Two weeks ago, I had the opportunity co-facilitate leadership labs for senior managers of a prominent company along with a brilliant team of facilitators from Potentia. These leadership labs are a confluence of process work, group activities, and contemplative conversations that can uncover deep insights unique to each participant helping them discover the North Star of their leadership.

Magic of Process Work

Over the years, I’ve found process work a fascinating way to peal the layers of our consciousness to engage meaningfully with some of the fundamental questions of human existence - Who am I? Where am I? Why am I here?

The participants came from diverse business verticals, met each other as strangers and left as friends and co-travellers who shared some of their deepest joys, sorrows, and dilemmas with each other.

The vulnerability, courage, and compassion that was co-created in the space left me feeling in awe of the power of human connection that comes with being present in the here and now. Neither trying to escape into the comfort or sorrows of the past, nor into fantasies of an imagined future. Just the practice of returning to the present moment dealing with the beautiful mess of the reality as it is experienced in the here and now.

Gifts of Resonant Learning

Here are a few amongst the many gifts I received during the course of this program:

• There is no one right. You can choose to be either right or heal.

• Honour what brought you thus far. All of it. The beautiful and the ugly.

• History need not repeat itself. Being present and presence can create new histories. What is it that you wish to seed and nurture today?

• Change begins in the here and now. There is no auspicious moment to wait for. Action creates movement. Act. Now!

Discovering Your North Star

In Indian mythology, Dhruva Nakshatra (Pole Star) is a metaphor for the journey of living a life with a deep awareness of one’s potential and purpose. One who does it also becomes a guiding light for others on the path.

Yoga sūtrās talks of the qualities of shraddha (unshakeable conviction), vīrya (courage), and īśvara praṇidhāna (surrender to the divine intelligence) as three essential qualities to walk the path. As a leader, these are essential qualities one needs to nurture to lead with agility and compassion in turbulent and uncertain times.

Leaving you with this inspiring poem (composed by William Ernest Henley) from the movie, Invictus, which features Nelson Mandela in his first term as the President of the post-Apartheid South Africa, inspring the national Rugby team to the Rugby World Cup win. You don’t want to look any further to find a role model who practiced the power to change and create new histories through compassion and sensitivity.

The Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the Pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance

My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

Looms but the Horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate:

I am the captain of my soul.

What is your inner compass in leading your life?

Do you know the North Star of your leadership?

I would love to hear from you in the comments or DM.

Have you ever wondered about the power of attention and its connection to your well-being? Here is a simple thought experiment before you read further. Sit comfortably and take a moment to bring your attention to any one sensation in your body for a few seconds. Resist the urge to move and just pay attention to this sensation and watch what happens next. Most likely you would have observed that the very process of paying attention to the sensation brought some change to the sensation. Perhaps it intensified, moved to a different part of the body, or evoked some other image or emotion in your mind.

What we pay attention to and how we pay attention to it to has a significant impact on our sense of well-being in life.

Science of Attention

The “observer effect" is a key concept in quantum physics. It means the very act of observing something can alter the very thing being observed. To put simply, the observer changes the observed. “Whatever we pay attention to is amplified," writes Amishi Jha, a professor of psychology at the University of Miami, in her 2021 book, Peak Mind. “What you focus on becomes most prominent in your present-moment reality: you see the corresponding emotions, you view the world through that lens," writes Jha.

Her team’s years-long research into how the human brain pays attention revealed that attention can also be fragile and deplete rapidly under certain circumstances. On the positive side, her team also made a critical discovery that our attention is trainable, i.e., we can train our attention system to fully experience and enjoy the moments we encounter in life to help navigate life’s challenges more effectively.

If attention and one’s sense of well-being are so inter-connected, what is the quality of attention in our daily living? Are we really paying to what matters? Apparently, this is not the case.

Rise of “Brain Rot"

Oxford University Press (OUP) had announced ‘brain rot’ as the word of the year for 2024 after its usage frequency surged by 230% in the preceding year. According to OUP, the term refers to the “supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially because of overconsumption of material (now particularly online content) considered to be trivial or unchallenging."

