All my life, I have had different routines, sometimes I woke up in the noon while sometimes I woke up early morning around 4 am and began my day with work. Although non of this has been constant or religious followed.

The residency program was a time where I actually had a morning routine which was constant. Waking up, doing the morning chores, heading to office and connecting to myself was a part of my daily life. As we reached office, we performed breathing activities like, anulom-vilom, deep breathing and pranayama. These activities helped me to center my thoughts and calm my mind. They broke the intense thinking that always runs in the head which helped me to focus on my work.

Just calming the mind isn’t enough, the body needs to be centered too, thus we moved on to body exercises after the breathing exercises. We did some basic stretching exercises which helped me to relax the body, focus on my body strengths, strengthen parts that were weak and establish a balance. My body is not flexible so I never pushed myself to stretch much but doing this daily definitely helped to trace the different muscles and joints that I need to focus on, to establish better fluidity in the body.

Followed by this was a very interesting game that we played everyday. On the first day, when we met physically, we were asked to fill balloons with raw rice which left me baffled because I could not understand what could we possibly be doing with these. I certainly didn’t guess that it would be a game, that too a part of my daily routine. The game was simple, we just had to throw these balloons, filled with rice at each other from a distance. However easy the game might sound, it has amazing lessons that we learned at different stages as we played it.

These balloons were supposed to be treated as a gift. We always give and take gifts with certain intensions and respect, that’s exactly what the game was about. You give the balloons to the next person and then the next person decides what to do with it. You don’t put too much thought into it, don’t put immense effort into it, just be in the frame and play along. It was amazing how a small ball can teach so many things with so many perspectives.

I never thought that doing these activities would make a huge difference so I was never into this, but after having done this religiously for a month, I know that whatever difference it makes, small or big, it helps me to re-establish myself, center my thoughts, have better coordination with myself and others and calm my mind. Today, as I sit in Ahmedabad, thinking that something that I had never thought I would do, which now is a part of my daily routine; it makes me very happy to be doing this daily.