Dr. Navodita began Yoga at the age of 5 at home. She took up Yoga as a co-curricular activity in boarding school at Welham Girls’ School at the age of nine. She loved Yoga and grew up with these practices. She represented her school in several national and international Yoga demonstrations. She enjoyed Yoga so much that she did Yoga for almost four hours a day. At the age of fifteen only, she was selected to represent school and get trained at RamamaniIyengar Memorial Yoga Institute in Pune which was established by Shri B.K.S. Iyengar.

Yoga is an ancient art, science and philosophy. Lord Shiva is considered to have originated Yoga. Yoga is considered to be the precursor to many other forms of physical sport and games, gymnastics, martial arts, etc. It is said that Lord Shiva passed his knowledge of Yoga to his consort, Goddess Parvati who then passed on this knowledge to the great sages. Sage Patanjali is considered to be one of the first great yogis. His work on yoga called ‘Yoga Sutras of Patanjali’ is very well-known and a treatise on the subject. For regular updates on yoga and health, click here (link to YouTube).

Writing is something Navodita is passionate about. She has been writing poems and prose since she was a child, both in Hindi and in English. She began writing as a graduate student for the student magazine ‘Image’ in University of Allahabad. She published her first work in Hindi which was a biography of her grandmother and her life through the Indian independence movement.

She went on to write a book on television based on her experiences as a television journalist. The book was titled ‘TV Journalism: An Introduction to Practices’ (APH Publishers).

Navodita’s interest in research grew out of her education at Cardiff University where she was taught by some of the eminent media scholars like Simon Cottle, Cindy Carter, Karin Wahl-Jorgensen and Bob Franklin.

As part of her research she has written several papers and presented these, ranging from topics like media and politics to media and development. Some prominent titles are ‘Impact of NarendraModi’s Projection in Media’, ‘Feminization of Media’, ‘Representation of Election News Coverage in Two National Dailies’, ‘Silent Birth’, ‘Gap Year’, ‘Salma Hayek’, ‘SMCR Model’, ‘Integrating Spirituality in Transformational Leadership’, ‘Media Portrayal of Violence Against Women’, ‘A Study on Penetration of Digital Media in Indian Democracy’, ‘Discourse analysis of women politicians in Indian newspapers: Comparative Analysis of The Times of India and DainikJagran’ among others.

Navodita is a crusader for media activism and media education and to an extent even media reform. She continues to write on media, politics and gender in her columns on a webzine www.differenttruths.com.

She has been training young journalists since 2011. Her subjects of expertise are television production, communication theory, communication research and television anchoring. She also teaches television scripting and lifestyle journalism. Her current work maybe found here