The concern around brain rot is, however, not new. Henry David Thoreau wrote in his book Walden, “Why level downward to our dullest perception always, and praise that as common sense?....While England endeavors to cure the potato-rot, will not any endeavor to cure the brain-rot, which prevails so much more widely and fatally?"

Over 170 years after its first recorded usage, brain rot has taken on a new significance as an expression of the concerns over what we are paying attention to in the digital age and its impact on our well-being. What is leading to this crisis of attention?

Health Impact of the New Attention Economy

“Modern office life and an increasingly common condition called attention deficit trait, are already turning steady executives into frenzied under achievers," writes Edward Hallowell, an American psychiatrist, in a Harvard Business Review article titled, Overloaded Circuits: Why Smart People Underperform.

The widespread use of social media has changed the way content is created and consumed in the digital age. The rise of bite-sized short-form content ranges from ‘breaking news’ headlines to TikTok videos or Instagram reels. And attention fragmentation due to constant exposure to such short-form, low-quality content has made focusing on long-form, complex or nuanced content challenging for most people.

Information overload from the barrage of short-form content creates mental fatigue and numbing, reducing one’s ability to process information meaningfully. In this sea of distraction around us, how often do we then pay attention that which really matters?

Mind Wandering & Well-Being

“People spend 46.9% of their waking hours thinking about something other than what they are doing in the moment," a 2010 research study published by Harvard psychologists Matthew A. Killingsworth and Daniel T. Gilbert found. The neuroscientists describe the brain regions involved in mind-wandering as the “default network", because one's mind is usually humming along, shutting down only when something demands conscious attention.

Killingsworth and Gilbert’s research estimated that only 4.6% of a person’s happiness in a given moment was attributable to the specific activity he or she was doing. The person’s mind-wandering status accounted for 10.8% of his or her happiness. Further, time-lag analyses conducted by them suggested that mind-wandering was generally the cause, and not the consequence, of their happiness. So, one’s ability to pay attention to the here and now moment has a direct bearing on one’s sense of happiness and well-being over and above productivity metrics.

Practices to Reclaim Your Attention

The state of mind wandering is captured in the Yogic texts as citta vṛtti or a ‘mind full of disturbances’. Mindless consumption patterns (food, news, etc.) strengthen one’s compulsive patterns of rāga (repetition) for what is pleasurable and dveṣa (aversion) for what is uncomfortable or painful. Rāga-Dveṣa gives rise to distortions of the mind leading to fragmenting of attention through mindless habits.

Yoga Sūtra delves deep into how a distracted mind (vyuttita citta) can be transformed into a focused, attentive mind (ekāgrata citta). The practices of pratyāhāra (looking inwards, introspection) and dhāraṇa (centering the mind on one point) helps one to return to a space of mindful attention and awareness of the present moment. Practices of āsana (postures) and prāṇāyāma (conscious regulated breathing) help bring restful awareness to body and breath and return to the present moment. They help one move beyond the compulsive pull to act out of conditioned responses to both external triggers and inner narratives.

“I’ve been working with a college student who has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Through the practices of āsana and prāṇāyāma, she has learned to direct her attention to her breath and body, which has helped her manage her emotions and stay present during challenging situations," says Shravanthi, a Dubai-based yoga therapist in the Kriṣṇamachārya tradition of yoga.

Prof. Jha recommends certain set of practices in Peak Mind that capture some aspects of these yogic practices. For instance, practices to strengthen concentrative focus through “attentional reps" where you direct your attention to a specific object and maintain it there for a period of time closely co-relate to the dhāraṇa practice in yoga. Antaraṇga yoga practices which involve reflecting upon one’s meaning-aking processes help build what Jha refers to as building of the meta-awareness of the mind, i.e, “a heightened awareness of the rising and passing away of the contents and processes of the consciousness, such as thinking, feeling, and perceiving."

