My Actifit Report Card: July 28 2025

Yesterday, a student organization had invited me to give a talk on the topics Urban Forestry and Urban Gardening.

The event was scheduled to start at 10 o'clock and my slot was scheduled at 11.30 but due to various reasons, my slot was at 12.30.

I quickly gave a talk. I took hardly 15 minutes and had an amazing interaction with doctors, engineers, and social workers.

It was a good event and I was happy that I was able to interact with these young minds.

The session before me was about physical fitness.

And the speaker gave a compelling talk about why and how we should take care of our health.

And he gave us practical tips on how to increase our muscle mass, our health, and maintain a good physical form without doing much.

One of the tips that the speaker gave was to do simple exercises throughout the day.

One of the exercises that he suggested was sit-ups.

It takes a lot of energy. It is a little bit difficult, but it helps a lot.

It has a lot of highs and lower body strength and it helps everything.

So he suggested that and made us do some sit-ups so that we would know how to do and what not to do.

I taught as breathing exercises and although I have been doing breathing exercises for over 20 years now, probably I started doing breathing exercises when I was 14, 15 years old because I had asthma and I always was out of breath whenever I did workout, whenever I ran, I used to face a lot of breathing issues.

And what this trainer taught us was incredible.

I loved the simple technique that he taught us.

He taught us what he called 4-5-6 technique.

Inhale for 4 seconds, hold for 5 seconds, and release for 6 seconds.

4-5-6 and I love that.

It is a simple technique but it helps us with controlling our breath, getting as much oxygen as possible and relaxing our mind and body.

It works in multiple ways and helps us really good.

Breathing exercises have helped me in many ways.

I used to get breathless. A little bit more walking, some heavy lifting, or just my allergies waking up, and I would be breathless.

And someone taught me how to control my breathing.

When I started initially, I would just take a deep breath and then let it go.

Eventually, I started to hold my breath.

I would take a deep breath in, hold for as long as I can, and then release.

I would take a deep breath in, hold for as long as I can, and then release.

This went on for months and months. Maybe years.

And then eventually, one fine day, I was able to control my breathing.

And I remember once I was at a pool, and I was able to hold my breath for at least a minute.

60 seconds is a long time for someone who had breathing issues.

So this is how it helped me and eventually I practiced and practiced and once in a while what I would do is I would take a bucket of water, dunk my face into it and hold my breath for as long as I can.

And I remember the highest that I was able to hold my breath was one minute 30 seconds or a little bit more than that.

I'm not exaggerating. It was a lot for me.

I know there are people who could hold their breath for more than like two minutes or three minutes but for me 1.3 minute was a lot.

Recently I heard somewhere that the actors of Avatar 2 movie were made to shoot underwater and they were able to hold their breath and do all the acting and fight scenes for around eight minutes.

And honestly that's a huge huge task.

I will never try to I will never attempt to try that but if someone is doing then they have my respect.

I don't want everyone to do that but holding for one minute is good enough in my book.

The session was really good.

I enjoyed it a lot.

And most of the participants were not used to doing physical exercises.

Honestly, India lacks this.

People in India don't do exercises unless they are sick, unless they are obese, unless... something drastic happens.

Many Indians look like they are fit.

Most Indians are slim, but they are not healthy slim.

They are unhealthy slim because they don't exercise, they eat every shit they can eat, and Indians are lazy in general.

We will not do stuff unless it is really really important.

When the question and answer session started, I asked why we Indians don't exercise and what we can do to help our kids at school get more exercise.

And the trainer, the speaker was kind enough to help me understand why we are not exercising and how we can help our kids get more into physical exercise.

After the session, I went back to the nursery and had some stuff to do.

There were a few customers and one of my workers had come and I spent the rest of the day at the nursery.

It was supposed to rain a lot, but it did not.

It rained for a few minutes here and there, but the whole day was dry and quiet and calm.

I loved the weather.

The business is doing good, and I hope things will be better for the next few months.

A lot is going on in my mind, and sometimes I do want to share, but most days I just sit quiet, put my head down, and do the hard work.

They say that when you do good deeds, they come back to you, and I'm hoping that someday soon I will be able to redeem my good deeds.

I don't know how that works, but I do believe that if you do good, you get good.

This report was published via Actifit app (Android | iOS). Check out the original version here on actifit.io

Daily Activity, Gardening, Stretching, Walking