Month: March 2023

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From losing 50kg to discovering new sport: How Dubai Fitness Challenge changed expats’ lives

head dubai March 23, 2023 No Comments

Now in its sixth edition, the DFC has played a tremendous role in influencing several people’s fitness journeys

When the Dubai Fitness Challenge (DFC) was launched, the mission is to transform the emirate into the world’s most active, dynamic city. Every year, it gets closer to its ultimate goal, but something more incredible is happening along the way: People have started turning their lives around.

With the fitness frenzy ongoing in its sixth edition, Khaleej Times caught up with a number of people who have found inspiration and decided to make changes to their lifestyles — all thanks to DFC.One such person was Dr Krishnadas Nanath, associate professor and head of data science programme at Middlesex University Dubai. “My weight was touching almost triple digits,” he recalled.“I decided I needed to do something about it and that is when last year’s fitness challenge rolled around. I had read that it takes 21 days to make a habit so I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to try out that hypothesis.”

For 30 days, Krishnadas did 30 minutes of exercise and once the month was over, he just kept going, taking up running and cycling regularly.

“The one thing about Dubai is that if you want to be fit, there are so many events throughout the year,” he said. “I started to participate in many runs and races. This gave me constant goals to keep working towards.”

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The Dubai resident has now dropped over 26kg and is the fittest he has ever been. “People ask me how I find time for fitness,” he said.

“It is all about priorities. If I watch a movie, no one is going to ask me how I find time for it. It takes less time than that to complete your exercise. I have now started taking my 3-year-old son to events. I want fitness to be an integral part of his life as he grows up.”

Fat turned fit

For Husam Mohamed, the challenge was a turning point. Obese, diabetic and battling high blood pressure, the Sudanese national decided to use the DFC as a wake-up call.

“I was inspired by how our [Dubai} Crown Prince [Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum] was calling everyone to get fit and healthy,” he said. “I was always a big fan of his. So I decided to take up the challenge.”

In a remarkable feat, the Dubai resident lost over 50kg. “I could barely walk a few steps without stopping to catch my breath,” he said.

“Today, I have run a full marathon, participated in the Spartan World Championship and I am now a crossfit and nutrition coach. The DFC was the biggest trigger for my life’s fitness journey.”

Similarly, at one point in his life, Sandeep Sathyan weighed all of 118kg and shied away from even posting his photos on social media fearing ridicule.

However, when the Dubai Municipality began the ‘Your Weight in Gold’ campaign, he was motivated to lose weight.

Soon after that, when the Dubai Fitness Challenge began, he used it as an opportunity to get his fitness levels up. “I was still learning about exercise and diet at the time,” he said. “That one month was a great start for me to get committed and regular in my exercise.”

Today, the Dubai resident weighs 70kg and couldn’t be happier. “My health and self-confidence have transformed drastically,” he said.

“I think DFC has been a game-changer in my life. From 2017 onwards, friends and I participate in various activities around town during the month. Instead of doing our usual gym and games, we check out new activities. I love how suddenly fitness becomes everyone’s focus. Most of us in my friends’ group manage to keep the momentum of that month throughout the year.”

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Picking up a new sport

In 2017, Jeena Jacob had just given birth to her first child and was feeling overweight and unhappy. When the fitness challenge began, she took it up as a sign and decided to get fit.

“There was all this messaging about getting fit and staying healthy, so I got motivated by it,” she said. “I had always enjoyed sports and was looking for something like football or basketball.”

After searching around for a while, she found a club, but they only offered free rugby classes. “I had never even seen a rugby match ever in my life,” she said. However, that proved to be a much-needed turning point in her life. Rugby became her solace as she navigated through difficult life situations.

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Meditate With Urmila: Connecting to the body’s intelligence

head dubai March 23, 2023 No Comments

The body holds cues to the emotional story inside.

The last column articulated that the mind and body aren’t separate. Take note of the fact how the body responds to certain emotions, like when you are excited or nervous or anxious.

Thoughts generate emotions. The thoughts and emotions are energy from the mental plane and are invisible, however, they are real and this can be established from the way the body responds. The body’s expression is more tangible and visible than those of thoughts and beliefs, as the physical body operates on the material/ matter plane. Thoughts, beliefs, ideas, opinions, feelings are all subtle-level invisible, real energies.

Emotional Story Held in the Body

The invisible, subtle drives the more visible, perceivable. From that perspective, the body holds the emotional/energetic story of the self, while co-existing with the body and influencing it. Any mis-alignment in the emotional aspect will have a corresponding impact on the physical body. The body’s mis-aligned postures, pains, aches, illnesses, chronic discomfort are grosser expressions of unhelpful emotions-thoughts present inside.

Some of the stories we are aware of, at the conscious level, however, most we are not as they exist in the subconscious mind, but the body expresses them. Take a cue from your body’s telling and check what emotions-feelings are being harboured in the psyche and mind.

For example, the thought and the emotion, (operating at the conscious or the subconscious level): “I’m carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders”, will generate sensation in the shoulder region, may be as pain, or body posture of droopy-shoulders, or expanded/rigid shoulders (to be able to carry the weight).