In any moment or situation, here are three reflective questions that can help you shift your attention to what really matters. Ask yourself:

• Who am I being right now?

• How am I feeling in my body right now?

• In doing what I am doing, what am I really doing?

What is your relationship with your attention? What practices have helped you reclaim your attention? I’d love to hear from you.

P.S.: This article was originally published in the Mint Lounge on 2nd February 2025.

Modern workplaces and social systems reflect a deep-rooted misalignment with natural feminine cycles and energies. Perhaps, the most significant indicator of this is the global shift in the way time is perceived. Indigenous cultures around the world followed lunar calendar which honored natural rhythms. Lunar time is cyclical in nature and emphasizes the patterns of death and rebirth captured metaphorically in the phenomena of the waxing and waning moon.

Modern-day Gregorian calendar, first introduced by Pope Gregory XIII in October 1582, is a solar calendar. The solar calendar we have come to adopt emphasises linear time over cyclical patterns and standardises months into artificial lengths that do not correspond to natural cycles. The design and intent behind this view of time was primarily to cater to the industrial and commercial needs of that time rather than serve one’s biological rhythms.

Impact on Health

This fundamental shift has led to a loss of connection of daily routine with the rhythms of nature. Companies and governments follow systems of artificial division of time into business quarters and fiscal years rather than natural seasons. Our body responds differently to each season and the levels of energy available, sleep requirement, etc. varies with the seasons. Suppression of natural emotional cycles has a grave impact on mental health. Stress induced from the efforts to fit into artificial rhythms impacts digestive and reproductive health.

The impact of misaligned structures on health is felt more acutely by women. Often, their peak career-building years coincide with peak fertility years, and the biological rhythm of motherhood is seen as a “career setback”. Even the natural need for rest during menstruation is often seen as a weakness and women are expected to maintain high energy and engagement regardless of their physical and emotional state in corporate and social spaces. The recent debate and controversy in India around the necessity for a menstrual day leave in organizations bear testimony to this reality.

“The menstrual woman lives in a male-oriented society which influences her perception of the world and herself. In the industrialized western culture, which likes to think of itself as ‘enlightened’, the menstrual cycle is still rarely talked about except in medical terms. Menstruation is still viewed today as a biological disadvantage to women, making them emotional, unreasoning, and unreliable workers.”, Miranda Gray, author and mentor of a women’s cycle-based life-coaching course, wrote in her 1994 book Red Moon.

Getting Into Rhythm

While it may seem interminable, there is a quiet yet profound shift unfolding in the questioning of the current paradigms. Globally, there is a growing interest about the ancient wisdom of the divine feminine and its contemporary applications in daily life for healthy living.

A current illustration of this interest is the trend of cycle syncing that got popular last year among millenials and Gen Z. The practice encourages women to align their diet and life style with the menstrual cycle. The menstrual phase, for instance, is a time to do low-impact exercises like yoga or walking while the follicular phase when estrogen levels are rising is a time to go for high intensity exercises.

In Red Moon, Gray treats the whole of the cycle as the menstrual experience rather than the time of bleeding alone. And she sounds prescient when she says, “If women become aware that they are cyclic beings, then they begin to recognise that they are part of the greater rhythms of the universe and come closer to accepting their true nature and finding harmony in their lives.”

The Divine Feminine Archetypes

The use of myth and storytelling as a lens to understand the human condition is a very ancient practice in most societies. “Within the stories, a common device was the use of the archetype or representative character; these are the universal images which reflect certain truths to which people respond on an inner level. Through the identification of the image, the listener would undergo an inner realisation, whether consciously or subconsciously, and through that realisation could awaken and express the energies of the archetype”, writes Ms. Gray.

Red Moon draws from the ancient wisdom traditions to capture four feminine archetypes. The “Great Goddess” is the most common archetype that appear in many cultures representing the universal feminine force.

This image is often depicted as three separate goddesses, representing the life cycle of all women, viz., the Maiden, the Mother, and the Crone or old woman.

