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Hearth Summit Bangalore 2025

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Exploring (Inter) Connection in India

After an incredible first edition, Hearth Summit Bangalore returns to continue sparking wellbeing and positive change in India! Get ready for another transformative experience where an exploration of wellbeing at every level — individual, organizational, societal, and ecological — will intersect, all in pursuit of creating a culture of wellbeing within India’s social change sector.

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AT THE HEART OF IT – EPISODE 5

ROHINI NILEKANI AND MELINDA FRENCH GATES
Funding Hope and Wellbeing

In this insightful conversation, Rohini Nilekani, Chairperson of Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies, engages in a heartfelt conversation with Melinda French Gates, Founder of Pivotal Ventures, about the power of wellbeing to inspire welldoing. As part of The Wellbeing Project’s new series, “Cultivating Hope”, Rohini and Melinda discuss the critical role of philanthropy in supporting the wellbeing of social changemakers.

Building on Rohini’s keynote address at the first regional Hearth Summit in India, they highlight how funding wellbeing initiatives can lead to sustainable impact in the social sector. By sharing their own personal wellbeing practices, they offer invaluable insights into the importance of nurturing both inner and outer work. Let’s get to the heart of it.

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This transcript has been edited for clarity

Welcome to At The Heart Of It, a podcast where we explore issues at the heart of our world’s biggest challenges and their solutions. We’re on a journey inward going into ourselves, reflecting on who we are, listening to humanity’s collective story. Our guides are the visionary leaders, activists, scholars, and practitioners who are changing the world and whose own inner journeys of wellbeing inspire their welldoing.

You may know that at The Wellbeing Project, we believe wellbeing inspires welldoing. This means that when social changeamkers’ wellbeing is cared for, their power to make the world a better place is even stronger. But sometimes changemakers have limited access to wellbeing resources, and this funding gap is holding back progress both now and for future generations.

To make a difference, philanthropy and funding organizations can play a key role in making wellbeing more accessible to the people who need it now more than ever. For today’s episode, we bring you a profound conversation from our new video series, Cultivating Hope, where leading philanthropists share how funding wellbeing is a key way to cultivate hope and sustainable impact in the social change sector.

Our special guest host is Rohini Nilekani, Chairperson of Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies, who sits down with her friend and fellow philanthropist, Melinda French Gates, founder of Pivotal Ventures, for an intimate conversation on their own wellbeing journeys, why it’s important to fund changemakers’ wellbeing, and the role philanthropy plays in driving transformative positive progress.

Let’s get to the heart of it. 

Rohini Nilekani (RN): Hi, Melinda. It’s so good to see you.

Melinda French Gates (MFG): Hi, Rohini. I’m so glad we could do this.

RN: Yeah, I’m so glad The Wellbeing Project asked us to be in this, what I think is an important conversation that should ring around the world. And with you there, I hope that will happen. 

MFG: Okay, good. 

RN: You know, I’m going to kick it off, Melinda. We’re going to talk a little more about the wellbeing of the social sector, which is what The Wellbeing Project is mostly involved with. But I want to ask you about your own journey, and I’m happy to share mine later. But how do you see the journey of your own wellbeing? I mean, it keeps changing across our lives, but anything you’d like to share about what you do, or how important you think it is and any words to share with us? 

MFG: Yeah, I think wellbeing is fundamental in terms of me doing the work that I try and do in the world. And for me, it’s when I’m sort of at my best, I think when I can align my heart, my spirit and my mind. And for me, I’ve had to develop over the last, I would say 25 years, a kind of a set of practices that helped me do that. I’d love to hear some of yours, but I’ll tell you a few of mine, which is I try in the morning, every morning to do just a little bit of yoga and then I sit and I either read something spiritual and journal or meditate on that, or I just meditate. Every day I try to get some exercise. The realistic part of that is probably five days a week. It’s harder when I’m traveling and on the road. Then kind of across the course of the month or the year, I both have a group of friends, female friends, that I try to walk with every Monday morning when we’re in town. And then I’m in two different non-denominational spiritual groups. One is about eight women. It’s been going on for over 20 years. One is started right before COVID and it’s six women. And again, we do readings and then we talk about what is alive for us or what we’re working on in terms of our spirit. So those are some of my practices. I’m curious, what are some of yours? 

RN: Yeah, you are very disciplined, Melinda. I know that about you and you work really hard at things. So, yes, wellbeing. Obviously it’s critical. I find that my needs and practices have changed over the decades. And now that I’m in my 60s, I feel like I need something different. So my first way of being well is to be with my grandson, but everybody should be so lucky to have a grandchild next to them. But apart from that, as soon as I can, I get out into nature. So, like you, when I wake up, I do some breathing exercises or some prayer or something like that to settle me before I get out of bed. But then my first thought is to go out on the balcony and listen to the birds because I’m a big birder. So the first thing I want to know is there some other bird calling? Who’s calling? Are my friends here out there in the sky on the trees? So that really helps to center me a lot. I love music. I like yoga like you. We like walking. We try to do exercise as much as we can. And we try to be disciplined at any rate. But I think of all the things I like what you said about having a circle of friends. I think women perhaps find it easier to have that circle of friends to whom you can make emotional contact and tell them what you’re feeling and hear from them too. But that’s been hugely important. And I think having them on a WhatsApp group has also helped, especially since the pandemic. So yeah, working on wellbeing seems to be critical. 

MFG: You know, there’s a great teacher who says that unless the inner work is large, the outer work can’t be large, right? If the inner work is small, the outer work stays small too. 

RN: I’m sure you’re familiar with this, but I had some statistics. The Wellbeing Project has been doing a lot of surveys among changemakers, 300 plus in 55 countries. And 75 percent of them said, yes, wellbeing was important, but only 25 percent felt able to do something about it. And that burnout, stress, anxiety, trauma seems to be part of the journey of changemakers. Because you and I are at least one degree or two degrees removed. People on the front lines dealing in war-like situations, in extreme poverty, disease. We are hearing that their substance abuse, anxiety, mental health issues are much higher than in any other sector. So which is why I think we need to think together. How are all of us who are in the donor community, in the social sector community, able to make a difference? How do you think, Melinda, we could work together, all of us, to do a little more to bring this issue more into the mainstream? It is more in the mainstream than it used to be, but any of your thoughts as to how we can highlight it more? So that even how philanthropy is done can change a little to support the social sector better. Do you think philanthropy is ready or we need to nudge it a bit? Or when will we, do you think we are more ready post-COVID?  

