Woman’s Hour Radio 4
The changing of the guard on Woman’s Hour has been tricky – for this listener at least.
From the wise and witty duo of Jenni Murray and Jane Garvey to the fresh new faces on the block… Anita Rani and Emma Barnett.
Change is good but it takes time to bed in.
I’m forever a Woman’s Hour fan - just like I love yoga.
That was the topic for Anita Rani’s recent interview with Nadia Gilani.
She has had a lifetime love affair with yoga and has written a book – The Yoga Manifesto.
The practice became her rock in what was a “crazy and dysfunctional life”.
She grew up as the only child of a single mother who was Pakistani.
She had problems with bulimia and later, drink.
But her mother was a constant. She practically dragged Nadia to that first class at 16.
She resisted and refused but went and what she discovered was a sense of no longer living just in her head.
“It was like a deep firm feeling of just okay. That was the best feeling I’d had in a long time,” she said.
This wasn’t a lightning bolt… she talked about falling in and out of love with yoga, about finding it difficult to be the only brown face in the class; about how the current fad for yoga can make it factory line, conveyor belt, commercialised, elitist.
But the magic draws her back.
About 93 per cent of Asian adults don’t swim, according to research by Sport England carried out in 2020. There are certain cultural barriers to break down.
Summaya Mughal is trying to change things with her Brown Gal Can’t Swim campaign.
She joined Emma Barnett on Woman’s Hour to talk about how, as an adult, she returned to the pool that terrified her as a seven year old girl and learned to swim in eight weeks.
Now she’s on a mission.
In the Islam faith, modesty is important, she explained.
So to get these women into the pool, she had to find modest costumes and set up female only classes.
She has come a long way from the terrified child to eight weeks in a pool and catching a crab in her hair while open water swimming in Montenegro.
“It’s a skill that could save your life after all,” she said.
