The body and the face
are one piece of work.
Bodycare is the work of Mallika, a yoga, physiotherapy and wellness practitioner with close to 25 years in the field. What started as a few morning classes in Burdwan, West Bengal now reaches women across India and outside it.
Since 2004
Teaching without a break
~25 years
In yoga, physiotherapy and wellness
Burdwan
Yoga qualification, University of Burdwan
Durgapur
Physiotherapy, under a senior physiotherapist
10 to 80
Student ages, India and abroad
How a few morning classes in Burdwan
became this.
The body and the face are treated as one piece of work here. That is the whole idea, and this is how she arrived at it.
In 2004 Mallika lost her husband in an accident. Her son was small, money was short, and sitting at home was not something she could do. The one thing she had carried since childhood was yoga, so she made a living out of it. The classes began that year.
Students enrolled quickly and arrived with everything. Lower back pain, neck pain, bad knees. Yoga alone was not a complete answer, so she took a place on a physiotherapy course at a hospital in Durgapur and kept teaching through it. Burdwan in the morning, ninety minutes each way to class, the evening batch, then study until midnight. She calls those the hardest years she has had. They are the reason no two students here are given the same plan.
Years later she noticed something her students could not see. The weight was coming off and their faces had not kept up. The glow was gone. So she learned face yoga and put fifteen minutes of it into every session. Almost nobody wanted it. They logged off for exactly that stretch, until they saw the skin of the two or three who had stayed.
The face is what people see first.
Mallika
Women still come asking to lose twenty kilos before a wedding. Mallika tells them what is actually safe, and when the gap is too wide she tells them to go somewhere else. It costs her the enrolment. She does it anyway.
Close to twenty-five years on, the room holds students from ten to eighty, in India and abroad.
How she teaches
Different bodies, different programmes.
A bad lower back and a weight-loss goal are not the same assignment. That is what the physiotherapy training is for.
Face yoga is not an add-on.
Fifteen to twenty minutes in every session, no exceptions, whether or not you came for it.
A safe rate, not the one you asked for.
Often three to four kilos a month. Pushed harder, a body burns muscle instead of fat.
The ten minutes after class.
Most students come in for one thing and turn out to need another. She reads it off their face and keeps them back.
Students call her first when something
goes wrong, and first when something
goes right.
One student had been trying to conceive for seven years and had been advised to consider IVF. She had PCOS, found Bodycare through a Google search, and called. Mallika took her on alongside the care she was already receiving, and asked her to give it a year. Eighteen months later she rang to say she was pregnant.
Mallika does not claim the exercise is what did it, and she will tell you so herself. What she is certain about is the phone call.
Individual results vary. This is not a treatment for infertility or PCOS. Published with the student's written consent.
“I lost 10 kilos in two months. I had been 80 kilos, and with the yoga classes and the diet I followed, the weight came off that fast.”
“Within two months my skin looked more rejuvenated. With Ma'am's guidance the result came quickly — a stronger glow, and more confidence.”
“My face got its glow back. People keep telling me I look younger than I did before.”
The programmes
Online, and in person in Burdwan. Students from ten to eighty.
Fitness & weight management
At a rate your body can hold.
Physiotherapy-informed movement
Backs, necks and knees.
Face yoga
In every session, and taught on its own.
Meditation
The part that is not on the timetable.
Fitness, weight management, physiotherapy-informed movement, face yoga and meditation — taught by someone who will tell you the truth about what your body can do in the time you have given her.
Mallika holds a yoga qualification from the University of Burdwan and a physiotherapy qualification from Durgapur, where she trained under a senior physiotherapist.
Bodycare provides fitness, movement and wellness coaching. It is not a substitute for medical diagnosis or treatment. Please consult your doctor before beginning any new exercise or weight-management programme, particularly if you are pregnant, post-operative or managing a diagnosed condition. Individual results vary.