Suhail Rather
Bandipora, Jan 04: Meet 17-year-old girl, who is the only girl from north Kashmir’s Bandipora district who has won a national championship in Yoga and has 4 national championships in her name in martial arts.
Shah Parihaan Peerzada, who hails from Naz Colony locality of Bandipora, started her career in sports when she was just six years of age.
Parihaan said that she started her sports career when she was 6-years-old and the first game she played was snow skiing.
She says that she then played sqay martial arts because for a girl learning self-defence techniques are very important. “The third sport I chose and played was Yoga because it is very important for our physical as well as mental health.”
“I was of very tender age when I started playing snow skiing and when I pursued my basic course in this category, I was trained by famous Olympian of Jammu and Kashmir, Gul Mustafa Dev. He was my inspiration and he trained me in snow skiing from the very beginning,” Parihaan says.
She says she did three courses in snow skiing in Gulmarg under the guidance of Gul Mustafa Dev and then she was recommended for competitive snow skiing.
“After snow skiing, I started learning self-defence as I was inspired by my father to learn about self-defence. He actually motivated me to learn this sport as it very important for a girl to learn self-defence,” she says.
Parihaan said she did not choose another country’s martial arts but she chose her own country’s martial arts and that is sqay martial arts, which is world-famous.
“Mir Nazir and my female coach Salma Madam trained me in this sport. They supported me a lot in this field and I have played at least four nationals in the sport and have won medals.”
She said that at last, she chose Yoga because Yoga plays an important role in “our lives”. “Our mind and lives remain active if we regularly perform yoga. I am the only girl from Bandipora who is a national champion in Yoga,” she said.
She said that on International Yoga Day last year, she was invited as a female yoga instructor by the district administration. “I instructed then deputy commissioner Bandipora Ravinder Kumar and officials of youth services and sports and department of ISM to perform Yoga on International Yoga Day.”
Apart from this, Parihaan says she is a good singer and she is a female instructor at a local gym centre in Bandipora.
