Sabi­ta Sookdeo jug­gles be­ing a house­wife, moth­er, busi­ness own­er, and dancer. Bel­ly danc­ing is her pas­sion. Now she teach­es the el­e­gant East­ern form of dance along with zum­ba to women as a feel-good way to im­prove their fit­ness and health while hav­ing fun.

The in­struc­tor said the dance class­es al­so help women over­come their ini­tial shy­ness and im­prove their self-con­fi­dence and self es­teem.

Speak­ing to the Sun­day Guardian at her In­fin­i­ty Bel­ly­dancers Com­pa­ny Ltd stu­dio in El Do­ra­do on Tues­day, Sookdeo said "Peo­ple are not tak­ing care of their health and them­selves, eat­ing what they want and not ex­er­cis­ing.

"I want peo­ple to prac­tice good health be­cause too many rel­a­tive­ly young peo­ple are dy­ing of health is­sues and de­vel­op­ing lifestyle dis­eases such as hy­per­ten­sion, car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease, strokes, can­cer, and di­a­betes.

"We want to en­cour­age peo­ple to come out and learn to try some­thing new like bel­ly danc­ing and zum­ba. Aer­o­bics is fun but it doesn't do as much for your body as bel­ly danc­ing or zum­ba."

The 33-year-old di­rec­tor and chore­o­g­ra­ph­er said the rea­son for this was bel­ly danc­ing's slow­er move­ments worked the body's mus­cles faster and de­pend­ing on the size and weight of the stu­dent, it burned more calo­ries when do­ing move­ments such as snake arms.

She said be­fore open­ing her stu­dio at home, she tried in­tro­duc­ing more dance class­es at gyms in the East­ern area clos­er to home as she want­ed to be clos­er to her three-year-old son, Sachin, who was her life, how­ev­er she was not not get­ting con­ve­nient time frames.

Sookdeo said her prot�g� and best friend, Ani­ta Chadee, who set up a stu­dio and dance class­es in her con­vert­ed garage in Debe al­so in­spired her to open her home stu­dio in El Do­ra­do with the as­sis­tance from her hus­band, Michael, and her fa­ther-in-law, In­dar.

She said the stu­dio which start­ed of­fer­ing zum­ba class­es from Mon­day, which she taught, while Chadee taught bel­ly danc­ing, catered for peo­ple in the area who would like to do bel­ly danc­ing and zum­ba but didn't want to go too far out of the way.

Chadee, 30, said her job as a process en­gi­neer kept her phys­i­cal­ly ac­tive and it was very hard for her to put on weight.

She said there were oth­er ben­e­fits to be de­rived from bel­ly danc­ing.

Chadee said danc­ing was a stress re­liev­er; she would put on mu­sic and dance her stress and any anger she had away. It al­so helped peo­ple sleep bet­ter, she said.

Sookdeo said peo­ple were hap­py with the time frame and the cost. If they can can come 3 or 4 pm, they will be ac­com­mo­dat­ed be­cause it was at her home.

Sookdeo said they some­times did pri­vate house class­es for small groups of peo­ple or a moth­er and daugh­ter.

She said some peo­ple were shy and did not want to come to an ac­tu­al class.

Sookdeo said they al­so catered for peo­ple's re­li­gious prac­tices such as Mus­lim women who did not want to take off their hi­jabs in front of strangers.

She said the ma­jor­i­ty of stu­dents came from Ch­agua­nas, Ari­ma, Arou­ca, Trinci­ty, Tu­na­puna, Cen­tral, and the fur­thest was Port-of-Spain.

Sookdeo said the stu­dio al­so did char­i­ty work with The Li­ons' Club and spon­sored The El Do­ra­do Youth Group every Christ­mas with T-shirts and toys for over 200 chil­dren.

She said the stu­dio al­so spon­sored Di­vali pro­grammes in Tacarigua to get vil­lagers to come to­geth­er to let them know about their cul­ture.

Sookdeo said the stu­dio al­so did per­for­mances for wed­dings, birth­day par­ties, bridal par­ties and com­pa­ny func­tions.

She en­cour­aged woman to pur­sue their goals in life "be­cause it is an in­vest­ment in them­selves for the fu­ture and no one can take that away from you."

For more in­for­ma­tion on The In­fin­i­ty Bel­ly­dancers Com­pa­ny Ltd stu­dio con­tact: sabi­ta.suraj@ya­hoo.com