#TheRealHealthTalk: Meet Rakhi Jayashankar, An exclusive interview with India’s leading holistic wellness & nutrition coach!

Hi everyone, 

Excited to share another interview post for series, “The Real health Talk”. The series is an exclusive interview series with some renowned and leading health bloggers/nutritionist/ youtubers of the digital health and wellness industry.     

Read Vasantha Vivek’s interview for the series here. 

In today’s post, I am excited to welcome India’s leading lifestyle blogger, published author, holistic coach, yoga instructor, podcaster, digital content creator and my dear friend Rakhi Jayashankar to my blog.   

Rakhi Jayashankar is a mother of three, a holistic wellness coach, yoga instructor, author, mobile jockey and a blogger. She believes in learning as you go and sharing the knowledge. Her Book Review blog was selected as the Top 15 Book Review Blogs in India as well as Top 22 literature blogs. Whereas her Holistic Wellness blog was selected as the Top 100 health blogs and Top 50 Lifestyle blogs. 

Blog 

https://outsetbooks.com

Instagram 

https://instagram.com/rakhijayashankar

Facebook 

https://facebook.com/rakhijayashankar

Personally, I really admire Rakhi’s multitasking capability. She always amazed me with many impressive health and wellness initiatives that help people to achieve their health and wellness goals . 

I am so thrilled to have her on my blog. Read the post to know about this “The Real Health Talk” conversation. 

Interview with Rakhi Jayashankar India’s leading Holistic wellness & nutrition coach! 

Q. 1 You are a content creator, digital marketer, yoga-trainer, holistic wellness coach and a health and nutrition coach. Tell us something about your working experience in these different fields? 

A. 1 My journey into blogging started, when I decided to write for myself. What started as a short story developed into a novel, and soon I got published and started a blog to promote my book. 

While interacting with fellow authors in good reads I started reviewing their books in my blog and that’s where it all started. 

Being a blogger gave me the ecstasy that I have never felt. With no knowledge in SEO and social media handles, I saw my fellow bloggers grow leaps and bounds where I was stuck where I have been. I have never been bothered about blog ranking, DA, or anything because I never knew anything about it. 

After four years, despite being selected as the Top 50 Indian Book Review blogs, I knew that my arena of growth was restricted due to lack of social media outreach because that’s where the action happens. Thus, I started my twitter account but soon after I realized microblogging doesn’t excite me. So, I deleted the Twitter account and started my Instagram. Everyone has a cross road in their lives and this was mine. 

I met many new faces, created a bunch of good friends. My only intention was to grow my blog. 

I learned more about the importance of content, the difference between content in blogs and other social media handles and more. Thus, I enrolled myself for s digital marketing course. My intention was to learn and improve my profiles. That’s when I met a bunch of women entrepreneurs and influencers who were clueless of how to go about in this world of competition. So, I decided to help them with digital marketing albeit in a small scale. 

In the process I was ignoring my blog for more than a year. The DA dropped and I was devastated because it was my baby. So, I resumed my reviews and my personal blog. 

However, I ended up blogging about health and happiness, which I still don’t know why. Probably my history of being a Biotechnology postgraduate was haunting me. Somehow, I started taking more interest in diet nutrition. 

Having gone through PTSD post third delivery I wanted to heal myself.  That’s how I entered the holistic wellness scenario. Being a daughter of two Yoga instructors, it was unable to think of wellness without an aspect of Yoga. 

Taking up the course to be the Holistic Wellness Coach was probably the best and only decision that I took for myself. I met several women who were leading unhappy lives because they didn’t know how to love themselves. I could be their companion. I slowly realized that there are things other than reading and writing that I could derive ecstasy from. This was one of those. 

Q.2 Please tell us something more about the concept of “Holistic wellness”? What is the importance of holistic health for our overall health and general well-being? What are some important components of “Holistic wellness”? 

A. 2 We are living in a busy world where we are mechanized and don’t realize what to do and how. The materialistic world has dominated out lives so much that our definition of happiness has been skewed to a point that we ended up being eternally unhappy and dissatisfied. This is where the concept of Holistic Wellness comes into picture. Wellness is not just being happy or healthy or fit. It is a conjunction of physical, mental, emotional, economic, social, occupational and relationship wellness. 

