last updated:23.01.25
I had one in 2011 too. I remember posting a pic. A selfie with a heavy filter on it, taken from my room in Delhi and highlighting my eyes lined with kajal. I don’t remember what I had named it, probably something that conveys “I am mysterious”.
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This account was created when I found myself in Canada in 2016.
The first pic was taken by my ex, the first trip we took together – to Toronto. The city that became my home from 2018 onwards. And the city I would leave in 2023, to travel indefinitely to find a home in myself.
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The account was named @randomphantom_
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The thought put behind it was as random as the name. There was no intention behind it. At the time of account creation, there was a word “phantom” in my sight and my mind added random to it, as I often referred to my actions as something I did randomly.
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​Ah, I just felt like doing it. So random.
​yes, I am going to piece it all together that my actions were not random at all, rather my intuition and my instincts guiding me. But we’ll get there.
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Then I found yoga in 2019.
Around the same time, my grandfather passed away and I shared some words in his memory. That was the second post. His death shifted something in me, humbled me, shook me, yet grounded me.
My reality shifted.
What I was going towards shifted.
I wouldn’t know what just yet, but something had changed.
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I got my PR, paid off my loans, found a new job, and was ready to finally take a vacation in Tulum, a proper vacation. The vacation didn’t happen and even if it had, my body wouldn’t know what rest really means until years later.
March 2020, COVID-19. I had been going to my new job for 2 weeks so far until lockdown was announced. I would work remotely at that job until May 2021; the month I would decide to quit my job – the first time I did it._​
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Craving rest, realizing I was burnt out, and having my reality been shaken a bit, I decided to do yoga every day.
I needed to be accountable. I found some yoga accounts on Instagram, Smaika being one and one more that I can’t remember. They used to share daily yoga here and keep each other accountable that way.
Sounds interesting.
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So I started recording my practice and sharing it on instagram, every day.
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The validation in terms of likes, comments, and praise, gave me enough dopamine to continue showing up for my yoga practice.Now whether the continued practice was a genuine urge to move my body vs my body craving the dopamine, I don’t know.
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But it was a hack that served me well.
From yoga, my interest grew to mobility, strength training, functional yoga, this yoga, that yoga.
After some overconsumption of content –
this yoga is good,
that yoga is bad.
Wait, what is this now?
Confused and overwhelmed finding myself in this new yoga ecosystem, and seeing contradictory information and not knowing who to trust and not that it helped, but finding myself too drawn in I didn’t need to but this is where my brain decided to hyper-fixate at that time.
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I started feeling some reluctance to associate myself with anything to do with “yoga”.
​of course, as my future self will say now – I was just learning yoga, not really practicing yoga deep within me.​
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So when it was time to choose a new name for this account –
I changed “phantom” to “movements” and kept random, because you know, my actions still felt that they were done randomly.
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random movements, which would later become my tiny movement business.
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We come back to May 2021, I am officially burnt out.
In April, my dad got COVID and spent 14 days in the hospital, with oxygen levels dropping really fast.
My family was in Kashmir.
I was in Canada.
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I remember every single moment fearing I would crumble down if something happened to Dad. I lost my grandfather and never got to see him after our last goodbye hug in Delhi in 2017.
I am not ready to lose my dad.
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With God’s grace, he survived.
The shift that had earlier happened with my grandfather passing, moved further. ​
I decided to quit my job, take a rest, and see what I could do with random movements. I learned how to create a course on Teachable in June 2021. I created my first ever online course (fundamentals of movement) in July and let others know about it in August 2021.
15 people bought it.
My reality is shifting again.
Someone bought what I just created.
Ah!
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It was a 10-week program covering the fundamentals of movement. At this point, I had been doing my “movements” for over 2 years. I didn’t feel confident but I wanted to give it a try.
To share everything I have learned.
Anatomy. Biomechanics. Nervous System. Breath. Core. Backbends.
And so much more.
You guys, our bodies are so cool.
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And so I did and I built some more trust in myself.
Along with some more reliance on social media to dictate my mood, some dependence on this new businessy thing I created that set the tone of my day.
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Continuing with this up and down, another anxiety hits. This time – financial anxiety.
When I quit my job, I had no idea what I was going to do next. I didn’t even ask myself if my nervous system was ready to handle the anxiety of no salary coming in. The universe probably knew I wasn’t ready to do this full-time yet and suddenly this recruiter reaches out to me and I say yes to the interview, and two weeks later I have a new job.
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The coming year saw me drifting away from “yoga” and more towards floor flow, modern dance, some phases of aerial (pole, silk, hoop).
I started sharing more of this movement, random as I would feel it was.
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Sometime in 2022, I discovered spinal waves and obsessively started training towards them.
I was surprised at the lack of movement in my upper back, given my backbends were A+.
But having taken a course on hypermobility, not that surprised.
Spinal waves opened the floodgates to fluidity for me, and oh, have I ever looked back since then…
Continuing with my habit of sharing my practice online, I started sharing spinal waves and what I had learned.
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People resonated.
The account grew.
​_I started getting messages like –
I also do random movements.
I move my spine now inspired by you._ ​
I woke up for two mornings without back pain, thank you…
This was something new.
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Random movements for me were just a bunch of movements that I do randomly.
But it had become something.
It was associated with something.
Something to do with wiggling your spine.
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Moving your arms, legs, or the whole body randomly because any movement is better than no movement.
Ahaa đź’ˇ
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And so I officially decided to name my tiny business: Random Movements.
Got a business license, registered in Ontario, Canada.
It may not seem like a big deal, but that day, it was a big deal for me. I was happy.
Along with the name, came the second course I would work on:
​Spinal Flow. Mi amor ​
This one is special.
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And then 30 Days of Random Movements (30DRM) – recorded and edited in Cesme, Turkey. Days after I ran away to Antalya, after a fight with my ex.
My first-ever solo travel, sponsored by my big feelings and delulu.
30DRM was the first course where I finally nailed how to get people to complete a course, lol.
​which I will later learn is not sustainable but the learnings were still helpful.
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Others (Happy Hips, Embody Your Anatomy, and rest) would follow eventually.
But these ones were created, when my heart was heavy with grief. Post Sept 2023.
And that brings us to where we are today.
Ah, how these past 1 and a half years have changed.
But really the shift had happened way before. May 2019.
I talk more about the past year in the video on YouTube: random movements has to die.​
This year, movement found me in different ways: through attempting surfing and realizing I should probably learn how to swim, finding salsa in Colombia, losing myself in bachata eventually (after spending hours and hours taking lessons), getting curious about tango and zouk and connecting more to the rhythm of music.
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One night before dinner with Adina in Medellin, I was showing her some drills for spinal waves.
And telling her about Random Movements and what it means to me and she said something that I knew all along but didn’t pay attention to –
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you know, but this is not really random.
I would understand what that means on Jan 9, 2025 (when that YouTube video was recorded).