Or a thought similar to it such as , “I have to fulfill expectation/s of my parent or sibling or…”; thereby carrying that thought- energy on the shoulders. The individual may feel “weighed down” by this “burden” (drooped shoulders) or energetically will try to broaden the shoulders to be able to carry the weight of expectations.

Similarly, thoughts evoking feelings of anxiety, helplessness, worry will give sensations in the spleen or stomach region. The feelings of fear, unsupported-ness, blame will be felt in the kidneys or bladder. Similarly, harboured feelings of resentment or grudge will show up in kidneys mostly. Grief, sorrow, sadness, rejection will impact the lungs or colon.

Know that emotions can lodge anywhere in the body, especially those areas which are vulnerable (say, by injury, or nutritional deficiency or by genetic disposition).

The body doesn’t lie. It merely expresses the internalised feelings. When one continues to feel the same unhelpful emotion over and over again, regurgitate the same thought, the same unhelpful belief, the organ where the emotion is “lodged” might feel “overloaded”, and/ or work “double”, causing wear and tear to itself. It may feel obligated to produce more of that vibration, reinforcing the same cycle-pattern of thoughts.

The unhelpful emotions that get “lodged” are trapped energies within the body-system. Most emotions get trapped in early childhood and before that, at the conception stage or are carried forward from the past lives or from ancestors.

For example, the trapped emotion of betrayal, or forlorn, can be trapped in a person’s heart region. This emotion may be traced back to childhood, when an individual didn’t have a parent around while growing up, is one example. (“My parent was never available to us” or “my grandmother raised me, not my mother”).

A trapped emotion can be inherited, say of anger issues or easy disposition towards feeling fatigued. Some comments might seem casually made but can have forceful impact, as ‘you may fail this class’, may cause humiliation, or feelings of unworthiness to trap in the body causing performance anxiety.

In awareness one can notice the body signs and work backwards to the trapped emotions and let go of them.

Fashion Model

Dubai-based jewellery designer on designing gemstones with a twist

head dubai March 23, 2023 No Comments

Meet the popstar of high jewellery, Pavit Gujral.

A gemologist by education, and a jewellery designer by profession, Pavit Gujral is a Dubai-based jewellery designer whose creations are known to intertwine with the elements of nature. Be it starfishes and parrots dangling from one’s ears, or daisies and fishes nestled between collarbones, Pavit’s designs reflect unique styles, with a story behind them all. Recently showcasing her designs at the Dubai Design District, Pavit won the prestigious Inhorgenta Award in Munich, Germany, for her crab earrings from her Marine collection. The designer, who graduated from the Gemological Institute of America, has previously won the Saul Bell Design Awards in the US, and the IJ Jeweller’s Choice Design Awards in India.

Voyage, Marine, Sylvan, Memoir and Le Fleur, the designer’s collections are heavily influenced by a harmonious concoction of art, nature, moments and architecture, enriched deeply with the history of the gem. Sapphires, rubies, diamonds and topazes are no stranger to her as she takes pride in infusing colour and grandeur into her pieces, while paying ode to the stone. Ahead of her win, the designer opens up on her love for gems, and the journey to creating a niche.

The muses behind Pavit’s creations are not only limited to elements of nature, but she also takes inspiration from architecture. “Especially when I travel, I keep an eye out for different sorts of architecture because I feel the design industry is interconnected. Be it fashion design, jewellery design, or interiors or whatever architecture, that is one of my main inspirations. I even did projects on Zaha Hadid’s building.”

Gemstones are the main element in her designs. Pavit incorporates the colour and class that these precious stones bring into a piece. “As a gemologist, gemstones are something that I really want to promote, especially the lesser-known gemstones which are rarer and more valuable than the known ones.”

With changing trends and styles, bold jewellery has taken a backseat lately with more minimalism and simplistic designs coming to the front. But Pavit believes there is a market for her niche. “I think there was always a niche market for artistic jewellery, which is something that I try to do. I know I’m targeting a niche market for people who appreciate art, but I think that market is getting bigger and there are more people who are looking at jewellery as art and not just an investment,” says Pavit. Following trends is not something that she abides by, and instead prefers to create her own trends. “All my pieces are inspired by ideas that come very spontaneously and that’s why I can’t be following a trend. If I do, then somewhere or the other I will be compromising.”

The jewellery designer goes by the term ‘jewellery popstar’ on Instagram, a term inspired by her iconic inspiration, Lady Gaga, as she hopes to become the first of her kind in the industry.

Hailing from Punjab, India, the colours that Pavit infuses into her works are inspired by the colourful nature and diversity of her country. She even designed an inter-cultural piece, which was the Indian tikka, inspired by Egyptian pyramids. “Tikkas are usually round or crescent shaped, so I ended up doing a triangle version of it, which has never been seen before and all the diamonds in it were also triangular. I love playing with shapes and colours.”

Be it on her Instagram feed or in her exhibitions, there is always a detailed story and history of the gemstone mentioned either in the form of a post or a QR code. Pavit goes by the principle of educating people about what they are wearing and adding more value to it through its rich history. “There’s a piece, which I have designed with my grandmother’s old stones, so that is something they really enjoy knowing about. Otherwise, it’s just a piece of jewellery. The story adds value to it.”