GET MICKEYMIZED: Keep yourself young and healthy by moving your body, growing your mind and doing the little things that make you happy! Make time for your loved ones, watch a sunset, and dance your blues away!
BY TARA NARAYAN
YOU cannot not go see and listen to him! The iconic fitness guru of our times — Dr Mickey Mehta. From the sound of it at the 12th D D Kosambi Festival of Ideas 2019 the focus this year is how to be fit and happy and mean and lean. Dr Mickey Mehta fits the bill perfectly. He must be pushing 60 years now but you may think he is a schoolboy, oozing energy and a lot of sensibility. He was speaker number two (day two) at this year’s four-day festival and spoke of fitness, wellness, wellbeing, god as an internal force…a calming atmosphere.
Oh yes, we must believe in god! Any god, presumably. He asked, when did you last watch a sunset on the beaches of Goa? Only a handful of hands flew up in the audience! This guru is a smooth, eloquent charmer and it’s not hard to believe that he has guided all kinds of folk up and down the corporate ladder, chief ministers and their wives, Bollywood celebrities and trained Mumbai police to imbibe the secrets of staying fighting fit, their reflexes always on high alert around the clock.
Dr Mickey Mehta is a very Natauropathy, Ayurveda-leaning fitness guru and chalks up mediation on top of the chart in his 380 Degree gyms in Mumbai (he gives everyone a discount equal to his age every August/September)! Who’d look at him and think he started off life as a door-to-door personal trainer and masseur? Today, he lives a much out-of-box lifestyle as celebrated as his clientele, if one may say so. One learns that this guru’s guru is the Ayurveda grandmaster Dr Omkar Belgi and Dr Mickey Mehta has been quoted in interviews saying that when he touches 90 years he wants to be as fighting fit as the late legendary yoga guru BK Iyengar!
WHAT did he tell the audience largely made up of students at this year’s Kosambi Festival of Ideas? Be young and youthful forever, for that you must internalize the spirit of youth…if it’s wintertime eat raw grated beetroot (amongst other nutritious things). Don’t try to be like anybody else. Be yourself. It is energy which is important and what we want, not strength! Dance a lot! And yes, this I loved the most: God is a calming atmosphere, let him or her be a natural opiate in your body secreting happiness.
Dr Mickey Mehta hails from a Parsi background and is undoubtedly the most holistic healer of them all in and out of the country. His sensibility is wholesome and appealing. He says, never sit around entertaining depression…when fitness and happiness happens to you, depressed people stop being depressed. Go out and learn to energize and synergize better, “Wellbeing is constantly evolving, translate it into vision. You be powerful. Every student has potential, see where your interests lie…recreate yourself.”
Fitness, health, wellness, wellbeing, in short become your own god or you be a representative of god! That was not a statement of arrogance, he qualified, but just an aspirational statement. A true guru doesn’t mind lending his shoulders for the growth of his students, to see beyond the present to greater heights ahead. Forget the whys of life, ask why not and move on.
That’s the way to stop being copies of others, “Your genetic signature is different. Benchmark yourself. Start growing…don’t just be an accountant of numbers! God is genderless!” Dr Mickey Mehta comes across truly as an exhilarating guru of fitness of mind, body, heart and soul, my dears, and yes do read him up ….he has been on top of the ladder of fitness for the last 36 years and reports say he has initiated close to 4,00,000 people into wellness over the last four years. His vision is to let wellness be religion number 1, his slogan is wellness revolution for human evolution and his objective is to go green — get naturalized, get revolutionized, get Mickeymized! Little wonder he is popularly described as the Get Mickeymized guru and listening to him one may well be tempted to wonder what it entails to be Mickeymized….make a beginning somewhere.
And some more: Eat healthy, exercise, sleep well, let your thoughts flow in harmony with your heart beats, “A rhythmic flow establishes healing, shut your eyes, be quiet, stop searching and settle down. Being is better than doing!” He says he is 56 years old now and a son, husband, father, “We’re multiple personalities packed in one and each is fighting with the other! But there is something called neutralizing yourself. I can only speak with love, I simply motivate, aspire….the one who has enjoyed public transport can later on appreciate a Mercedes ride that is earned. Desire to sleep happy every night and get up charged with love for your parents, hug your grandparents, serve them, respect your teachers…a guru sheds darkness and gives light. Light is existential, darkness is foggy.”
OF course by the time Dr Mickey Mehta had finished talking almost everyone in the audience is ready to be Mickeymized! I must say I have always enjoyed the DD Kosambi speakers and find them a fountain of cheer, my dears… This year’s other speakers include National Geographic wildlife presenter and filmmaker from Goa Malaika Vaz, seasoned ad man Pralhad Kakkar on “Goa — Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow”, Swami Smarananda Giri (general secretary of Yogoda Satsanga Society of India) on “Leading a balanced and joyous life through yoga meditation.” I’m sure soon a lot of goodness will be flowing our way in Goa soon!
ON that note I must remind you that another guru worth listening to will be here in Goa and Panaji first week of February for ISKCON’s Jagruti Festival of Spiritual Awakening (February 2&3). I would say don’t miss this festival. The Krishna Consciousness festivals have a special charm of their own. Alas, I’m off to Mumbai but maybe I’ll be back in time to catch up with what spiritual guru Radhanath Swami (the American Jewish young man Richard Slavin, who came to India to feel at home and whose books “The Journey Home” and sequel “The Journey Within” make for some awesome reading) and guru Radha Gopinath Das have to say. They’re the two keynote speakers for the festival coming up next at the Kala Academy.
I hope with so much spiritual awakening coming our way the acche din will also come internally if not externally….on that Kalayug note, I’ll say avjo, selamat datang, poite verem, au revoir, arriverdecci and vachun yetta here for now.
— Mme Butterfly