When Nyumba Group CFO Vishal Soni lost his mother in 2018, he was left rudderless. All of his career decisions until that point, including rejecting any job offers outside of his native Mombasa, had been made with her in mind.
“I get plenty of offers from Nairobi. I get plenty of offers from around East Africa, even South Africa, but I was outright refusing them because I wanted to stay near my parents. For me, no amount of money could buy the amount of time that I could spend with them. And when I lost her, everything just fell apart, because it felt like, ‘why do I need to do anything when the very person for whom I let go of all other possible goods and riches is not with me?’” he says.
During this time, Vishal plunged headlong into his spirituality. He received training from Isha Yoga certified teachers who were traveling from India to Africa through Uganda shortly after the Covid19 pandemic. For five days, he learned about the classical Hatha yoga tradition and began to practice it soon after.
His spiritual practice helped him answer some of the questions that lingered after his mother’s passing. But more than that, it helped him reclaim ownership of his body and mind, expanding his perception of his capabilities.
“The test is in stopping it. If somebody tells you ‘this is what I'm doing and it's working’, I'll tell them to stop doing it for a period to see if it really is working or not. And that's what happened to me,” Vishal says.
But another misfortune would force Vishal back into the search for deeper meaning.
In October 2022, Vishal started a journey to the summit of the highest mountain in Africa. He had climbed Mount Kenya twice and was sure he could scale Mount Kilimanjaro without medication to help him adjust to the high altitude. 100 metres away from the peak, he was hit by a bout of altitude sickness and had to be dragged down the mountain by a pair of guides, barely conscious. As they descended, the two guides conversed in Kiswahili, unaware that Vishal could speak the language.
“These guys were saying ‘this guy might not survive. He might not make it. The other guy who we brought down died by the time we went down because we went down too fast’. These guys were discussing it like a regular thing. And you are like a zombie, because when you get hit by altitude sickness, you don't even have the energy to raise your hand. I may have been hallucinating, but I was literally seeing every single rock, pebble, and stone, looking like skulls. I wondered, ‘why am I doing this?’ I had to mentally remind myself that, ‘you have a family waiting for you. You have your kids waiting for you. Whatever you do, just don't die here’,” he says.
After the incident, he took a break from his yoga and meditation practices, and his health bore the brunt. He lost his enthusiasm and began to go through the motions, clocking in and out each day without much thought.
“I'm looking at people who are twice my age with 10 times more enthusiasm than me, and I'm seated there listening to them. What's wrong with me? I can't understand it. I'm going home. My kids are ready to play with me. My wife wants to talk to me, and I'm there slouching on the sofa. I’ve had a long day, and I can't take it another minute. The only thing you look forward to is the weekend, and you probably go out with your friends and have a drink and relax and shut your mind. And I thought to myself, “I cannot continue like this,” he says.
Six months after the Kilimanjaro incident, he resumed his yoga and meditation practice, and the pay-off was instant. Today, he carries his yoga mat whenever he travels. His eating habits have changed too. He no longer drinks, and he eats before the sun sets. When he introduced yoga and meditation at work, his colleagues reported feeling better rested and being able to concentrate more. Today, he believes he is closer to gaining a mastery of his faculties.
“The best analogy I can give you is brushing your teeth. You can wake up and decide one day not to brush your teeth, and nothing goes wrong. Your day can continue, but it's other people who are going to notice that this person’s breath smells. And then over a span of six months, one year, two years, three years, you will notice, because now your teeth are starting to decay, and it's too late from a dental perspective. The same thing happens from a yoga and meditation perspective. When you have done your yoga and meditation in the right way, the way you interact with the world and the way you present yourself to the world changes. Yoga and meditation is just servicing your body and mind to the level that they function at their peak,” Vishal explains.