MFG: What you’re doing here with The Wellbeing Project is bringing it to light, and then yes, absolutely, philanthropy can keep some space to say, okay, we know this takes a little bit more overhead, but then what we see is that, like, a social worker will stay in their job longer, and there’s, there’s a huge benefit to that longevity. We can use our voice in the philanthropy sector, I think, to bring wellbeing up and to highlight it. And we’re hearing it discussed more and more around. The world at what I am seeing, particularly after COVID, is that the changemakers who were out there trying to help in the caregiving space or the teachers on the front lines or the nurses or the community health workers, they are just overwhelmed. I mean, they’ve helped to deal with that in their own family lives, let’s say COVID, and they’ve seen a lot of death in the community or near death, and they see traumatized families. So what they are experiencing is just enormous and it’s cumulative over time, right? So in one of the projects that I’ve worked on here at Pivotal Ventures, one of the things we made sure to do is one of the partners that we’re working with called the Highland Project. They’re trying to help women of color create financial intergenerational wealth But what we’ve realized with that partner and what they realize is they first had to take care of the wellbeing of their own staff. And so their own staff had to learn practices to take care of their own wellbeing, their own mental health, and their own financial wellbeing, so that then they could be out in the community, helping people on the ground have this intergenerational wealth. But you’re now having employers also say, wait a minute, if my employees aren’t well, or let’s say they’re dealing with an ageing parent who’s dying at home, they just can’t show up at work the same way. So how do we give them more wellbeing days or personal days off? And so I do think having this conversation, you know, helps us all recognize in society literally what we’re going through.

RN: Yeah, I’m so glad you mentioned the corporate sector as well, because definitely employee wellbeing and mental health are important key concerns that have come up, especially after covid. But do you think I can see how the corporate sector? Yes, they want to employ productivity. They obviously want their employees to be their fittest possible, happiest possible selves. Do you think philanthropy is ready? And how do we help make it more ready to say, yes, we talk about overheads or we talk about unrestricted funding, how can we keep a portion of that so that every organization we all support has a little space to create more wellbeing practices or whatever it needs? Maybe develop some processes, all of which take some resources so that they are also at their best to do what they want to do, which is help make social change. 

MFG: I will be honest. I don’t see the philanthropy sector doing it at large yet but the conversation has started. There are more conferences about wellbeing. I mean, how are you seeing it play out in India?  

RN: I think we are new at this. Even putting it on the table that it is such, we know that our frontline workers are under extreme stress, whether they’re in the social sector or government, medical workers, health workers, the ASHA workers, et cetera, it’s an extremely stressful situation. And I think sometimes while government has some good practices, I think it’s up to the philanthropy sector in India to now help start to develop some more tools to help those who have to face this. You know, come head-to-head with human distress every day and yet be detached enough to continue working. So I think there’s a lot of space from my philanthropy side, Melinda. One thing is I’ve begun very recently a new portfolio on mental health. I’ve put in about 13 million so far to two big national institutions that are working on five very prevalent mental health issues like schizophrenia, addiction, bipolar, etc. So, there’s long-term research going on there, which is very critical so that we can develop new, I hope, innovative therapies, or I don’t know what’s in store with that. But we’re also doing other grants in the sector which is important because it’s a huge issue in India. We’re also trying to understand what donor practices, just like you said, what are the best practices that help support our partner organizations to be at their most effective self. So we try at least to lead with trust and we try to give organizations space to change their practices or change based on what’s happening on the ground so that they’re not really locked into very hard defined ways of doing things. And we try to do some deep listening whenever we can. So I’m sure it’s the same with you. And I think that allows organizations a little more freedom and flexibility and takes the stress off of them. I must say sometimes donors can cause a lot of stress to partner organizations. So if donors were to say that we won’t be a source of stress at any rate, maybe it gives more space for peopl, especially leaders. You know, Melinda, I’ll keep this brief. We did a recent portfolio meet. And the leaders of these organizations were talking about how difficult it has become for them as leaders to constantly lead with confidence and without themselves scrambling under the increasingly complex issues, especially with climate and other things that we are facing now, climate anxiety is huge. I found among young people and young leaders. Any thoughts on that? 

MFG: Well, I would say the other thing that you haven’t mentioned just as a general thing that we can do as philanthropists. One of the things I’ve worked on with Pivotal Ventures is about six years ago, I decided I really wanted to look more at the adolescent mental health space because the numbers were not good in the United States. And one of the things we realized is that there was not a good body of knowledge about what was truly going on with adolescents and particularly around their digital usage, right? Because they get all these messages about climate change, about institutions not working for them, and they get all these messages from their friends that aren’t good. And so one of the things that we’ve done is added to the body of knowledge by creating a Center for Digital Thriving at Harvard, and what they’re doing is really surveying and talking to adolescents about where is social media helpful to you and where is it hurtful? We’ve had some pretty surprising results. For instance, adolescents are saying that it’s really hard for them because at night, if one of their friends, let’s say, is having suicidal ideation or feels like they’re on the brink, they feel like they need to stay awake and support them. So one of the things we’ve learned is then how do we give parents tools to support their own adolescents? And everybody can use that in the field, right? Whether you’re a philanthropist, whether you’re a changemaker on the front lines, you can say, I’m also supporting my adolescent son or daughter. Here’s what I know about helping them survive or thrive, actually digitally. So we’re doing that. That’s one space we work in. And another you can work in, which we’re doing again with Pivotal Ventures is really looking at the caregiving that’s going on. It’s going on in every country. Women carry the disparate burden of that, but really highlighting that issue and bringing the research forward to show. What is the double-edged sword that women face supporting elderly parents and the young and again, getting that in front of employers and helping employers realize how to connect employees to the right insurance policies and the right sort of days off. So that’s another thing philanthropy can do is, which is we can highlight issues and then create bodies of knowledge of research and then connect various industries.  

RN: Absolutely. So I hope it’s there on the Pivotal Ventures website, and I’m sure you’re putting out public documents that others can use for sure. And we shall continue. We will continue to do the same. As you know, Melinda for seven or eight years, our philanthropy has been working with young men and boys because we find that I mean, of course, you what you’re talking about women’s economic empowerment, their safety, the health is absolutely critical. And we are decades away from getting to any place that we are comfortable. But alongside, a lot is happening with young males around the world. Many of them are at extreme risk. There is enough data to show that whether it’s sexual abuse, whether it’s exposure to violence, young males sometimes have worse issues. When it comes to enrollment, and we’re finding this in many countries, that actually today, there are more girls enrolled in educational institutions than boys. So where does that leave boys in the future and young males? So I think we are working, and it creates a lot of anxiety especially in adolescent boys. And just today we were listening to stories about how ymales are getting confused. They don’t know whether to be happy that women are moving forward or whether to feel resentful and victimized by the advancement of women. Because when you get into that mental model of scarcity, then you’re not able to be generous about other groups moving forward. So I think some of these things, we all can share best practices and how do we relieve some of these anxieties and stresses, especially with young people around the world. And The Wellbeing Project actually does have a lot of work on this. Their annual summit is, I mean, it’s not annual, it’s every two years, but that brings together changemakers from around the world who talk about what they did to help not only their wellbeing, but the wellbeing of the constituencies they try to represent. And we really need much more of that sharing around the globe.  

