UPLOADING THE ASANA

With Covid having forced yoga practitioners to rely on social media and online tutorials, this year’s National Yoga Day will first be celebrated on Zoom and Instagram

Few yoga studios are as familiar as Anshuka Parwani’s in Bandra, Mumbai. A reliable celebrity-spotting location, paparazzi hover outside its gate to click the entry and exit of actresses like Kareena Kapoor Khan, Deepika Padukone, Alia Bhatt and Ananya Panday, to name a few. Parwani’s high-profile clientele is one of the reasons she is among the most popular yoga practitioners on Instagram with over 152,000 followers. Another draw is her eclectic approach to fitness: offering everything from ashtanga yoga and yogalates (a combination of yoga and pilates) to “fly fit”, a suspension fitness practice which, she says, takes the “yumminess” of three fitness genres—aerial yoga, aerial pilates and aerial fitness. Of late, due to the lockdown, there has been little activity outside the studio, but Parwani’s business is flourishing online.