Prenatal yoga is as interesting as it is complicated. You’re dealing with hormonal women who don’t want to work out. Pre and post-natal regimens can only be crafted on learning the client’s history. Soha Ali Khan is experimental. I began training her in her fourth month of pregnancy. The thing with pregnancy is that things change by the week. There is so much that happens, especially in the second trimester, that the body can feel significantly different in the first two weeks of the fifth month than in the last two. We had to alter workouts accordingly. With Soha, we made her do exercises like sweeping the floor while doing a duck walk, in her fifth month. 

That is something we couldn’t do in the first month because it involves deep squats which would put pressure on the groin. One celebrity came to me with a low-lying placenta. I trained her in seated and supine postures over routines that changed weekly. Her placenta was in place in five months.

Kareena Kapoor doesn’t like to train during her pregnancy; she prefers to enjoy the phase. I started training her after her first pregnancy, and have been doing so since then. She’s enthusiastic; even if she begins the workout nagging about how strenuous it is, she’s willing to perform further sets, once she commences. I negotiate an intense workout plan by not letting clients think too much, and engaging them in conversation. 

Anurag [Kashyap] is into Crossfit. So, with him, I knew I was dealing with a tight body. He is also muscular, and, when we began working together, he could barely do a forward bend, or twist. He has improved a lot. Physical flexibility makes you mentally flexible. I have been able to keep infections at bay for him with jalneti. He also had joint issues, which had become more pronounced in the last few months. In fact, currently, I am taking him through a seven-day plan catering to training the joints alone. When anyone comes to me with joint problems, that is a factor that must be dealt with before planning any other routine. It’s not something that needs to be kept in the background and avoided. People cut out ghee and oil. But, how will your joints stay lubricated without them? We usually begin with mobility work, spend the first four days on strengthening the joints, and the remaining three in stretching them. Anurag had gone through an angioplasty recently. After vaccination, he experienced pronounced after-effects. His gut health also needs to improve, so, we are factoring in that too. 

Zoya Akhtar had issues that related to her age. She has great strength, but would feel stiff, despite doing classes regularly. We trained daily during the first lockdown, and took to a mix of functional training and yoga. When I establish a routine, the first thing I take care of is one’s mental health. Apart from pranayams, I talk to my students a lot to know what they are thinking. Zoya was going through something in her personal life, and didn’t want to train. But I egged her on to exercise because I knew it was what she needed at the time. She was eager to take to a weight-loss programme, but I had to draw her attention to how she would benefit from a holistic mental, physical, and emotional plan.