KOCHI: The one-hour yoga sessions offered by certified instructor Binuja S Menon have been a hit among netizens, especially youngsters. Plenty of them have joined her classes during the lockdown phase. A yoga practitioner for the past 13 years, Binu started holding online yoga sessions in 2018. She is currently working as a yoga therapist at Vedasudha Ayurveda Hospital and is using her spare time to conduct the online classes. “Youngsters, couples and families enjoy being a part of my sessions,” said the Palakkad-based yoga instructor. The one-hour classes, being streamed via zoom, WhatsApp and Skype, are priced between `100 and 200.

According to Binuja, basic warm-ups, sun salutation and other asanas (postures) are being offered as part of the package. “The classes will also be customised depending on the fitness level and age of the person. An individual class to assess the physical condition of the participant will also be conducted at the beginning, before assigning the person to group lessons,” she said. 

Although she has plenty of clients from Kerala, Binuja’s yoga sessions are equally popular outside the state and country. She has students in Tamil Nadu, Gujarat and countries like the US and Switzerland. The lockdown time also helped her increase the frequency of her daily classes, something which was not possible earlier due to her tight work schedule. 

Binuja is offering free classes for financially-backward children from Palakkad. “A 15-day training will be given as part of the free class. The yoga videos will be shared via social media platforms such as WhatsApp,” she said. Breathing sessions to boost immunity levels are also shared via WhatsApp to help patients under Covid-19 threat. “People have been flooding me with requests on my YouTube channel.

They see yoga as a remedy for body problems and health issues such as diabetes, neck pain and back pain,” she said. Binuja credits her yoga teachers Manu Bose and Prabhakaran P  for sparking her interest in the process from a young age. As an experienced yoga practitioner, she believes that doing yoga brings about a positive change in a person’s mindset.

“Yoga is a miracle for me and it has helped me improve my clarity in decision making. Life will become easy once you do yoga on a regular basis. This is the message that I’m trying to spread through my lessons,”  said Binuja. Those interested in joining can reach Binuja through her Facebook page ‘Yoga With Bini’.