MFG: Just add to what you said about men and boys. You’re the one that really affected me quite some time ago, it was maybe seven or eight years ago. You and I first had this conversation and I really just wasn’t looking at the issue at the time. And I realized I needed to broaden my lens because you’re exactly right. I mean,we don’t have great generative models, I think for talking to boys in society about, it’s not a pie that gets sliced, you know, half to the women, half to the men. It’s that we expand the pie. We expand the pie economically. We expand the pie of being able to live the life that you want to live, right? But if you end up with a segment of society that feels like they’re losing because women are gaining, that fear and that anxiety plays out in society and will often actually then play out in violence towards women.

RN: Right. 

MFG: And so instead so men and boys having these messages of here’s a great way, like here are three dozen archetypes of men that you can look up at and they are very generative leaders They support their daughters and their wives and their aunties. And, and they’re a great CEO or they’re a great founder of a company, but they need to see archetypes of who they can be in society, just like women and girls need to look up and see archetypes of great women and in society. Because I always say we have to be well to do well. So you have to feel good in terms of your wellbeing, but you also can’t be what you can’t see. And so I think we need to have a new conversation for men and boys about who they can be in society in an ever-expanding world, not a contracting world. 

RN: Exactly right. How can they be the best human selves without being weighed down by expectations from society and without having to take out their frustrations on the women around them, which has been unfortunately very sanctioned and normalized over the years. But things are changing. I heard so many positive stories from young males that our partners have been working with, and I feel very hopeful that our identities that split across so many, so many groupings in our heads that our human identities will be first and foremost, and that it will allow us to look at our own wellbeing and the wellbeing of all people in equal measure. 

MFG: One thing I want to just say, just because I’m not sure everybody knows it about you and Nandan, which is I’ve been in conversations with you all over time where we’re talking about very serious topics, right?  And I will watch you insert your voice because you have a different point of view from him because of what you see in society at times. And I have watched the two of you dispel that with humor. Right? Like he sees your point of view and you see his point of view. And I think sometimes we also don’t talk about, you know, humor is a way of releasing some tension, right? Or taking time out of life. I know the time, the two of you take some time for vacations, like to the extent we can take some time out away from our, Difficult change making work just to have time to reflect and to be and even to play right, I think is so important. 

RN: I think I’m so glad you brought up the point of humor.  You know, humor is very important. It’s almost like a muscle you have to develop because it keeps you humble, right? It keeps you from having too much certainty about your own beliefs. It allows you to break your ego once in a while, apart from allowing to laugh, which we all know releases endorphins and improves your wellbeing. So you’re absolutely right to bring in the humor. How can we keep our sense of humor alive even when times are very dark? So thank you for bringing up that point. It’s very, very critical. So as we come to a close of our time, Melinda, any last thoughts, any message you would have from your own life, how you went inside to strengthen yourself so that you could work outside? And what would you say for people who are just beginning to do that or just beginning to realize that? It’s not like a goal that, oh, I have to reach there in 10,000 steps or whatever. So how, what last advice would you have or what do you want to share?

MFG: I would say build a trusted group of friends that you can talk with when things are hard, when you’ve seen something different, difficult on the front lines, or you’re supporting someone in your family while you’re trying to create change. Have a trusted circle of friends that you can reach out to on WhatsApp or via a walk or on email. For me, that has really carried me through some very difficult times in life, either personally or when I’m doing the hard work out in the developing world. So find your trusted group of friends and nurture it. And the second thing I would say is have a gratitude practice. Every night, no matter where I am before a meal and whoever I’m with, even if they don’t want to, which would be my older adult children now sometimes, we go around the dinner table and we all say one thing we’re thankful for that day. And I just did it with my son and his friends who are 24 this weekend. And I did it again with my 21 year old daughter and her friends. You know, I kind of get the look like, are we really doing that mom? But I find that you’d be amazed what people say they’re grateful for and how it creates connection. And just in being grateful, it also releases some of the stress and tension.  

RN: I think that’s really beautiful because gratitude gives us so much strength to carry on. I used I’ve been saying of late that also cultivating hopefulness, not empty optimism, but hope almost as a religion, an article of faith, because when you have hope, then you have the energy for action. You can get up and do something because you have hope that some good outcome will come out of it. So I think hope when it is nurtured in the right way. Not in an empty way drives us to action and action when you’re doing something, there’s less space for you to ruminate and to be depressed. So keeping that hope, nurturing it or strengthening it, especially when things don’t seem to be going right, certainly has helped me at any rate and I hope it will help a million others in the world. So, I think I’ll close by saying thank you to The Wellbeing Project for thinking of getting us both together. It was a great pleasure to speak to you. You are a role model to many millions of women in the world because of how much you give of yourself. And I think by giving of ourself, we receive so much back and that is also part of the journey of wellbeing. So shall we end with a nod to the millions of changemakers around the world who need support, who need us to recognize that in their work, which they do on behalf of all of humanity, they need a little bit of a helping hand too. And if philanthropists like us could do a little more, I think there’d be that much more, well, wellbeing, of course, but also more opportunity and ways out of our crisis looking ahead, but I’m going to let you have the last word.

MFG: Yeah, so I would say my gratitude today and my thankfulness really is for the workers who do the really hard work on the front lines. I always say this in my own work that I don’t have the tough job. They have the tough job. They’re out working in communities and creating change and trying to help moms with a new baby and try to be a teacher of the young and set the right values. So I just have enormous gratitude for the men and women who work on the front lines. You’re doing the hard work. So I would say take care of yourselves. Be nice to yourselves and you are actually my heroes.  

RN: Thank you so much Melinda. Thanks for that message. And thank you for doing what you do. Let’s keep working together. Namaste. 

MFG: Namaste. Thanks Rohini.

Thank you for listening to this episode of At The Heart Of It. For more news, research, and stories about wellbeing and social change, visit wellbeing-project.org. The Wellbeing Project is the world’s leading organization advocating for the wellbeing of changemakers and for wellbeing in changemaking. We believe wellbeing inspires welldoing. Thanks for listening and see you next time.  

 

AT THE HEART OF IT – EPISODE 4

DR. MALA KAPADIA

Healing With Indian Wisdom

Join us for this delightful and deep conversation with Dr. Mala Kapadia, Director of the Anaadi Foundation’s Center for Indigenous Knowledge Systems. In this insightful episode, Mala shares learnings from her life-long exploration of traditional wisdom and modern wellbeing practices. Discover how Mala’s work addresses intergenerational trauma and Ecological Belonging, promotes holistic healing and peacebuilding, and incorporates Indian sciences like Ayurveda and Yoga into contemporary Indian society.

After sharing more about this emerging research at the first regional Hearth Summit in India, and in our Higher Education Network, Mala invites to learn about the intersection of spirituality and science, and explore transformative practices that can help us achieve both personal and global wellbeing. Let’s get to the heart of it.

