Around four to five years ago, on a trek in Karnataka, Dolly Singh hurt her foot and the doctor advised her to lose weight. As an alternative to losing weight, she decided to work on making her legs strong. That’s how she started doing yoga.
Now, the 35-year-old, who weighs around 70 kg, is India’s most popular plus-sized yoga practitioner and is challenging body stereotypes on social media by showing that size doesn’t matter when it comes to performing yoga.
But yoga was not something that came naturally to her. After she suffered the ankle sprain, she started with functional training. She tried different physical fitness regimes like Zumba, running, and pilates but got bored. And then one day, she decided to attend a yoga class. She liked doing yoga and continued going to the class for four months until she shifted to running.
After almost a year, she again started learning yoga but this time, all through videos.
Dolly, now, practices five to six times a week for around 75 minutes. On days when she is busy at the office, she prefers doing yoga in the morning or at the office itself.
For Dolly, yoga is not restricted to rooms. She prefers doing yoga in the open in summers, Dolly told to Hindustan Times:
“It’s just that I stay in a studio apartment in Mumbai and in the summers it gets very humid. So one day I just decided to take my yoga mat, speakers and laptop and started practising in the park. People in Mumbai have been very appreciative. Many times, some uncles, older people, have come up to me after I finished yoga and said, ‘You do this so well. You know I have a back pain. What should I do about it?’ after which I give them a few tips about what all they can do.”
Yoga has now become the favourite routine of her daily life. She focuses on pushing the boundaries of her strength and ideas. Through yoga, she now looks forward to promoting body positivity among women in India.
