Like many in Bollywood, Love Khichdi actress Riya Sen has caught the fear bug over swine flu (H1N1), a highly contagious though not particularly virulent flu strain. “I”m taking all the precautions possible,” she explains, “I’ve ensured that my staff at work and at home including building watchmen wear masks.”
Riya has always been very conscious of her health and is a devotee of Bikram Hot Yoga, devised by Bikram Choudhury and said to be practised also by Madonna and Elle MacPherson. It’s a form of yoga that takes the practitioner through 26 different positions corresponding to the letters of the alphabet, giving the body an all-over work-out in a space of low temperature, allowing the body to excrete toxins through natural body heat. “Every posture prepares you and leads you into the next posture, giving you a full-body work-out from A to Z,” says Bikram, “The whole trick is to systematically stimulate the body’s internal organs and glands, strengthen and tone the muscles and bring the body back to its state of balance. As the positions are sequenced to stretch the muscles in the order in which they should be stretched, it is bliss. In addition, it also promotes oxygen circulation throughout the body.”
Riya needs to keep in shape as she gears up to a demanding schedule that includes Chargesheet with Dev Anand, Divya Dutta and Jackie Shroff; Tara Sitara with Shakti Kapoor, and possibly Krissh 2 in which she may play the femme fatale opposite Hrithik Roshan as he seeks to save the seven wonders of the world.