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LISTEN TO EPISODE 4

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From This Episode

Full episode transcriptFull episode transcript

This transcript has been edited for clarity

Welcome to At The Heart Of It, a podcast where we explore issues at the heart of our world’s biggest challenges and their solutions. We’re on a journey inward going into ourselves, reflecting on who we are, listening to humanity’s collective story. Our guides are the visionary leaders, activists, scholars, and practitioners who are changing the world and whose own inner journeys of wellbeing inspire their welldoing.

Today’s guest brings the heart of India’s traditional knowledge systems to the world of social change. Dr. Mala Kapadia is director of the Anaadi Center for Indigenous Knowledge Systems at the Anaadi Foundation located in south India, where she leads transdisciplinary research to connect with wellbeing sciences from India and around the world. 

She also holds a couple of other important titles, one of which is Principal Investigator for the Indian Ministry of Education’s Indian Knowledge Systems Research Project on happiness and wellbeing. Mala’s work allows her to take deep dives into the unique aspects of Indigenous traditions while finding connecting threads between different cultures and ways of viewing the world – particularly how intergenerational trauma impacts all of us, our cultures, and the planet, and how we can find healing in the wisdom of the past. This bird’s-eye view lends a special approach to her wellbeing and welldoing, and today she’s inviting us to see the world connect with each other and heal from this great height.  Let’s get to the heart of it.  

Madelaine VanDerHeyden (MV): All right. Well, hi, Mala. Welcome to the podcast. Great to have you here. I know we’re a little bit far away from each other these days. I’m in France and you’re in New Zealand. So it’s very late for me, very early for you. So thanks for calling me at this time. I thought we could get started just by you telling us a little bit about who you are and the work that you’re doing at Anaadi Foundation.

Dr. Mala Kapadia (MK):  Sure. I’m Dr. Mala Kapadia, and I work with Anaadi Foundation. It’s a non–governmental organization based in South India, and we do a lot of research and create curriculum based on Indian knowledge systems, my entire journey, Madelaine, has been through various fields from psychology to literature to human resources, Ayurveda, yoga. And I’m happy to now see all the dots and connect them in different areas of research as well as education.

MK: So, we work at multiple levels, we create curriculums, we offer them to different universities from schools to parents to corporates, higher education. We work with the Ministry of Education in India, where at the moment I’m working on a project on creating a wellbeing and happiness framework and index based on Ayurveda. So there is a lot of research  based on my wellbeing and happiness project. We have written a book, a small booklet called Sukha Sutra. These are wisdom on how to remain healthy and happy for school children. It was quite a challenge, right? Schooling for very young children so that the next generation can have more wellbeing and a healthier life. How do you give them the metacognition, metavalues, metaskills? Meta is an aerial view, right? It’s a heightened view, where we are able to connect all the dots and see the intricacies of all the paths. This is how we use the GPS system when we are driving because we don’t know what’s ahead. So, metacognition and metawareness help us understand how we and everything around us are connected. Not only that, but how the cosmos and us are made up of the same stuff. What happens outside happens inside, right? So that’s the first pillar for health and wellbeing. The second pillar that flows is of metavalues. Once I know who I am and how we all are interconnected, how the wellbeing of planet is connected with my wellbeing, that metacognition gives me meta values, and values become a foundation for our character and that foundation gives us skills. So those skills then can be applied in life to be in a state of wellbeing and happiness.   

MV: And so these knowledge systems from India, these different sciences, I know what they are, and that’s why we’re speaking today, but maybe our listeners don’t. So could you start by first sharing what is the Indian science of Ayurveda? 

MK: They describe Ayurveda as a manual of life skill. It’s not just a medicinal system. It’s veda, knowledge of ayu. Ayu is life. And the beauty of Ayurveda is that it is for everyone, so it’s not for Indian people. It’s not for the people from certain regions. But the sages talked about humanity at large. They say that our life has purpose and meaningfulness and to achieve that, there are paths. So the path begins with dharma, so anything that sustains you and holds you together, is dharma. And I felt it’s a beautiful way to look at our life. It’s only psychology has taken more than 200 years to reach positive psychology where Martin Seligman and others are talking about meaningfulness. And here there are sages many, many millennia ago who wrote about how life has to be meaningful for us to be healthy and happy. And then they describe life as hitha, beneficial to self and others, because they always saw life as a continuum. We and the cosmos, we and everyone else, are interconnected. And only when we are leading a life which is interconnected and integral can we be happy. And happiness is, not the pursuit of happiness that we understand today in a modern language, but it’s all about the state of being. It is called sukha in Sanskrit. Su is auspicious, Kha is space. So how do you create beautiful, auspicious space where you live, whether it’s your body, whether it is your mind, whether it’s the community, whether it’s the nation or whether it’s the world? So with all the wellbeing crises that we see today, I realize that Ayurveda beautifully connects the wellbeing of the planet and wellbeing of an individual. It’s a continuum. In Ayurveda, in Yoga, the continuum is very beautifully described. So when I go back to Yoga and Ayurveda as ancient sciences as I said, if we all are integrated, we all are connected, then my energy and the world’s energy are somewhere merging together. And energy as we all know cannot be created or destroyed. It needs to be transformed. So when we look at trauma, what is it impacting? Is it impacting your security? Is it impacting your relationships? Is it about your power or victimhood? Is it about your heart experiencing gratitude or is it about your heart experiencing a closed xenophobic existence where you switch on to a survivalistic mode? Now this is where Yoga and Ayurveda come into play because they have a lot of practices which can help you dissolve these traumatic emotional imprints without wanting to bring them up to the brain, which is not able to cope. And when I say Yoga, it’s not just exercise or breathing exercise or physical postures, right? Because Yoga, Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra, one of the oldest text of collations of yoga sutras, talks of Yama and Niyama, which are the behavioral codes at individual level and collective level. So unless we practice them, doing breathing exercises and doing postures, will not give us results. 

MV: And in your opinion, Mala. Do you think that with the curriculum that you’re developing, the books that you’re writing, for example, is it filling a need there? Because, I’m just going to suggest some things, and you can tell me if I’m completely wrong, but is the need there because you think that there needs to be more awareness around wellbeing or more connection back with India knowledge systems? A mix of both? Am I getting it completely wrong? Why do you think this work is needed?

MK: You’re absolutely, you’re absolutely right. It’s both right. One, it needs awareness. I mean, unfortunately, in any colonized country, the country and people take very long time to come out of the colonized mindset. And therefore, in India, unfortunately, there was nothing Indian in our education system. When I studied psychology, I was horrified because all of our textbooks were either American or Europe-centric. You know, there was nothing Indian. All the  philosophy is totally missing from the curriculum.  The same with economics, the same with political science, the humanities. So that’s where we realize bringing back the Indian knowledge system, which is not India as a geopolitical boundary, but India as a civilization, ancient wisdom needs to be revived, revisited, and integrated wherever possible. 

