Purposeless walking
When I joined Zoho straight from my college in 2015 I weighed around 62 Kgs.
There was a complete change in lifestyle since I started working, I still clearly remember the second day of office, where my whole body was aching. I was never used to sitting in front of the computer for so long. And my body wasn’t ready for it. Within a week I was accustomed to the new normal of an office goer.
3 regular meals, infinite visits to the pantry to gulp down on coffee(made of gradually condensing milk through the day) and cash on hand to order from any restaurant took me to about 80 Kgs within the first year. Some kind of an internal alarm goes off in my body when I reach the above mentioned critical mass and that usually makes me check my weight. Hitting the gym, yoga, football and jogging are some of the irregular activities that I ended up doing bringing my weight back to 70 odd kilos. Once I feel good internally, automatically the physical activities that I do reduces over time and this sinusoidal pattern of hitting 80 and coming back to 70 continues till date.
Except for playing football I never liked any other activity and it just felt forced. During the second lockdown I had hit the critical mass and didn’t feel good internally. Football was ruled out and now I had to figure to do something on my own. I was doing yoga and body weight exercises inside my house but it just wasn’t working. I realized that either my workout wasn’t intense enough or I needed some cardio. I decided on the latter. And by cardio how would I choose something like walking that is meant for old people with arthritis and slip disc. I am a 28 year old with affinity to football, so I decided to start off with a 2 Km run every day in the mornings.
With Fitbit in my arms and Kipchoge in my heart, I completed the 2 KM in some 12 or 13 odd minutes. The next two days I was down with fever, probably from the pure shock that my body went through after 1 year of lockdown. I would do this for about a week trying to beat my own time every other day. The fever should have given me a hint that this was not for me. But what made me stop doing it was the sleep inducing effects of running by 11:30 in the morning.
Walking and Ramana ashram
I was never really a fan of walking but I did visit Ramana ashram from time to time and doing the Girivalam(walking around the mountain) was my alone time to think. It was never really about walking, but more of a private space in the open. With the lockdown restrictions and about 2 years of not visiting Tiruvannamalai, I thought why not circle around the hills of Nellikuppam road. One weekend with no specific agenda I thought I will walk till I get tired and then maybe book an ola to come back home. The experience was no different to that which I did in Tiruvannamalai. I felt a lot relaxed and calmer than before. More importantly I never felt tired physically.
I started walking every day then on and the agenda was to purely wander, play with the plants and the like. No phones, songs or Fitbit. I would look forward to walk in the open space whenever I had time, but with any other physical activity I had to force myself to wake up in the mornings. The usual route took me around an hour and later when I measured it, it was about 4/5 odd kms.
The unintended side effect was that I am around 68 Kgs now, because it was never planned as an exercise to reduce weight, but something I took up for my mental well being.
I have been practicing meditation on and off sitting inside my house. But there is a certain effort-fullness to meditate while sitting, whilst there is an effortlessness to meditate while walking.