The Maiden was generally portrayed as energising and dynamic, reflecting the light of the waxing moon, and was associated with the colour White.

The Bright Mother was portrayed as nurturing and fertile, reflecting the radiating light of the full moon, and was associated with the colour Red.

The Crone was portrayed as the holder of wisdom, the gateway to death and the path to the powers of the inner world. She reflected the increasing darkness of the waning moon which leads to the hidden aspect of the dark moon and was associated with the colours blue or black.

Today, many women facilitators curate healing spaces for those who seek to explore an alternate idea of power and a way of living that is anchored in these feminine archetypes.

“Working with an archetype is universal. Women can easily connect to them. In these spaces, we hold the wounded and shadow aspects of the archetype while embodying it. Even while doing it women will have a sense of how the pure archetype will look like. That will become an inspiration.”, says Kolkata-based Sukhvinder Sircar. A senior facilitator with Indian Society for Applied Behavioural Sciences (ISABS), Sircar hosts the Joyous Woman community, which offers programs that teach men and women to get in touch with their feminine energies for a balanced life.

“Working with the feminine archetypes and the Menstrual Mandala have brought me in tune with my body's natural rhythm and cycles, creating much ease in my being. It has enabled me to reclaim my power from places where I had lost or given it away in.”, says Akanksha Thakore, a well-being facilitator based in Mumbai and a member of the Joyous Woman community.

The Heroine’s Journey

Maureen Murdock, a family therapist and writer based in California, designed the “Heroine’s Journey” framework drawing inspiration from Joseph Campbell’s model of the heroic quest. The heroine’s journey begins with “separation from the feminine” and ends with “integration of masculine and feminine”. This framework offers a map of the feminine healing process.

“Heroine’s Journey is both an inward and outward journey for me. Women often carry a lot of shame about their femininity and sexuality. Reconnecting, reclaiming, and rewriting your sexual narrative is a big part of the Heroine’s Journey.”, says Sylwia Savitā, a practitioner of Sensual Somatic Healing based out of Bali.

“When you sit in a women’s circle with full presence and is fully receiving, then you can relate to a story from another and resonance. It instils a sense of belonging for each person in the circle.”, adds Sylwia who offers Heroine’s Journey and women’s circles as part of her work.

A Yogic View

In the Sānkhya Darśana, prakṛti represents the active, creative, and transformative feminine principle, and puruṣa represents masculine, passive observer principle.

Devi as the feminine principle is represented in diverse forms in the Indic tradition. “Annapūrṇeshwari Devi represents experience of contentment that one attains through self-nourishment and connects to the idea of santuṣti in the Yoga Sūtrās. Lakshmi Devi represents the energy of abundance which comes from being in alignment with the flow of the Universe. This inner sense of abundance comes with the practice of aparigraha or non-possessiveness in Yoga. Saraswati Devi depicted in white represents the presence of a still and clear mind or ekāgrata citta as mentioned in Yoga.”, says Rama Koneru, a yoga teacher in the Sri T Krishnamacharya tradition based out of Boston.

“Dasha Mahāvidyās in the Indian tāntric tradition invite us to integrate the feminine energies that are a more primal and natural force of life. Being in flow with our primal energies will help us be more in tune with our purpose.”, says Sylwia who is also a student of Vedanta and archetypes in Shamanism.

Simple Practices To Get Started

Organisations may choose to explore experimenting with alternate ways of looking at wealth creation, goal setting, and work schedules that is more in tune with the natural rhythms.

Designing rituals that hold meaning to you in your daily routine is a good start. “On waking up, I have a ritual to express gratitude to the Bhūmī Devi (Earth). Setting up of a personal altar has helped me connect to my inner child and let it play.”

Investing time to understand the subtler aspects of the festivals is also a beautiful way to rediscover meaning and connection with self and the community.

In a restless and relentlessly busy world, deciding to consciously take rest is itself a creatively rebellious act. Regularly take conscious rest for your body and mind.

Note: This is an expanded version of the article I originally wrote for Mint Lounge published on 7th Jan 2025. You can read it here.

