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Make a Difference with GOQii Karma

GOQii Karma

We often think of karma as an intangible entity, something that we can’t touch or predict. There’s a fair chance that our notions of karma might not be true at all but that doesn’t negate the fact that doing good creates personal happiness and paves the way for gratitude.

It has been scientifically proven that the selfless act of giving creates happiness and promotes overall wellbeing. The opportunity to do good is a quality present in all of us. Humans by nature are altruistic beings. It is in our nature to help. All we must do is recognize that part of us and walk together for the greater good. That’s what GOQii Karma is all about! A tangible way to see the impact you make on the world by being healthy.

How does it Work?

Inspired by Mahatma Gandhi’s iconic Dandi March of 390km, for every 390 steps you clock while using GOQii, you are awarded 1 Karma Point. Once you accumulate sufficient GOQii Karma Points, you can choose to donate these points to social causes listed in the GOQii App’s karma section. The points you donate are converted into monetary contributions by our Karma Partners and our Karma Partners help the underprivileged via these causes.

What Has GOQii Karma Achieved?

Since 2015, with the Karma Points donated by our players to our Karma Partners, we have helped and enabled many individuals throughout India. Some of our key highlights include:

1. Supporting Victims Affected by the Tamil Nadu Floods: The heavy rainfall that plagued Tamil Nadu in 2015 drove thousands of people out of their homes. 5479 GOQii Players walked and contributed a total of 3.9 million Karma Points to Oxfam India to support those affected by providing them hygiene kits, non-food items, dry food ration kits, soap and chlorine tablets and hygiene promotion activities.

2. Empowering Women against Violence: Through our Karma platform we were able to aid Oxfam India in their quest to end violence against women. Through this program, Oxfam India reached out to more than 42,000 women to end violence and established 23 support centres within formal and informal locations to provide psycho-social counselling and legal aid to women facing this issue.

3. Upcycling to Slippers for Children in Need: This cause enabled the collection of old shoes and Rs. 199/pair to upcycle them to slippers and donate them to children in need. Greensole’s vision is to contribute to social good, by creating a self-sustaining infrastructure that facilitates the provision of the basic necessity of footwear to everyone. This cause was completed with 1, 30, 00,000 Karma Points donation by our players.

4. Trees for Rural Communities, Chintamani, Karnataka: Still an on-going cause, Grow-Trees.com wants to allow users to satisfy a private purpose of greeting someone through an eTreeCertificate, while doing social good by planting trees. With Grow-Trees you can plant trees with just a few clicks and gift them to celebrate festivals, birthdays, anniversaries or other special occasions using their personalized e-certificate. The cost of each tree is INR 85.

You can browse through some of the causes on the Karma section in the GOQii App. Just like this, every step you take makes a difference. So clock in your daily steps, collect and donate karma points as you never know who you might be helping.

On the day of Gandhi Jayanti, pledge to walk daily so you can help someone else get on their feet!

#BeTheForce

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“I have achieved the impossible and that is a change of attitude towards health, happiness and fitness”

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“Fitness is not about being better than someone else… it’s about being better than you used to be.” – unknown
Impossible – can be broken down to I’m Possible – and this is the one thing that comes to mind when you see the progress Namitha, a GoQii player of a year has made. Once a salad dodger and a soup skipper who couldn’t care less about exercise, Namitha has seen a remarkable change in her life, having lost 24 kgs in the last 11 months.

This is her story –

“I have never been on the slim side of the scale. Right from childhood, as far as I can remember, I have been pleasantly plump and easy going. My love for food dominated my life style and I was very pleased with myself, despite hovering on the higher side of the 2 digit weight figure. My double pregnancies became a good reason to pacify myself for the increase in my weight.

Although I had tried dieting before, the weight always crept back! Further, I had issues like PCOD since 16/17 years and chronic ache in the heel.

Two years ago, work required me to move to Bangalore. My desk job, coupled with canteen food and a sedentary lifestyle increased my weight and lethargy more than ever. It was not till Februrary 2016, on my birthday, that I was confronted with the rudest shock! My weight had reached the 3 digit mark! This is when a friend of mine who had seen drastic results from being a goqii player recommended the Goqii band and encouraged me to become a player.
I was assigned Kiran, my coach for who I will be eternally grateful for. Kiran set very small targets for me in the beginning starting with the basic 10k steps. She was always available for me and I recall how much I have nagged her. Kiran’s patience and encouragement along with my perseverance has paid off.

I introduced dietary changes in my food – from slowly cutting down on the carbs (I am a rice lover!) and adding sprouts and salads, fruits and soups to my diet. I played with smaller portions. Now it amazes me to see people actually polishing off a whole plate of biryani and to think I used to do the same.

I loved the fact that Kiran was pushy but not drastically so; just the right amount of push that someone like me needed. She guided me and was so dedicated which further pushed me to do my best.

Today, I am a whole new person. I took part in the 5 kms marathon on March 29th this year and this is a person who hated walking, running was a far cry. My friends and family are proud and ecstatic with my achievements. In fact, my husband joins me for my morning jogs. I realised that I don’t feel as restless during physical exertion like i used to and my recovery rate is faster than before as well. The pain in my heel has close to vanished. In fact, just yesterday, I climbed up six floors of a building. These are things I would have never imagined I would do even in my wildest dreams.
For someone who only went to the limited plus size stores, today I proudly walk into regular stores and am thrilled to be able to choose from a variety. People who see me are shocked to see the remarkable change and I keep telling every one of the benefits of being a Goqii player.

