Here are some labels that capture my many selves: resonant healing practitioner, urban permaculture gardener and consultant, trained scientist (a biologist with a PhD) who chose to exit the halls of Academe — I’m still integrating my schooled-scientist and unschooled-indigenous selves. I grow more than 100 species of herbs, shrubs and native trees in our ground and terrace garden. I’ve been on a decolonizing journey for many years, which is centred around studying and integrating different world-views and philosophies, Western science and indigenous Indian science systems like Ayurveda, our relationship to food, to the panchabhootas [five elements that all life is woven out of] and to Bhooma-devi [Earth mother]. I’ve been considering deeply, and attempting to embody the stances and ways of living that might season our capacities to stay with the trouble of the Anthropocene, and to live with integrity in these times of climate collapse. I engage in communal/neighbourhood tree planting activities, support local organic farmer networks, sow and save native seeds, and conduct native tree walks. I meditate. I read, listen to music, sing, and dance to sounds and words in English, Hindi and Tamil. I’ve been a Yoga practitioner of the Krishnamacharya school since I was a teenager. I identify as a HSP (highly sensitive person). While I’m rooted deeply in our home and garden in Chennai, India, I’ve lived abroad, both in the USA, France and Oman, and in different parts of India as well. All of these multiple layers of experience gives me a certain richness of perspective, and multiple wells of lived resonance that enable me to accompany those with diverse and/or marginalized identities and lived experiences.
Currently, I work as a member of Sarah’s team, and also in various roles with TEN (The Emergence Network) and the We Will Dance with Mountains course team — being a part of the team in organisations that support the rewilding of our inner and outer selves, and are planting seeds of emotional resonance, complexity, nuance, and the resilience that comes with post-traumatic growth are truly enriching for me. It’s what I most love to do for clients I accompany as well — to accompany their shadow emotions [unmetabolised grief, alarmed aloneness, anger, disgust, pettiness, resentment, hatred etc., both personal and systemic] and their disavowed selves, through both time travel and sacred vow releases, so we can be in service to the integrated, emergent self, in this moment of planetary awakening and poly-crises!
“I have a very deep sense of gratitude for your steady and grounded accompaniment. It’s been a very challenging year and working with you has made a huge difference to my well-being, while navigating intense mental health challenges in my family system and my own shifting identity around finding my place in the world. There’s a huge sense of feeling seen, and a huge relief that comes from that: to be witnessed in the fullness of my experience. What I most treasure though is your capacity for nuance in language — really helping me to tune into the subtlety of what’s true in my body and being, to find the words that I could not find myself and to hold that with warmth, so I can settle into deeper truths. That feels like something very special and remarkable, and I wish a lot of people can benefit from that — to be seen and held in resonance by you!” — KG