P.S.: If you are a woman leader or professional interested in exploring the Heroine’s Journey at a deeper, personal level, feel free to reach out to me at namaste@hariprasadvarma.com or on WhatsApp at +91-9966900337 for details on the upcoming group coaching and retreats on this theme.

How do you relate to your emotions? Here is a simple test to help determine that. As you read the question I next have for you, make a mental note of where your focus and awareness are shifting. The question is: How are you feeling right now?

Take a pause. Pay attention to yourself and write down the 3 words that came to your mind in response to the question. If the words you jotted down weren’t the typical ‘okay’, ‘better’, ‘think’, ‘tired’, or ‘hungry’, you are among the few who are able to identify their feelings without intellectualising it. You’ll be surprised to know how many people end up ‘thinking’ and articulating their thoughts even when invited to share how they are ‘feeling’.

“Emotions are energy in motion. They need to move through us, be felt fully and expressed. Otherwise, they get stored in different parts of our body, and repressed emotions, over time, affect not just our health but also our relationships, work, and the ability to enjoy and live life fully,” says Akanksha Thakore, a mental well-being professional and founder of Ripple Effect in Mumbai. “Unfortunately, as a society we are neither taught emotional intelligence nor encouraged to practice it,” Thakore says.

Emotional intelligence is broadly defined as a person’s ability to recognize and contextualise their emotions and the emotions of others. It is, therefore, both intrapersonal intelligence and interpersonal intelligence. While our rational intelligence focuses on facts and logical reasoning, emotional intelligence relates to how we apply those facts and reasoning. The cornerstones of emotional intelligence are self-awareness, self-management, and social awareness.

Understanding Self-awareness, Self-management, Social awareness
American organisational psychologist Tasha Eurich found in her research that 95 percent of people think they are self-aware, but only 10-15 percent actually are. She found that working with team members who are not self-aware can cut a team’s success in half leading to high stress and low motivation levels. Self-awareness needs to be complemented with self-management, which can be described as a conscious cultivation of the ability to respond to emotions that arise in us in different contexts.

In the absence of this response capability, one could end up reacting to situations in a manner that would lead to dysfunctions in relationships and organisational spaces. Leaders who lack this capacity often show up as reactionary to their peers and associates at the workplace. 

Social awareness or contextual intelligence is the ability to tune into and understand the emotions of other people around you and the organisational dynamics. What is described as an experience of empathy by people is often a consequence of practising social awareness.  This ability allows a person to make a choice by being aware of both how they feel within themselves, as well as a sense of the other person’s emotional location. This is especially critical for leaders to help them create a resonance with everyone they engage with.

Feel the ‘Nava Rasas’  
I was introduced to the power of the emotional landscapes within me through a set of programmes designed by my mentor Raghu Ananthanarayanan, a behavioural scientist and co-founder of Ritambhara Ashram in Kotagiri, Tamil Nadu. The programmes enabled me to discover the deeper connection between emotions, healing and well-being within myself. It also introduced me to practices from yoga and Nātya śāstra, which transformed the way I looked at emotional intelligence and well-being.

Over the years, I’ve observed both in therapeutic as well as coaching engagements that many ailments in people often begin as a result of repression of their natural feelings. Social conditioning during our growing up years plays an important part in this. Children often introject certain social norms. This leads to them giving (an unconscious) permission to themselves to experience certain emotions while blocking certain others. Some of the most common ways in which this kind of repression happens is when elders in the family or authority figures in educational institutions make statements such as “Boys don’t cry”, “Girls don’t laugh out loud” or “To show anger is to be a bad person”.

Both yoga and Nātya śāstra encourage one to celebrate and feel all the rasas or emotions. In Indian aesthetics, nava rasas or nine emotions are proffered as a lens through which to look at the world of feelings and emotions. According to Nātya śāstra, the eight primary emotions have their base in the ninth, śāntam. The nava rasas are vīra (courage), śrngāra (love), raudra (wrath), bībhatsa (disgust), hāsya (mirth or humour), kārunya (compassion), adbhuta (wonder), bhayānaka (fear), and śāntam (tranquility). 