MV: Well, I’ll just, I’ll just say just on the topic of post-colonial impact, or ongoing colonial impact, and then bringing in the topic of intergenerational trauma: do you see a trauma response in this dynamic? You know, what is the impact of trauma in educational systems as it relates to needing to bring in more of a strong presence of Indian knowledge systems because they’re not there? Are those two related? Not so much? What do you think? 

MK: Absolutely related because I realize that, let’s say when we say trauma, what is a trauma, right? Trauma is a wound that we carry within ourselves which is not healing. And it’s like, maybe you have a large house and you have forgotten your air conditioning or you have forgotten your tap, which is leaking water in an attic or a basement. And for many, many years you don’t realize why your electricity bill or the water bill is so high. But it’s taking a toll on you. So unless you dive deep, unless you visit all the rooms in your large mansion to locate the problem and fix it, the same way trauma is something that I think all of us carry within us. It could be due to colonization. It could be due to climate change. It could be due to wars. Nowadays we also talk of climate refugees, so it could be due to displacement because of war or climate change. Everything that is happening in the world is impacting us. Quantum science calls it the butterfly effect, right? That even far away in time, if a butterfly flutters  it’s impacting everything else around. Because all of us are energetically connected. Now, unfortunately, as I gave the example of electricity or leakage in water,  the same thing happens to trauma. We have it at a cellular level. However, we are not even aware of it. So what happens? It becomes our frame of reference when rather than respond, we are just reacting to life out of that trauma. So let’s say one of the impacts of colonization as a trauma that I’ve seen in India at least is that anything Indian does not hold value. Anything which comes from the West or is stamped by the West holds value. So if Yoga gets stamped by the West, then we say, “Oh, wow, Yoga is our legacy.” But you’re not ready to own your culture or civilization, right? And that trauma has impacted people going through low self-esteem about who they are and they’ve lost their voice. I mean, I’m here in New Zealand, and unfortunately, I’m seeing the same thing happen to Māori culture here. The way we know of or the way we talk of Māori culture, the values, the wellbeing that it can bring to the world and humanity: you do not really see that integrated in education, workplaces, or their way of living. So, that then becomes colonization, becomes an intergenerational trauma, because I’m carrying my ancestors in my blood, right? I’m carrying my ancestors in my genes. And whether I’m aware of it or not, I’m carrying that in my psyche as an imprint. And that imprint has to be brought to an awareness level to be able to address it. And then there has to be action. It’s not a cognitive thing. It’s a very emotional and experiential thing. So I cannot talk about it in a cognitive way and say, “Okay, I’m free of my trauma.” The trauma has to be dissolved  and therefore, a lot of transdisciplinary interconnections have to be made.  So we look at ancient wisdom, we look at modern sciences, we bring them together, and then we create practices, everyday life practices that help us become aware of our trauma and address them. 

MV: So I’m glad that you’ve brought up this work with the Māori because as you’re doing transdisciplinary research, you’re not only looking at building bridges between ancient, traditional knowledge and modern knowledge. But you’re also looking at cross-cultural knowledge. Different communities and different cultures and the threads in between them. So looking at the similarities and differences – between what’s ancient and what’s modern and what’s from India and what’s from elsewhere – and then talking about practices – practices for healing, but also practices as in rituals, everyday life practices – what do you see is happening in India right now? Do you think that in contemporary Indian society there’s a strong understanding and embrace of how traditional sciences from India, like Ayurveda and Yoga can help with wellbeing?

MK: We talk of ancient or Indigenous wisdom at one you know, one level. And then we say this is modern, right? And a lot of people have this misconception that ancient is outdated. People think modern is more scientific, modern is the complete know-how. Unfortunately, or fortunately, we realize that what is ancient is being rediscovered by many modern theorists. So it’s, we as humanity, we just have to take a U-turn, go back to our own cultural roots, civilizational roots. And I realize that all, most of the Indigenous cultures, they were connected and rooted in nature. I’ve been to Hawai’i. I’ve met some of the kahunas, the wisdom holders. And one of the ladies, I still remember, she held my hands and she said, “You are one of us.” And I realized that she felt that and I felt that because of the Mother Earth. We could have lived in different lifetimes. We could have lived on different geographical locations, but ultimately it’s all one. In all ancient Indigenous cultures, they’re also connected with their ancestors, because all of us are living biographies, right? And our biographies become our biology. So our history, our ancestors, are living within us, not just genetically, but psychologically and spiritually. Ancestor healing is a major ritual in most of the Indigenous cultures, including India. Now, obviously, we really don’t know what our ancestors were going through, right? Beyond a certain generation, we don’t even know our ancestors. We don’t know what trauma they went through. But whatever their trauma, we have inherited it.  Also, the trauma of Mother Earth, right, I mean, when we are saying climate change, climate refugee, what is happening to Mother Earth is impacting us. That’s also an ancestral trauma. So in reality, no, I think India is not doing great on wellbeing at many levels because, you know, the American fast food and industrial revolution, colonization, everything has impacted Indians. You know, India had global universities once upon a time. And today when I look at the youth, their only aspiration to get an admission in an American university, right? So, what is happening at physical level, your lifestyle is compromised, you are not actually living Yoga and Ayurveda in your everyday life. This is where I would love to quote one of my favorite authors from America, Henry Thoreau. And Henry Thoreau had his brother die at a very young age in his own arms. It was very traumatic for him. And that’s where he left the New York or Boston, wherever he lived, and he went to Walden Lake. He built his own house and he stayed there. So this can be one of the practices of reconnecting with nature, questioning the life that we are living at an autopilot mode. And Henry Thoreau said that we are living very fast rather than deep, and in India, I realized that the ideal could be that India becomes the voice for humanity, where, you know, you see the vibrancy of people practicing Ayurveda, practicing Yoga, living their civilizational, cultural values, which is slowly happening, it is slowly happening. I was in North India and I was at a place called Sonipat, which was originally in ancient time called Svarnaprastha, a city made of gold. And I realized that people there are actually living a much healthier life because they are all staying as a joint family. I could see actually two or three, even four generations living together in the same house, which is very rare today, even in India. But that kind of community support… let’s take a simple example of a childbirth. Today, mothers are left alone to fend for their pregnancy days and post delivery days, but imagine when you had a whole community or your entire extended family supporting you in your pregnancy and childbirth. That trauma of childbirth would have got so much reduced when there was support system. So, I was look at India as actually start reliving their own ideal ways of life. Where a lot of community support, a lot of extended families staying together, where the practice of Ayurveda and Yoga was a household thing, where grandmother’s wisdom was the first thing where you went, you know, whether it was your physical discomfort or you needed psychological help, so nothing became a trauma.  It was resolved. It was identified by somebody in the family who had the wisdom, and it was resolved. So today we have coaches, we have mentors, we have psychologists, we have counselors, we have nutrition experts, we have life coaches. In those days in India, your grandmothers held those roles all in one. So, you know, realistically, unfortunately, not every family in India is an extended family, but I would want to really see this coming back all over the world.  

