Unleash your creative potential: Here's how Disha Deshpande combines art with Yoga to help release stress

For this half Maharashtrian and half Andhraite 26-year-old enthusiast, yoga and meditation is something that came to her naturally. Disha Deshpande is a travelling yoga teacher, a Reiki healer and an inner work facilitator, who is currently conducting workshops, retreats and treks in Manali.

A former music journalist, Disha says the longest she has been in a place was in Mumbai and that was for 6 to 7 years and her family lives in Gujarat. "I am a high-altitude trekker by passion, I really fell in love with the mountains when I visited Manali for the second time. Since then, it's been a little difficult to stay so I come back to the mountains quite often. I conduct yoga treks, yoga retreats, yoga holidays in the mountains. Currently, it's all happening in Himachal Pradesh and from June 29 to July 4, we will be trekking to the Deo Tibbe base camp that also falls under the Himachal range. Rest of the year I spend four to five months in Goa and that's where I also conduct yoga classes and yoga retreats. This is what I do full-time," she explains.

Disha goes by the name Swastiastu Yoga on all her social media platforms and she says she has been able to organise all of this because of a bunch of really efficient and amazing people that she has had the chance to trek with before. 

Yoga really helps children as well. Children are so easily influenced by what's going on around them and they don't realise where it's coming from or why they are doing what they are doing. Art combined with yoga becomes a really great means to release all of that and channel their energies in ways that they can make the most out of it. For children, learning yoga would be the best when experiential. They need to understand it is a part of self-care and it's there to help the human body optimise its journey on earth

Disha Deshpande, Yoga trainer and enthusiast

Disha was introduced to yoga at an early age — four years, by a neighbour of hers. "Back then it was not something that I picked up but then I had a certain inclination towards it. I would prefer to sit with my 50 something neighbour and meditate rather than go down and play with other kids my age. As a teenager, I suffered from severe migraines and regular nightmares that made me tired and gave me serious anxiety. Since I knew migraine was psychosomatic, I realised I needed to calm the mind and watch the pain without being affected by it. I suffered from sexual abuse as well. All of this led me to yoga. Especially Vipassana meditation is what I do the most and that was something I started at the age of 20. I feel yoga lets relieve all the baggage and it has definitely helped me a lot," she adds.

Disha also designed a series of workshops combining yoga and art, which is a culmination of creativity and therapeutic benefits of yoga. "I make a lot of art. That gives you a lot of creative relief. We combine yoga therapy with art therapy at our workshops to help people tap into the power of their subconscious mind. To fuel whatever creative endeavours that you are working on," she concludes.