An alignment between one’s inner experience with the outer expression is necessary to experience greater response capability and choicefulness in action. Renowned yoga achārya T. Krishnamacharya said, “A healthy individual is one who is able to feel all the rasās as it arises in them and return to a state of śāntam after the emotional experience.”

Access Emotions through Arts  
Performing arts like music, arts and theatre can help us access our emotions at a deeper and subtler level. During the covid-19 lockdown years in 2020-21, I designed an inner work programme with musicians Shruti Bode and Aarti Sivakumar, where we explored different rāgās of Indian classical music and the emotions they evoked. The programme enabled participants to work with the patterns of their emotional expressions and experiences and discover new possibilities. 

“I found myself going through a plethora of emotions ranging from ecstasy to deep melancholy. I realised how freeing it is when you explore the patterns in life from a space of curiosity, rather than fear,” said a participant who did not wish to be named. But no one could have put it better than eight-year-old Zara who’d tagged along with her mother for the retreat. “When you have too many big feelings, your emotional brain takes over. It does not function like our ordinary brain. If you feel something, the feeling goes through your emotional brain and comes out as action,” said Zara, sounding wise beyond her years.

Emotional Intelligence at Work
Research shows that in a corporate setting, every unaddressed conflict can waste about eight hours of company time, every day, in gossip and other unproductive activities that lower employee morale and resources for the firm.

“Getting in touch with the sensations of your body, labelling your feelings, creating a safe space for yourself to vent the emotions, and validating and accepting what you are feeling before thinking how to deal with them, are some simple practices anyone can adopt in their daily routine to nurture emotional intelligence,” says Thakore. In a globalised world where most of us are exposed to culturally diverse contexts, nurturing emotional intelligence is critical in building trust and developing deeply nourishing human connections.

Originally published in the Live Mint Lounge on 2 January 2024.

Infosys chairperson N.R. Narayana Murthy’s recent comment, “India’s work productivity is one of the lowest in the world. My request is that our youngsters must say, “This is my country, I want to work 70 hours a week,” has predictably kicked up a social media storm raising questions on the health and well-being of employees. It makes one ponder over whether our idea of growth and prosperity is really in service of an individual’s well-being?

The Indeed Work Wellbeing in India 2023 Report by Forrester Research found that 71% of respondents reported low to moderate well-being at work. A 2022 McKinsey research on workplace mental health in Asia found alarming levels of workplace stress and mental health issues among Indian employees. While the figures and findings aren’t congratulatory by any means, there are companies who are taking proactive actions to enhance employee well-being. These include initiatives such as adding mental wellness to the health insurance plan, sponsoring sessions with counsellors and psychotherapists, spacing meetings with adequate breaks and nurturing a culture of open conversations. 

Milind Katti, co-founder of Pune-based DemandFarm, emphasises that people’s well-being is a pre-condition for peak performance at work. “Feeling secure about the job and feeling inspired about the work that one does are important factors in an employee’s sense of well-being. Only those who are feeling well enough themselves will be able to support and help others in their growth at work,” Katti notes. This is probably the reasoning behind his company’s refreshingly inclusive ‘shubh - lābh’ experiment.

He elaborates: “We asked ourselves if it was possible to have a different model of corporate governance that was not based on pure shareholder profit maximisation?” “Can a community of people come together to create something, and in doing so create shubh (wellness) for all stakeholders including the customers, vendors, and environment, while also creating lābh (profits)?”

Hari Krishnan, managing director & head, Publicis Content in Gurgaon, also vouches for the health of his team. Publicis Groupe globally has implemented Marcel, a custom-made AI platform, which among other features, has a suite of initiatives catering towards employee well-being. “PubFit is a holistic health and wellness program that we designed that is focused on maintaining the harmony of body, mind and spirit and boost overall well-being,” shares Krishnan.