MV: And that’s so nice, that’s such a nice image. And as you were saying, the grandmother would hold all of those roles. And it just makes me think, like women can do everything can’t they!

MK: They do! They do! And honestly, because I’ve been really thinking, you know, prior to the Industrial Revolution, women held different roles. It has nothing to do with gender, but it’s feminine energy, it’s masculine energy, right? So the role of feminine energy was to nurture,  sustain, hold everything together, I was just discussing this with my son that at one level, I’m happy women are having more confidence when they are getting education, getting roles, doing jobs, having successful careers. However, what they don’t realize is that they are actually suppressing their feminine energy. You know, becoming competitive, wanting to be better than a man. I’ve been an active human resource roles and corporates, a lot of senior leadership coaching, developing leaders. And I realize that we are bringing back all feminine energy. Like compassion, empathy, listening. But, we want women to be competitive, we want cutthroat competition. I mean, look at the language. It itself is very traumatic, right? So, yes, we are creating trauma. I think the Industrial Revolution uprooted people from nature. So, nature become a resource to be used and exploited and people became resource that needs to be used and exploited and we didn’t realize that we ourselves became a resource which was exploited by others and we are exploiting others. And this trauma, I think, needs to be addressed because today corporates have to wake up to the spiritual aspect, which is not a philosophical aspect, but I would say spirituality is a basic foundation. And most of the United Nations Sustainability Development Goals are far away from being met. Right. I mean, when we are spending so much money on sustainability goals, climate change, et cetera, what we don’t realize is, we just need to bring back that foundation of spirituality in everything we do. And the moment that foundation comes back, everything will fall in its place. Right now, we have lost the bigger picture and we are all struggling with pieces of puzzles, and trying to fit them here and there. But spirituality is like a bigger picture. And without looking at that bigger picture, we are not able to fit in those pieces of puzzles. 

MV: Well, Mala, we’ve spoken a lot about your views on the work that you’re doing, the different sciences that you’re exploring and connecting across cultures. And that does tell us a little bit about who you are, but we haven’t really gotten to the heart of it. And I’m wondering if we can share a little bit more about you and maybe there’s some personal anecdotes you can tell us about that brings this work to life in your own life. Is there anything you’d like to share with us?    

MK: I can share one of my own personal experiences here. One of my friends was doing a course on craniosacral  therapy. As a part of her course, she had to work on people and heal them and make a case study. So I was one of the guinea pigs for that study. And the first question she asked you know, apart from a lot of other questions, is what is a basic emotion that I feel that I experience very often? Without much thinking, because I knew what I was experiencing, I said sadness. And it has nothing much to do with my personal life or personal trauma. But overall, why is the world like this? Why are people behaving like this? Why are systems like this? Why are societies like this? Right? And that sadness was very heavy on my heart. So this is what I told her. And craniosacral is an energy healing when the healer does not even touch you, but just holds the space for you. And in that space the energy transfer happens and a lot of your own emotions get transformed and channeled. Only in three sittings, I realized that, Oh my God, my sadness had got transformed. Now, if I again use Sanskrit words from Natya Shastra, sadness is called KarunarasaKaruna is sadness in Sanskrit, but Karuna is also compassion or empathy. So, you know, it’s so beautiful that your sadness can actually become an activation of compassion if it gets transformed. Another experience that I’ve personally had is that, one of my friends gave me feedback in college that I kept on nodding my head, you know, I was like a doll when you touch the head and the doll goes like this [like a bobblehead]. There was something, some problem in my neck. And I said, Oh, am I doing that? I’m not even aware. So see, most of our even behavioral gestures, we are not aware. And then whenever I was becoming aware that I’m nodding too much, I would become stiff and my neck would have a lot of pain. So I would give up controlling and I would let my head go wherever it’s going. Now, much later in life, I was going through NLP, Neuro Linguistic Programming Training, and Mick Lawrence, who had come from UK for the program, he asked in one of the sessions on hypnosis if anybody wanted to get rid of a bad habit. I was the first one to jump, saying that I want to stop nodding my head. Now it was, you know, if you look at it very superficially, it’s a very innocent gesture, right? I’ll share in a while how deeply it was connected with my trauma in childhood, of which I didn’t even have a cognitive awareness. So, he brought me on stage, hypnotized me, calmed me, took me back in time. And there I was, way back in second standard, maybe six years young, seven years young, learning dancing. And in Indian dancing, you need to learn to do this neck movement. Somehow I wasn’t able to do it properly. And my teacher scolded me. Now, she was one of my favorite teachers. And imagine being scolded by her in front of others, right? It created so much shame and guilt and sadness  that, it got stored in my neck because it was a neck movement. And then even when I was not dancing, it kept on nodding my head. And trust me, Madelaine cognitively, I didn’t even remember this incident. It was only through a very calm and relaxed hypnosis that this memory came into awareness. And the moment it came into awareness, it dissolved. And people who are part of that NLP program could see a change in me from the next day. Now, two, three things happened. You know, in my life being an elder daughter, I’ve always been the good one, right? The obedient one who loves to get validated by parents all the time, who’s supposed to be a good role model for a younger sister. So I was always very obedient. Also, I was non-assertive because when you’re obedient, you’re also non-assertive. I continued being non-assertive even in my marriage and in my role as a manager in my organization. So obviously everyone was very happy dumping work on me or making me do things that I never wanted to do. But before I say no to anything, become assertive or have my voice, my head was nodding yes. Thanks. You know, so people took me for granted and I could never understand. So that frustration, I got feedback from my bosses and my organization, you are a manager, you need to be assertive.  But it’s again, it’s not a cognitive skill. And what happened after this one  NLP session, the moment my body stopped giving this traumatic response, I suddenly became assertive. It was like magic. 

MV: You leave one day and you come back a completely transformed person!

MK: And I joke that obviously my husband and my bosses were very unhappy because – 

MV: Now you’re an assertive person! 

MK: Yes!

MV: But I mean, I’m laughing because it’s a charming story, but it speaks to, one, how deeply stored all of this is. Like, did you even remember, before this, did you even remember what had happened to you in, in second year? 

MK: No, no.

MV: Exactly. You don’t remember, and then the physical sensation you feel, the before and after, is so strong that there’s, you don’t need any other evidence to know that it was there. You know, it’s so clear. Yeah. Wow. Wow. 

MK: And this is where I feel that, you know, we have to have the holistic practices, right? I mean, for dealing with trauma. And we don’t even know what trauma we are holding.

MV: I feel like your common, your common theme for the conversation today has been, the cognitive is not enough. Stop thinking that the cognitive is enough. Like, get out of your brain, get out of your mind.

