International Women’s Fitness Festival (IWFF) is a one-of-a-kind initiative supported by the Sports, Physical Education, Fitness, and Leisure Skills Council (SPEFL-SC) that aims to change the way women think about fitness on all levels: physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, financial, and physiological. IWFF was founded with a mission to curate exclusive events-both online and offline-to promote and raise awareness about a variety of themes that benefit women with the purpose of empowering them with knowledge on all aspects of life.
Taking a step towards this goal, IWFF conducted its first event, “Introduction to Meditation and Mindfulness” with Black Lotus on 19 June 2021 to inculcate mindfulness and meditation into the lives of women for a better lifestyle. In the words of Vikram Shastry, CEO of Black Lotus, “The mindfulness and meditation workshop with IWFF was one of the most successful sessions we have had in the recent past. The audience was engaging with a strong intention to invest their time in meditation.”
With close to 250 registrations, the event started off with some video exercises focused on awareness which helped everyone to understand the meaning of awareness in an understandable and pleasant manner. Continuing the topic, the attendees were explained about mindfulness in detail: what mindfulness actually means, the benefits of mindfulness, the impact it creates in our lives and how to take the steps towards practising it. It also included the practical demonstration by practising several breathing exercises for everyone. To motivate everyone to try and include meditation as a part of their lifestyles, everyone was told real-life experiences of the hosts themselves about the lives they lived before they started practising the art of meditation, the impact of mindfulness on their lives, the changes they experienced after they started meditating and how they became aware. Towards the end, the viewers were shown another amusing video exercise that provided new perspectives and made everyone ponder. The event concluded with the experiences of Shweta Rai, The CEO of IWFF on how practising meditation impacts life and her experience with mindfulness.
Talking about the objective behind this event, Shweta said, “With the recent trauma and major life changes in the past few months given the pandemic, it was salient for the first launch event of IWFF to be around mental well-being as it is of paramount importance for the overall well-being of a person. The main focus of the event was to stimulate and help the women all around take steps towards their mental well-being, which the event was successful at.” Marking the words of Tahsin Zahid, CEO of SPEFL-SC, “The overwhelming response to the workshop reflects the importance of the subject. In today’s circumstances, it has become imperative to have a healthy mind, soul and body and I personally feel such workshops shall be conducted more often and it’s learning to reach every woman of our country.”
IWFF has a diverse range of partners, namely, YouCare- All about You by Luke Coutinho, Dr Yuvraj Jadeja (Healthcare Partner), Black Lotus (Mindfulness Parter), Women’s Web (Community Partner), Womenshine (Digital Magazine Partner), Gurgaon Moms (Head Community Partner), FitnessGuru (Digital Magazine Partner) and Cosco (Merchandise Partner).
Expressing her views about IWFF, Amisha Sethi, Chief Awareness Officer of Black Lotus said, “IWFF’s recent work in the areas of paramount importance like mental health and women’s fitness is not even commendable but truly unprecedented. We are thrilled to take the benefits of meditation at scale with the help of IWFF.” Working tirelessly to fulfil the mission of creating awareness amongst women for their well-being, IWFF aims to direct more such events in the time to come and become successful in bringing a fundamental change in the well-being of the women population.