Alka Krishnan, a Gurgaon-based behavioural skills trainer and yoga therapist, also confirms the emergence of positive trends in the Indian corporate world. “Youngsters do not hesitate to resign these days if their health is not prioritised by the company. So, I see many corporates recognising and promoting health and well-being initiatives today, as they are seeing the direct impact between effectiveness, efficiency, and well-being,” she says. 

In DemandFarm, a company with a significant number of employees working remotely, Katti shares that wellness programmes were designed keeping that aspect in mind. “We recognised early on that many of them faced the challenge of feeling lonely at work. As an organisation, we took steps to address this issue by empanelling an ‘Organisation Development Consultant’ whom they could reach out to at any point in time. We also launched an in-house leadership development programme to equip all our functional heads with coaching competencies so that they could train their team members,” he adds.

Leading by example
Most happy employees interviewed by Forrester Research said that they were motivated by managers who displayed empathetic leadership skills and led their teams by example. Krishnan makes balancing professional success and personal life look easy but that has come after a few lessons learnt the hard way. “Working relentlessly in my 20s with no time boundaries had an impact on my body. When I realised this, I made changes to my lifestyle. I reduced my commute to work and started running regularly. Today I dedicate 45 minutes daily for cardio and strength training, and to practice yoga,” says Krishnan about how he prioritises health amidst his busy schedule. 

“I believe prioritising wellness must begin at the top. When I was unwell a few years ago, I realised how adversely it impacted everyone else in the organisation. That is when I started my journey of inner work. Now caring for wellness has become part of the DNA of our company,” says Katti. Rhea D’Souza,  an artist & CEO of Kabila Consulting, Mumbai is convinced that when it comes to designing corporate well-being solutions, a holistic intervention that addresses issues of the body, heart and mind are most effective as different people are differently motivated. “Integrating an intervention as an ongoing part of the system than deploying it as a one-off is critical,” she says.

A Yogic perspective
Yogic traditions look at the individual as a holistic entity through the lens of the pancamaya kośa model that consists of annamaya (physical and physiological), prānamaya (energetic), manomaya (emotional), vijñānamaya (knowledge), and ānandamaya (joy) kośās or layers.

“Long sitting hours tighten our hip joints and yet, people keep pushing themselves for long hours leading to high stress. This in turn has a huge impact on one’s quality of breath,” observes Apoorva Jalan, a yoga therapist and coach, who emphasises the importance of approaching well-being through the lens of pancamaya kośa. “Working with your breath can calm the nervous system. When your nervous system is calm, your body is relaxed and the mind automatically has a greater ability to ‘respond’ than ‘react’ to external stimuli,” she explains.

“During the covid-19 lockdown, some people started cooking, others became artists, and some started working out seriously. Having experienced a lot more of themselves, most people don’t want to limit themselves to leading uni-dimensional lives that are only centred on work. It is up to organisations now to create an environment where avenues for self-expression are available for employees,” observes D’Souza before mooting the idea for a ‘Zero Distance’ initiative in companies. “Companies can create space where employees can engage with local artists and even explore their own artistic interests through a curated set of experiences,” she explains. 

Krishnan attests to the power of art in promoting well-being. He has actively pursued his artistic leanings through a variety of unique art projects over the years. According to Jalan, investing in simple body and breath practices even for 10 minutes a day and spending time outdoors away from screen time are small but significant steps towards better well-being. “A deeper sense of faith and learning to take things lightly can help one to prioritise things that bring joy to them in life,” she concludes.

Earlier this week, Facebook reminded me that it has been over six years since I started my journey of exploring the world of archetypes in Mahabharata for myself and bringing it into my coaching practice. This nostalgic picture that popped up on my timeline brought back memories of the sense of excitement that I had when I was part of this brilliant cohort organised by the TAO Leadership Academy in 2017.