MK: That’s, that’s the essence, honestly, because we are not just limited to our brains, right? The brain is just a very tiny part of who we are.

MV: Well, my final question for you today, Mala is related to our motto at The Wellbeing Project, which is wellbeing inspires welldoing. And today you’ve shared about the wellbeing side of things, what that concept looks like in the form of Indian knowledge sciences, like Ayurveda, like Yoga,  and coming to the topic of social change: how do you think that the knowledge that these systems share with us? How do you think they can help us with our welldoing? And that could be for, You know, individual changemakers, it could be for collective humanity, it could be for the planet.  What is the connection there? And if this is your final message to our listeners, what would you like to share with them as we wrap up our conversation?

MK: We all are born out of peace and ultimately we all go, we rest in peace as we say when somebody leaves the body. But unfortunately, we don’t live in peace, right? Because we don’t give peace a priority. Peace and spirituality, peace and heart, everything gets connected, right? Because if these are the permanent emotions we are born with, so the negative ones like anger or disgust or fear or shame, they need to be transformed, right? We are born with them and they need to be worked on and through certain practices, we need to transform them. I was talking about rituals in India, we always, you know, all the prayers ended with saying, Shanti hi, Shanti hi, Shanti hi. Shanti means peace. And in India, every mantra also, or the prayer, begins with chanting Om. If I say aloud Om, Om is creating a vibration within me and outside. So why do all prayers end with saying peace, peace, peace three times? Just one time could have been enough. Then I read a very small booklet which says that the three Ps are invoking peace at three levels: one, individual, myself; two, collective, which is community around me, society, nature around me, my nation; and three is at the global level and universal level. So now when today there are wars happening, when there is so much destruction happening, there is so much human suffering, I realize that working on peace and giving it a priority is very important. So when I started my research, I realized that, unfortunately, most of the Western researches define peace as absence of war or conflict.  Peace is not seen as a positive construct in itself, which in Indian literature, in Indian philosophy, peace is a positive construct. Health is a positive construct. Health is not as opposed to disease. And peace is not opposed to war or conflict. So, if peace is a construct in itself, how do you arrive at it? How do you actually start experiencing peace within? And chanting mantras, I realized was one way. We have to become calm enough to invite peace. And the moment we start inviting peace by saying Shanti hi, Shanti hi, Shanti hi – or you can use a word in your language, your mother tongue – the moment you start experiencing that, giving that a priority, slowly your life begins. Peace is something that we have to focus as an individual and collectively. And when we vibrate at a higher energy  or frequency, it compensates for thousands of people around us. So let’s say if we include this as a part of leadership training, that leader of the organization or leader of a team, let’s say if we train teachers to vibrate right at this level, and if we naturally train our national leaders, international leaders, right, to be vibrating at a certain level, I’m sure humanity will have a greater, much better future. We’ll be more into the wellbeing zone rather than the disease zone, trauma zone. And I think that’s the legacy, if I can leave behind all the threads of, you know researchers from ancient modern, west and east, everything coming together, along with frameworks and practices. I think that’s the legacy I would love to leave behind. 

MV: And it’s such a beautiful legacy at that Mala and perfectly, I think, resonates with the work that we’re doing around ecological belonging and revitalizing and reweaving and bringing in, reconnecting to traditions and knowledge and wisdom from the past. So, thank you so much for allowing us to take a deep, deep dive with you into the world of these beautiful traditional sciences. And for sharing a little bit more about you and the heart of the research and the work that you’re doing. And that’s all the time we have for today, so thank you so much for joining me. 

MK: And to you personally and to The Wellbeing Project because I think they are doing wonderful work. I was in Spain at The Wellbeing Project’s first global summit in Bilbao. And it was an amazing community to stay connected with. I’m connected with some of them even today. 

MV: Oh, that’s so great, Mala. Yes, the community from our first global summit in Bilbao was just fantastic. Well, thank you so much. And we’ll talk to you very soon.

Thank you for listening to this episode of At The Heart Of It. For more news, research, and stories about wellbeing and social change, visit wellbeing-project.org. The Wellbeing Project is the world’s leading organization advocating for the wellbeing of changemakers and for wellbeing in changemaking. We believe wellbeing inspires welldoing. Thanks for listening and see you next time.  

The World Will Not Change Unless We Change OurselvesThe World Will Not Change Unless We Change Ourselves

Stories from the Hearth

Reflections From:

Kotaro Aoki

Co-Founder and Chairmain, KOTOWARI
🌍 Tokyo, Japan

As a new endeavor, we will be holding Hearth Summit Kyoto at the end of this year. As we look for young people to join us on the journey to the summit, let me share my personal background and talk about my own journey so far. This journey began in the Himalayas in India.

Surrounded by mountains that are silent and devoid of any sign of life, where the wisdom of the East is stored, I spent my days training. After studying philosophy at a liberal arts university in the United States, I worked in global investment, and then I set off on a journey of wandering. Through my travels, I realized that the roots of the problems that are prevalent in the world lie in the framework of civilization and human consciousness that have existed for hundreds of years.

This realization turned into conviction through my journey to the wisdom of the world, past and present, and my days of training in the Himalayas. No matter how much the framework of society is reformed, if the consciousness of people who aspire to change does not change, the same problems will be repeated. Above all, the world will not change unless we change ourselves. I was struck by the true meaning of Mahatma Gandhi’s adage, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.”

After returning to Japan a few years ago, I began to give back to society the fruits of my journey. Since last year, my work has expanded beyond generations and borders to connect with the world. Through the management of the retreat “Gandhi 3.0” in India and the “KUNI Initiative” co-run by Haruo Miyagi, leaders in philosophy, religion, politics and business have come together to create a global solidarity that aims to create a new society rooted in inner transformation.

While the world around us is facing a worsening crisis, at the same time, there are strong signs of the birth of a new worldview. We will build the future of society on a foundation of wisdom that will not change over the ages. There must be a way in which the pursuit of personal truth and happiness and the efforts to improve society as a whole can coexist without contradiction. Pioneers who embody this kind of future are beginning to appear around the world.

Global leaders who are at the forefront of this exploration will gather in Japan to create the future of society together with the younger generation. Driven by this vision, this project was born. I look forward to meeting young colleagues who will join me in exploring the future of Japan and the world.

Kotaro Aoki

EXPLORE THE REGIONAL SUMMITS FURTHEREXPLORE THE REGIONAL SUMMITS FURTHER

Dive Into Stories From Around the World

Discover the Wellbeing Movement in AsiaDiscover the Wellbeing Movement in Asia

Meet and hear stories from the changemakers championing wellbeing in Asia.

