Time For Women To Hold Their Own 'Health' Baton: Fitness Coach Urmi Kothari

There's a reason why fitness trainer Urmi Kothari also calls herself an energy coach. As the founder and author of Kinetic Living, Kothari combines traditional workout techniques such as pilates, animal flow, yoga and mindfulness, recharging both the mind and body and fostering a sustainable, enjoyable fitness routine. "The idea is to become mentally stronger, physically sharper, and emotionally more resilient," she said in an interview with SheThePeople.

Drawing from her own experiences and training over 9,000 clients, including celebrities like Kubbra Sait, Drashti Dhami, Sumukhi Suresh, Shakun Batra, and Sarah-Jane Dias, she has now penned a book that offers original practical solutions for making fitness a lifestyle choice instead of a chore that everyone dreads.

Kothari, an MBA and professional dancer, gravitated towards becoming a fitness trainer and entrepreneur after a stint in Kerala with Daksha Sheth. "Kinetic Living happened because I wanted to give people the experience of what it is to move and work out with their body and feel a sense of empowerment and to do it in a way where you're not just trying to burn calories. Fitness has helped me to be okay with failure, rejection, difficulty, and hard work. It has so much to do with character-building. And that's when I came up with the word kinetic living because I used to be described as a kinetic person, super energetic. And living because it's not just a workout, it's a way of life," she recalled. 

Urmi Kothari's Interview

Kothari believes fitness begins with a mindset. Though it is built on the foundations of discipline and consistency, people must realise working out like machines won't work. Quoting her from her book,

Another drawback of excessive reliance on discipline is that it leads to feelings of guilt or high self-judgement. It fosters unhealthy dependence on external standards of performance— kilograms lost, push-ups performed, kilometres run, percentage of fat loss, total number of inches lost, weight lifted, frequency of workouts, Instagram likes. They don’t consider you or your life phase. The need of the hour is to change the way we look at fitness and our relationship with our body.

She firmly reckons that fitness must be a wholesome, integrated development of both the mind and the body. "Emotions like guilt or insufficiency come from the wounded inner child. Hence, I have moved the coaching to not just fitness and awareness, but also to emotional regulation via inner child healing, because that inner child affects to all areas of your life," Kothari added.

However, when it comes to mindset, women generally tend to put themselves at the end, especially with their health. Kothari admits this is due to the systematic conditioning of patriarchal society. "Unfortunately, advertisements and media are glorifying the term supermom. Women today are suddenly expected to not only nurture a child, but also ace in a boardroom, but then also run the house. This is not empowering her, isn't it? She deserves as much as a man to take care of her health."

Women are entitled to healthcare, but they have been conditioned for generations to believe that putting themselves first makes them a 'bad' person. Enlisting for daycare because they need to work is bad, sleeping for an extra hour is wrong, taking out a few minutes for themselves is seen as sinful and god forbid if she asks her husband for help - she is just not doing it right. But how can women ever get it right and stay healthy? Urmi Kothari pitches in a solution:

"I feel there is a pressing need to put the 'health' baton in the woman's hand for she can take care of herself whilst taking care of her family's health. She must proactively take certain decisions, which are better not just for her health, but also for her family's long-term health. Ask the right questions. Let's allocate some budget to help the woman run the house. Make their lives easier by helping them out. Work with her, work together to ensure everyone's health is prioritised."

In conclusion, Kothari adds three things that she hopes people to take from Kinetic Living:

• Enjoy fitness. Find something you enjoy and then try to get disciplined. And later try to inculcate consistency in it.
• Create the habit of checking in with yourself, women must definitely follow this. "How is my body feeling? What is my mind? What is my heart saying and who do I want to listen to?" Become the observer of your body, your mind and your emotions. Ask the question, "Is this really true? Am I thinking and feeling it? And then decide accordingly for everything.
• Get ample sunlight. Don't look at the screen beyond 11 pm. Get at least 15 minutes of breathing and moving every single day whether it is just stretching or whether it is lifting weights or whether it is swimming, or walking. Stop having processed food. "Do these three things and your life will change," she concludes.

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