The last one year has been a memorable journey, a momentous one actually. I have achieved the impossible and that is a change of attitude towards health, happiness and fitness!

What does Coach Kiran Madari have to say about her player Namita?

Namitha is an awesome person. As a coach I am really proud of her and her achievement. Namitha was very worried before starting on GOQii as she was on the heavier side weighing 114 kg with PCOD and she wanted to lose weight, be healthy and wanted to be a girl which she was before. She was very consistent in following my advice and worked very hard to achieve her goals. We have been together in this journey. Whenever she had challenges like guest coming, festivals, illness, she used to ask me for my support and followed whatever I told her and stayed on track.

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An “ATTITUDE” of “GRATITUDE”

 

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I vividly remember myself humming these few lines back in school:

“Thank you for the world so sweet,

Thank you for the food we eat,

Thank you for the birds that sing,

Thank you GOD for everything.”

WAIT a second! This is not a religious blog but, simply about being thankful for the good in our lives focusing on the positives rather than the negatives. Seeing the cup of life as “half full” than as “half empty”.

Sadly, I could not continue saying those 4 lines as I grew up. But why should I not feel grateful about things that are around me or happen to me now?

This thought stuck my mind a month back and since then I became serious about being “grateful” in life and making it a lifelong habit. Of course, it was going to be something beyond these few lines considering the amount of experience I’ve had or the number of things that I should be grateful for. Best thing about it was that it was doable and it required no inventory.

Just 5 min of your day, but in turn provides great rewards in happiness, healthy, mind-fullness, career, personality, deeper relationships. The benefits are endless but, doing so takes a bit of practice (talk about HABITS !) .

Speaking about its benefits on Health & Well-Being (since that’s my forte), here are some of the ways it affects us:

  1. HAPPINESS:

Experts say that practicing gratitude can increase health and happiness levels by about 25% ! And we all know that to achieve optimum health we need a healthy body, but we also need a healthy mind. Like muscle building, your mind also takes a while to build up and get strong. For this essentially practicing gratitude certainly helps.

  1. POSITIVE ATTITUDE:

Gratitude also turns what we have in to enough, shrinking away our worries, negativity, comparisons. You end up with a more positive outlook towards your goals and your life.

  1. SLEEP :

It improves sleep quality, time required to fall asleep and increases sleep duration. Just thinking about a few things we should be grateful for induces melatonin (sleep-inducing hormone) and knocks us out. Gratitude and positive emotion in general are among the strongest relaxants known to man. A safe and free sleep aid!

  1. INCREASES LONGEVITY:

Indirectly of course. Gratitude is strongly related to a positive emotion and we all know that the optimists live a few years longer than the pessimists! So, gratitude —-> positive emotion —-> extra months / years on earth!

  1. STRESS:

Gratitude reduces feelings of envy, makes our memories happier and lets us experience good feelings. All of this helps us bounce back from stress. Whenever I am under this funk , feel down or demotivated, all I do it’s : grab my journal and start counting my blessings !

  1. YOU ARE MORE LIKELY TO EXERCISE !

While there is no strong evidence that supports this, it should not surprise you if being grateful for your health would increase the tendency to want to protect it by exercising more. (Start practicing and let me know if it works for you! )

In a nutshell: Gratitude is no one-stop-shop , but it is a massively under utilised tool for improving the quality of life . You will be amazed to realise that all the goodness we take for granted.

Now you should be asking me, HOW can I bring more gratitude in my life???

Well, while there are many ways to practice this, one way that I follow and find the most practical is: Maintaining a gratitude journal.

All it requires is noting 1 or more things ( I write 3 everyday ) you are grateful for on a daily basis . No fancy notebook or App required. The real work goes on in your head. But if using a tool is helpful, go for it.

Here are a few handful of apps / websites that specialise in Gratitude:

Thankfulfor.com ( http://thankfulfor.com/) , Gratittude Journal for Iphone , Gratitude Plus for Ipad , Treater for IOS and Android .

I have picked up a few examples from my journal to give you an idea about how can you start:

  1. I am grateful for being able to sleep on a clean white bed sheet.
  2. I am grateful for the comfortable shoes I am wearing right now.
  3. I am blessed to have access to technology.
  4. I am lucky have my own bedroom space.
  5. I am grateful for a day off!
  6. I really enjoyed the lunch today.

Start off with small and simple things and gradually get deeper and complex. All of this takes less than 5 mins a day. It’s that simple! Trust me, once you start, you will want to go on and on and start falling short of space!

Keep a few things in mind, before you made a decision to go ahead:

Be genuine, No false praises, Be as specific as possible, Try to actually “feel” that feeling of gratitude.

So do you have 5 minutes to change your life forever ?

Thought so!

Go ahead and let’s make GRATITUDE PRACTICE a daily habit!

(WARNING: This exercise is super powerful and can make you feel really good. You might also find yourself smiling while filling up your journal.)

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