://www.thedollhousedubai.com/

Rujuta Diwekar: Books

I learnt about the phenomenon that Rujuta is from a Facebook like from a friend around July 2015. I instantly got pulled in as I saw a young lady in great shape just after delivering a baby and eating laddoos and ghee! This promised to be different if nothing else.

I looked into her philosophy and got to know about her books. I bought Don't Lose your Mind, Lose your Weight. When I read it, I seemed to agree with each and every word in the book and the space in between. There was no piece on nutrition or wellness that has touched me the way this did. 

It had a profound impact to the extent that I then read her next two books. Iv been recommending Women and the Weight Loss Tamasha to anyone who cares to listen since then. 

In all this, I was of course trying to apply the principles to my own lifestyle and didn't know where to start. As you know from the blog, I've struggled with weight issues since about three years. More than the physical or aesthetic aspect of it , I think it's affected my confidence and send worth the most. 

I am contemplating making the big investment of taking the private consultation to know really where am I going wrong. Will keep the diary updated here :)

http://www.rujutadiwekar.com/

Personal Trainer in Dubai Marina

After long deliberation, I decided to get a personal coach in April.

I found him through a voucher on Entertainer, his name is Duke (personal messages) only for his contact details. I think for me the hardest bit was to justify the investment on myself. This is especially questionable when I used to attend aqua-biking sessions at L'atelier previously at an even higher price.

Till now, the experience has been amazing. He comes to my building gym for an hour twice a week. Even though the weight isn't budging as such, I think I can notice good toning up of my body.

15 Feb 2015 - BEFORE

29 May 2015 - AFTER

Meditation in Dubai

So yes, the all spoken about 'M' word.

It is mentioned so many times that it loses its intensity. Especially in Dubai the M would largely be for Materialistic pursuits. Meditation? Bah, who has the time!

I insist though:
M = Make Time

I am very new to meditating or really even listening to my thoughts. Paying attention to their effects on my body, on my external and internal reality is something I am still getting used to. Its started off with my husband looking for some activities, I decided to tag along and we ended up at Illuminations JLT. It was the introductory self-hypnosis course run by Soneeya. The investment was low and overall there was nothing to lose.

We sat in the free Self Hypnosis class in Sep 2014 and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. The takeaway was to listen ones thoughts and feelings. We were taught about Affirmations. 

I took up an easy measurable affirmation and after 6/7 cycles of starting and breaking the flow in between, then restarting, I finally completed a full 21 day cycle in Feb 2015. I would say the effects were substantial. 

Since then we started following the Chakra series - held every two weeks on Wed evenings for 2 hours each. Our first session happened to be just my husband and me so we enjoyed the personal attention from our lovely coach Bharti Jatti Verma. 

She became our personal guide, mentor, shrink, hypnotherapist, friend and philosopher all rolled into one. We have taken a few personal sessions from here which we're expensive for sure but well worth it. 

Strongly recommended to anyone with a need to get rid of baggage in life, resolving emotional blockages, gaining strength and grounding = basically all of us. 

Live Light! (as their logo says)

Dubai Marina Kitchen Before and After

I will keep the words to an absolute minimum for this post. Hope you all enjoy looking at the makeover below. Let me know your thoughts:

Funky Town Cafe: Parsi style Dining in Dubai

We were randomly in the mood to try something new for breakfast in the vicinity this weekend so ended up searching on Zomato by area.

We came across this novelty concept in JLT, it seemed fairly interesting and close enough to try.

https://www.facebook.com/CafeFunkieTown/

We tried:
Gunpowder potatoes (4/10 - nothing new really)
Cheese Toast (Came on a soft bun or pav - 8/10, absolutely amazing)
Kurkuri Bhindi (5/10 - average)
Masala Chai (8/10 - pretty good for me as I am not a chai drinker since childhood)

The cafe has funky interiors that might make you nostalgic about Bandra. The Parsi owner has put some interesting heirlooms on display too. His personal attention is evident as we have seen him sitting on the sofa in the corner on two occasions :)

Kitchen Renovation Part 2 - Kitchen Cabinets in Dubai

This can be quite tricky in the whole scheme of things. One starts to see pictures on Pinterest and read blog posts on Houzz/Apartment Therapy and starts to form a picture. The picture though is unfortunately not always doable in Dubai. Even if it is, you would either have to be very resourceful or be ready to dish out massive amounts of cash. We wanted to do neither of the two :)

We invited suppliers and suppliers to come over, measure the kitchen, do the drawings and give us an estimate. They came, measured and quoted upwards of 50,000 for cabinets and labour which was way over our budget. We were quite stuck when one of the interior designers invited us to look at one of her finished jobs. She had used IKEA kitchen cabinets with branded appliances and a Quartz worktop.

We were quite against Ikea at the beginning, we thought labour is cheap in Dubai and India is closeby - we would be able to find something in our budget. How wrong were we! Rents are extremely high in Dubai and all products/services are priced to include this rent. In contrast if you think about Ikea prices and Scandinavian design put together, its hard to say no to these drawers right?

We wanted a simple, modern design that would also fit the budget so we ended up with an Ikea kitchen. It cost us AED 20,000 and we are very happy with the finishing as yet. I will do another post after living in the kitchen for a few months.

On a sidenote, do you also find it very hard to find clean, modern home decor in Dubai on a budget? We either find excessive Golden/Silver decor or extremely expensive Ita-bloddy-lian straight simple furniture. I would love to see more stores sell my simple Scandinavian style, or God knows I will open my own store! Who knows.. :)

Happy New Year 2015

Happy New Year to all my readers.

Can't believe it is now a year and a half since I started working on this blog. It only started as a hobby on the side as I found a gap in knowledge when I moved to Dubai. I continue to write my posts with the single aim of bridging that gap and hope that you all enjoy it.

This year, my resolution is to achieve a state of overall Wellness - mentally, physically, spiritually and emotionally. It is only a way to kickstart the process and hopefully continue for the rest of my life. To be free of our own emotional constraints, emotional restrictions and resulting physical pain is true freedom. Amen!

What are your resolutions this year? Do you have any?