Unleashing The ‘Happiness’ Hormones

Imbibing the concept of Yoga, at the impressionable age of 17, when the rest of her tribe were heavily into gym workouts and hard sports, Debolena Bose, Manager - Digital Marketing, PwC India, continues to uphold the mental, physical and spiritual benefits of practising Yoga. What began as a strong intent to lose weight alone, has gradually transcended to becoming a ‘karmic’ philosophy which she hopes to cherish all through her life. This passionate yoga enthusiast shares a glimpse of her daily dose of fitness and her greater aim to pursue the study of yoga, so as to benefit the community around her

"The fact that I will be fit and ready to take on the day, that’s the thought that motivates me the most; you feel good and you can keep glowing too,"

“Yoga builds resilience; all these physical activities (yoga exercises) also has a mental impact and when you are building your resilience and physical core, you are also actually building your mental stamina and improving your capability for staying energetic at work”, says Debolena Bose.

The blithe teenager

The teenage years are often footloose and fancy- free, and it was no different for Debolena or Debbie as she is fondly called. Although not a sports freak, her journey into yoga and its realms has transcended beyond mere routine to the steely determination to pass on the goodness of the practice to people around her.

“I am not into sport and completely into yoga. Yes, I used to play volleyball but that did not start me on my fitness journey. The positive changes that came into my body my mental, physical, and emotional health with yoga was so massive that I continued with the practice”, said Debolena (Debbie).

Her fitness journey was triggered primarily to lose weight and to look good. She, however, avoided taking the ‘dieting’ route as she was apprehensive about the drastic changes she would have to incorporate into her eating habits on a regular basis and the gym format did not enthuse her too much.

Before she got into yoga, she was strongly habituated to fizzy drinks, which was her ‘all-time’ comfort drink. However, exactly one and a half years into the practice of yoga, her body started repelling the carbon dioxide in the fizzy drink and that is when she automatically and completely stopped consuming fizzy soft drinks. “I do not have any fizzy drinks anymore. Not that I am trying to curb fizzy drinks or the tendencies which I might have, but it was a genuine transformation the first benefits that I saw in yoga. It was a complete lifestyle change,” she said.

Yogic tenacity

She soon realised that practising yoga, did not reap benefits immediately but generated the ‘happiness hormones’ which kept her going in the initial stages of her practice. “It brought in a lot of changes in my outlook and in the way I perceive things. Yoga is not for people who want immediate results and I think they should hit the gym if they want immediate outcomes.”

As a yoga practitioner, she soon realised that there are two kinds of people at any point in life and in fitness parlance, the first set of people were all fitness freak, who hit the gym and could not make sense of yoga and considered it as a boring form of fitness regime, and the second set of people never believed in exercise some 17 years ago, when she began her fitness journey.

“At that point in time, people never exercised and considered it as something of an extra- additional thing some people did if they had time. Now the mentality has changed in a very big way”, she said. “I have self-trained myself all these years and my future plans are also to become a trained yoga instructor”, she added.

Yogic journey

Yoga as a journey comes with all its benefits as well as injuries, like in any other sport, especially if pursuing for a long time. The main challenge is also to self-motivate especially if one is a solo practitioner. Debbie too faced her upheavals that ranged from over-confidence in her fit and a healthy state of mind to balancing her office workload.

“There was a point in time that I dipped in my practise of yoga, and gradually discontinued. I was at the epitome of health and plus yoga had becoming boring as I was doing the same exercise over and over again,” she said. One of the reasons for leaving yoga temporarily was also the growth in her career and the added work responsibilities.

"Yoga is what I do to build myself up. I also practice Buddhism which completes by work-life balance. I love Yoga and I love my work too"

Yoga beckons

However, her voluntary disassociation with any routine form of yoga, recoiled when in 2018, she hurt her back in a very uncanny manner.

“I was not practising for almost five months then and suffered a sudden shooting back pain and had to actually rush to the doctor when a scan revealed a problem with the ‘L’ bones at the lower back. I also had to visit a physiotherapist”, said Debbie. Thankfully, the condition was not too grave and within two months she recovered and was medically advised to either pursue yoga or swimming.

The incident triggered her to once again pick up yoga in reviving her ‘fitness’ levels and restart her journey into something that she had been practicing since her teens. However, at this juncture, it was almost eight months since she had not done any form of yoga that year. So, she started off slowly with a lighter version, moving on to more rigorous routines. “I could not initially start off doing vigorous yoga, so, I started off lightly in keeping my back in shape and tried understanding as to what the best thing is to be done”, she said.

She enrolled with a professional yoga class for first time in her life. “I needed an expert guidance as I could not do it on my own post the medical condition as I did not know what is to be done or not, as regards a safe yoga routine in my recuperation stage,” she said.

She continued her classes for six months and also realised an urge to become a yoga instructor in the near future. “Although I have been practicing for long, I never really thought that I could benefit others because I did it in my own way. It made me feel good, but I never thought that I could go and seek certification and was also the strong trigger which leads me to start thinking on those lines,” she adds.

Renewed motivation

Once confident, she dropped out of her yoga classes to chart her own personal journey with yoga and this time experiencing the different forms of the practise. “I usually had been following the Patanjali way but now switched on to Sivananda Yoga, further adding Hatha Yoga, and Vinyasa Yoga (power yoga) in due course”, she said. “It’s been almost a year now since my medical (back) problem but I have recovered completely. While I haven’t got any scans lately, I am overall fit and able to do all the exercises including the back turns too,” she added.

Debbie’s motivations come from her first-hand benefits and experiences with yoga. Her day begins at 5:30 am with yoga which she practices daily for an hour and a half. Her regime includes an hour of strong yoga practice with 15 minutes each of pranayama (breathing exercises) and meditation. “The physical leads to the mental and the emotional as well; you really need to calm yourself down. So, breathing exercises helps me a lot,” she said.

“The fact that I will be fit and ready to take on the day, that’s the thought that motivates me the most; you feel good and you can keep glowing too,” said Debbie.

Bridging relationships

Debbie considers herself to be a fitness influencer at her workplace too. Most of her colleagues engage in some form of fitness regime and it has also become a talking point or a conversation starter at times. As a yoga enthusiast, she has enabled others to instil cheerfulness, happiness and a positive outlook in her conversations with them. “I’ve not trained people in a formal way but I’ve helped to improve and impact my community of friends by engaging with them on fitness routines.”

The lockdown (post the COVID-19 pandemic) encouraged Debbie to reconnect and engage with a few of her college friends as well as colleagues and motivate each other on fitness. “We share fitness apps and compete with each other”, she said.

A lifestyle for all

Doing yoga and not doing yoga is a thin line that makes all the differences in one’s lifestyle. “I can see a very clear difference in my life for when I am doing yoga and when I am not, especially if I skip my routine, the changes manifest and I can see the difference, said Debbie. “Yoga is what I do to build myself up. I also practice Buddhism which completes by work-life balance. I love Yoga and I love my work too”, she said.