The concept of wellness becomes complete only if you are at peace with each of these aspects. But mostly we won’t be able to attain all these together as external triggers would be plenty. The job of a Holistic Wellness Coach is to help you curb these external triggers by identifying the source and working together to make you immune. 

Quite often wellness is mistaken for either happiness only or weight loss or any one of the aspects. Only rarely do we talk about economic and.occupational aspects from a wellness point of view. But apparently, the idea of holistic wellness is beginning from occupational wellness. 

Q.3 What are some best practices to achieve holistic wellness in our day-to-day life? Is it really helpful in improving our quality of life? 

A. 3 We cannot generalize the practices for Holistic Wellness because the triggers would be different for different people. But yes, there could be some common practices that provide you overall wellness. One of the most important of these is digital detox. We live in an era of Social Media boom. From what you wear to what you eat is dominated by the SM stars or influencers. While I do not say that it is all wrong but make sure you take a break. 

• Always have gadget free time at least an hour before you sleep. Observe digital detox breaks like 15 hours, 25 hours etc. 
• Start writing journals. This helps in analyzing your life and makes you realize where you go wrong and where you can improve. 
• Visualization is another key to push your destiny towards your goal. The power of visualization is omnipotent. There is no simple way to say this. If you visualize your goal or success with all your heart, be assured of its success. 
• Positive affirmations are the extensions of Visualization. These are some simple sentences to tell yourself. 

These are some of the basic techniques but there are more to it. That can be taught by a coach. 

Q. 4 What are the advantages of holistic wellness compared to traditional medicine? 

A.4 There has been a misconception that Holistic Wellness practices can be substituted for traditional medicine. It is a myth. If you have a fever, you have to take paracetamol or any ayurvedic or homoeopathy medicine that you take for fever. But Holistic Practices added to this, can help you improve and heal better. That said, there have been instances where deadly diseases like cancer, even the latest stages, were healed with Holistic Wellness practices. But it would be wrong to scientifically state this as a better practice than traditional medicine. 

Q. 5 This is the beginning of the new year, and everyone is committed to making “new fitness and wellness goals” for the new year. What is one strong piece of advice you will offer as a health and nutrition coach that will help my readers to stay on track and achieve their “health and fitness goals” in the year 2022? 

A. 5 Always have realistic goals. Don’t go for crash diets, or shortcuts to Weight Loss. If you are an Indian, be assured that ours is the best diet if consumed with moderation. Exercise well, keep up with visualization and positive affirmations, and moreover Love Yourself. 

Q.6 Nowadays our life is highly influenced by social media and digital technology. By following the trend, people admire and follow their “online wellness gurus” religiously and take their advice seriously.  As a leading lifestyle blogger and a holistic wellness coach, what are your thoughts on it? How do you feel this trend (following wellness gurus online) affecting or improving the wellbeing of normal people?   

A. 6 As I mentioned before, there are numerous people out there who talk about wellness, happiness, and whatnot. Every other day we can see Holistic Wellness hashtags attached with different names and how.  

I recently saw an Instagram reel of a top Bollywood actress doing 108 Surya Namaskars. But the technique was all wrong. There was no stretching, the positioning was wrong and if someone following her decides to do Surya Namaskars seeing her video, they are sure to end up with a twisted leg, or stretched ligament much less no results. Always follow the techniques of certified instructors. It is better to take their paid programs where you get individual attention be it nutrition, yoga or holistic wellness. The generalized practices and celebrity endorsed videos are just for your inspiration. Not for you to blindly follow.  

I had a great learning experience with this interview. Thank you so much to Rakhi Jayashankar for taking out time and being a part of this initiative.  

What are your thoughts? Please share with me!    

If you are a health/wellness blogger/Youtuber/ Nutritionists /health book author/ digital content creator in health and wellness industry with some inspiring works to share on, then I would love to feature you in this series.     

Drop a mail at ritu,prapanna@gmail.com with your details (blog/book/YouTube channel link with recognized work details)  

Read Also: Vasundhara Agrawal’s interview