2017 was a threshold year for me in many ways. At that point, I was managing learning and teaching yoga for two years since 2015 along with my work at Accenture and later Amazon. I was also designing and leading online digital marketing training for Digital Vidya team on weekends. I began the new year by quitting my role at Amazon India and founding Yōgaśāla. I had just graduated from the two-year Yoga Acharya program by YogaVahini Foundation under the guidance of Smt. Saraswathi Vasudevan and other senior mentors.

I began my journey into the world of Mahabharata archetypes with the third edition of Mahabharata Immersion at Ritambhara Ashram in Kotagiri. The immersion was designed and anchored by Raghu Ananthanarayanan, along with Sashikala Ananth and Anuradha Ramesh.

When I joined the immersion, I was holding doubts and fears about my decision to leave the money and fame of the corporate world to craft a new path with a heart, following my intuition. I was still getting offers from many companies to get back to the trodden path. As I learned to look at myself and more importantly the different voices and fears within me, I felt something shift in me. The lens of Mahabharata archetypes gave me a language to articulate who am I, where am I, and why I am here. It helped me ask myself the all-important Arjuna question, “In Doing What I Am Doing, What Am I Really Doing?”

This is what inspired me to take the steps to be part of the coaching program offered by TAO Leadership Academy to get trained in working with the lens of Mahabharata Archetypes for myself and others in a coaching context.

It has been extremely insightful for me to work with the ‘Pandava Mandala’ or the inter-play of the heroic archetypes in Mahabharata within me over the past six years. I could see that while I was making my transition from being an employee to a solopreneur in 2017, my aspiration to significantly nurture my Bheema propensity, i.e, to invest more energy in anchoring my actions in my own passion. I could also see that coming from a strong streak of mentoring and counseling others in various capacities, I was feeling a need to significantly lower my entrenchment in the Nakula propensity, i.e, as I was experiencing the world as largely self-centred and I was feeling a need to be more like others in my world in this aspect. This is captured in the SC (who I am today), SI (who I wish to be), and OP (how I see others are) scores shared below when I took the test in 2017.

A year ago, I re-took the Pandava Mandala test and found how much my journey has transformed me in these years. My Bheema propensity score has significantly increased during this time. This is very relatable to me considering the volume of projects I have worked on in this span of time. I established Yōgaśāla as a space for personalised yoga teaching, designed some unique flagship programs such as Rāga Yoga, Pursuit in Happiness and Leela, and also curated over 15 retreats across India and abroad. From being a participant, I moved on to be a co-facilitator in the Mahābhārata Immersion Lab, Mahābhārata Exploration Online, and Rāmāyaṇa Exploration Online programs at Ritambhara. I also found a lot of joy and excitement in initiating, anchoring, and leading multiple projects across Yoga, Itihāsa – Purāṇa, and Decolonisation verticals at Ritambhara with my mentors, friends and peers.

This period also involved a lot of learning, unlearning, and re-learning for myself in different fields as reflected in my Sahadeva score and the aspiration I hold viz-a-viz this propensity. I completed my international certification in yoga therapy, got certified as a LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® and interactive theatre facilitator, completed my training in Transformational Coaching (ICF/EMCC) with Transcend International and Existential Universe Mapper (EUM) with Reflexive Lens Consulting, and started my internship journey in process work with SUMEDHAS ACADEMY FOR HUMAN CONTEXT.

This period also saw me ask more fundamental questions about myself, my path, the kind of work I wish to invest in, and the kind of communities I wish to nurture in the long term. I took the critical decision to pivot my work into the leadership and organisational development space and registered Zensei to consolidate and take forward my passion for working with leaders and reimagine the future of work and career for professionals and teams.

Today, as I look back at some of the drawings from six years back, I am able to sense how some of the seeds of transformation of my inner voices have started unfolding and blossoming in different life spaces. I’m grateful to all the mentors, co-travellers, and friends I have met on this journey and to the many more that I am yet to meet on this path.

P.S: If you are new to this lens/framework, and are curious to explore your own leadership propensities through the lens of Mahabharata archetypes, feel free to reach out to me to set up a call to know more about how we use it in a coaching engagement.