Karina Pandya

Moods –Understanding the way that we feel and sometimes even monitoring our own feelings is very important.  Moods are basically ‘emotional states’ and should not be confused with ‘emotions’ or ‘feelings’. Either we can be in a good mood or a bad mood.  Moods are mixtures of feelings and emotions as we go about through the days.  It is semi-persistent mental + physical + emotional state.  It is very different from our ‘temperaments’, which are those aspects of our personality, which are often ‘innate’ rather than ‘learned.’ Depression, bipolar disorder, chronic stress, persistent depressive disorder, and SAD-Seasonal Affective Disorder are some of the different mood disorders that people face. A ‘social mood’ is often given its name because of its collective and shared state of mind. There are many different factors that are known to affect one’s mood and these may include ‘the amount of sleep’ that one gets, ‘the nutritional levels’ he/she ...

Success is often linked with how much money we earn at ‘our corporate jobs’ or what role we hold as our designation. However, the reality is that this is not how we need to be limited to. There are so many people who choose to not work in the corporate sector but possess an incredible amount of talent and there are others who choose other professions outside this realm.   “Success is not final and failure is not fatal. However, it is the courage to continue that counts.” These famous words were said by Winston Churchill and yet resounds till date. Of course, everybody loves someone who is succeeding at his or her jobs/roles but reaching that position takes time, patience and a lot of hard work. If you look back at some of the most successful people in the world, you will see that they had all encountered some type of failure. It is important however to remember that failure should never be regarded as final but only as part of the journey. Failure can teach us how t...

When I first started writing poetry, it was more of a cathartic process for me and poetry was limited to written word. This was the only way, that I felt that I could vocalise my emotions. There is this magic behind writing poetry. It   has this inexhaustible ability to comment on things that affect everyone and in an extremely intimate and detailed manner.  Poetry can even outlast the number of changes in the society and yet find resonance in our behaviour. We make use of just words and words alone to create a poem but these metaphors, images, phrases, ideas and experiences, when weaved together impact us on so many levels.  I was introduced to 'spoken word' a few years ago and realised that there were so many other ways to express oneself. Spoken word was much more than simple poetry; it went beyond it and focused on the word play of the poem. Public recitation and performance of the poem gets highlighted and the voice plays an active element....

When we think of the body’s powerhouse, usually the first thing that comes to mind is our core (abs). However, the truth is that we possess a far more powerful group of muscles in our body, known as the glutes. The glutes colloquially referred to as ‘our butt’ or ‘buttocks’ are in charge of our posture, athletic performance and overall strength.   They are the largest and strongest muscle group in the body. The glutes (gluteal muscles) are a combination of three different muscles: the gluteus maximus, gluteus medius, and the gluteus minimus. These mucles work together, attached by either tendons or ligaments to the surrounding bone area. These mucles are in charge of the movement all the way from the hip to the thigh and allow us to rise from a sitting position, stay in an erect position and climb stairs. In short we can say that glutes power our motion. In fact, these muscles control most of our lower-body movements and are connected to our ...