Meet Ritika Khandelwal

Ritika Khandelwal teaches every batch at Karma Yoga herself, six days a week, in a small room opposite Thadi Market in Agarwal Farm. She is CERT_PLACEHOLDER certified, and over 5+ years she has taught 500+ students across Mansarovar and the surrounding areas of Jaipur.

How did she start teaching?

Ritika came to yoga the way most of her students do — with a problem, not with a plan. Long hours, a stiff back, and the vague advice everyone in India gets at some point: “you should do some yoga.” What she found in her first classes was that nobody explained anything. Postures were called out from the front of a hall, thirty people copied them approximately, and the people who most needed correction got the least of it.

She trained properly instead, and started teaching a handful of neighbours in Mansarovar. Word moved the way it does in Jaipur — one woman told her sister, who told her colleague. The batch outgrew the room. That is how Karma Yoga began, and it is still the reason the batches are deliberately kept to eight to twelve people.

What does she believe a class should do?

Three things, in this order: it should be safe, it should be understood, and only then should it be challenging. A posture you cannot feel in the right place is not doing anything for you, however impressive it looks. So Ritika explains where a stretch should be felt, what it should not feel like, and what to do the moment it feels like the wrong thing.

She is also plain about what yoga is not. It is complementary to medical care, not a replacement for it, and she says so to every student who arrives with a report in hand. If your doctor has told you to avoid something, that instruction wins in her room.

How does she teach?

In Hindi and English, usually both in the same sentence, because that is how the cue actually lands for most people in Jaipur. She uses names — yours, and the Sanskrit one for the posture, with the Hindi name alongside it, so you leave knowing what you practised.

Props are normal here, not a mark of failure. A folded blanket under the hips, a block under the hand, a chair for a senior student's balance work, a bolster in prenatal sessions. Everything is kept at the studio, so nobody has to buy anything to begin.

The students she works with most closely tend to be the ones other classes hurry along: women through pregnancy and postnatal recovery, students managing PCOS or a thyroid report, people with knees that complain on stairs, and desk workers whose necks have quietly locked up over five years.

What is a class actually like?

You arrive five minutes early and sit down. Class opens with a few minutes of settling and breath — not a warm-up in the gym sense, more a chance for the room to slow down. Then joint mobility, then standing or seated work depending on the batch, then a counter-sequence, then pranayama, then shavasana. It runs about sixty minutes, forty-five for prenatal and kids batches.

Nobody is asked to demonstrate anything in front of the room. Ritika moves between mats while everyone practises, which is where most of the actual teaching happens. If it is your first class, tell her before you begin what your body is dealing with; she will have an easier version of half the sequence ready before you need it.

The studio

It is one calm, uncluttered room at 112/187, Thadi Market, Agarwal Farm, in Jhalana Chhod, Mansarovar — ground level, no stairs, with two-wheeler parking directly outside. Mats, blocks, straps, bolsters and blankets are provided. There is nothing to join, no membership card, and no equipment to be shown how to use.

Why she teaches

Because of a specific moment that keeps repeating: a student who was told her knees were simply going to be like that from now on, sitting cross-legged again without bracing herself first. Or a woman in her second trimester saying she slept through the night for the first time in weeks. Those are ordinary results, and they are the whole point.

There is one more reason. When Ritika started, almost every well-known yoga name in Jaipur was a man. Plenty of women in this city want to ask about periods, pregnancy, PCOS or postnatal recovery without an awkward pause in the conversation, and had nowhere comfortable to ask. That is the gap the ladies-only batch exists to close.

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Ready to meet her? Book a free trial class, look through the batch timings, or see the fees before you decide anything.