AT THE HEART OF IT – EPISODE 1

Satish Kumar

A Lifetime of Love

In this inaugural episode of our series, we’re honored to feature Satish Kumar, a renowned peace activist, former monk, Editor Emeritus of Resurgence & Ecologist Magazine, and founder of Schumacher College. Satish captured global attention in 1962 by walking 8,000 miles without money from India to the nuclear capitals of Moscow, Paris, London, and Washington, D.C., advocating against the use of atomic weapons. His journey, spanning over two and a half years, ignited crucial conversations about nuclear disarmament, human rights, and environmental wellbeing.

Now at 87, Satish continues to inspire as an author, speaker, and elder with organizations like The Wellbeing Project. In a special conversation recorded in Paris’s Parc des Buttes-Chaumont, he shares insights on wellbeing and his vision for the future. Let’s get to the heart of it.

Let's dive right in! Let's dive right in!

LISTEN TO EPISODE 1

Resources Resources

From This Episode

Full episode transcript Full episode transcript

This transcript has been edited for clarity

Welcome to At the Heart of It, a podcast where we explore issues at the heart of our world’s biggest challenges and their solutions. We’re on a journey inward going into ourselves, reflecting on who we are listening to humanity’s collective story. Our guides are the visionary leaders, activists, scholars, and practitioners who are changing the world and whose own inner journeys of wellbeing inspire their welldoing.

Today’s guest is someone whose lifelong work is an inspiration for this podcast. Satish Kumar is a peace pilgrim, activist, and former monk who gained international recognition in 1962 for walking, on foot, with no money, from his home in India to what were then the four capitals of the nuclear world, Moscow, Paris, London, and Washington, D.C., to protest the use of atomic weapons. This journey of more than 8,000 miles over two and a half years not only sparked dialogues on nuclear disarmament, but also its interconnection with human rights, ecology and human and planetary wellbeing.

Today, at 87 years young, Satish continues to share messages of peace, hope, and compassion with the world as an author, editor, speaker, educator, and elder of many organizations, including The Wellbeing Project.

In a special conversation recorded in the Parc Butte Chaumont of Paris, Satish reflected on the role of wellbeing in his work and his vision for the future. Let’s get to the heart of it.

Madelaine VanDerHeyden (MV):  All right. Well, welcome to the podcast. Today I have a very special guest here with me. We’re sitting in the beautiful in Paris. It’s a gorgeous spring day, the sun is shining, the birds are out, the dogs are out, the flowers are starting to bloom. And I’m sitting here next to Satish Kumar. Satish, welcome.

Satish Kumar (SK): Thank you. My pleasure to be on your podcast. 

MV: Thank you, Satish. Now, Satish, you know The Wellbeing Project’s motto. What we believe is that wellbeing inspires welldoing. And you have had a very, very exciting, meaningful,  long career of welldoing. And I want to know a little bit about your inner wellbeing journey. Can you tell us about what that has been like for you? 

SK: Yes. I am now 87 years old and I feel very well in my body, in my mind, in my spirit. And I think the source of my wellbeing is my connection with the earth and also with my inner spirit. I was born in Rajasthan, in India. And when I was four years old, my father died. And so my mother was crying, my sisters were crying, my brothers were crying, and I could not understand what was going on. Why father is not moving? Why is he not walking? Why is he not talking? And so I asked my mother, what’s happening? Why are you crying? And why is father not speaking? And so she said, your father is now dead. I said, what is dead? When one is dead, one doesn’t speak, and one is gone, and you never speak with that person again, she said. So that was a big shock in my life. And so I start to think about death from age four years old. And I started to ask, is there a way of stopping people dying? And that led me to my Jain guru, whom I asked, is there a way to stop people dying? 

And after a bit of thought, he said to me, the only way to stop this cycle of birth and death is to renounce the world. And so, become a monk. I decided to become a monk. So at age nine, I left home and I became a monk. And as a monk, you have to walk with bare feet. Be in nature. So I was walking in the sand dunes, along the rivers, among the trees, the open sky.

And so that is how kind of my spiritual and physical wellbeing started. And then, after nine years in monkhood, I left monkhood and I joined a Gandhian ashram, a community in India. And I lived there more as a kind of social and physical work, like art, craft, gardening, cooking, agriculture, service to community. So Gandhian values of nonviolence and peace. That was my kind of main ethos and main pilgrimage for another nine years. And then when I was 26 years old, I was inspired by a great British philosopher, Bertrand Russell, the Nobel Prize winning author of Principal Mathematical. And so he was protesting against the nuclear bomb.  

MV: In what year was this?  

SK: That was in 1961. So, in 1961, he was protesting against the nuclear bomb and he was arrested and he was put in jail. And when I read this news in the newspaper, I said to myself, “Here is a man of 90 going to jail for peace in the world. What am I doing, young man, sitting here drinking coffee in a coffee house?” And so that inspired me and led me to set off with a friend on a walk from India to four nuclear capitals of the world. Moscow, Paris, London, and Washington, D. C. And so a friend, And I started to walk without any money. Both of us walked through many countries – 15 countries, 13,000 kilometers – without any money, and meeting ordinary people, talking to politicians, talking to journalists, talking to students in universities and schools, talking to religious people in churches and mosques. And so I encountered people and communities and communities and farmers and workers and politicians around the world. So two and a half years of that peace pilgrimage from New Delhi, from the grave of Mahatma Gandhi to Washington, DC, the grave of John F. Kennedy. That was a great, great journey. And then I went back to India and then I wrote a book about my journey.

I translated the book by Martin Luther King, The Stride Toward Freedom, the book which Martin Luther King had given me. So I wanted to introduce his ideas to Indian readers. And so I translated that book. And then, I came back to England. In 1973, I became the editor of Resurgence magazine and I edited that magazine for more than 40 years. And during that time, I also started Schumacher College, for ecological and spiritual studies and studies of wellbeing. And so that has been my life, in a nutshell. Long journey. Long story.  

MV: But Satish, you, I mean, you shared obviously you have your pilgrimage walk that you did as a young man. That must not have been easy walking all the way around the world. And wellbeing is not only about acknowledging things that go well in life, but also acknowledging the things that are hard. So in, in your experience, have there been any highs? Have there been any lows? How have you dealt with those as they come as they go?

SK: I mean, I tried to practice equanimity, so of course there have been highs and lows. The nuclear threat was very, very, powerful and unsettling and the Cold War was very unsettling and the kind of conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States of America and NATO countries, all that were very unsettling. Yet I thought that answer to all our problems is love. And so we have to practice love. We have to spread the love. And I also see, when I see low, I also see high. A majority of people in the world are not involved in Cold War. The majority of people are not involved in nuclear bombs. The majority of people are not fighting wars. The majority of people are farmers, teachers, doctors, nurses, artists, musicians, everyday people, they are living  good life and practicing more love than hatred in everyday life.

So that gives me a bit more inspiration. So I try to have a kind of balanced view rather than get exhausted, anxious; rather than get depressed and fearful that everything is going bad in the world. Of course things are going in the in the world which are bad and I do my best and I act out of love rather than out of fear. I act out of love rather than anxiety because my job is to do my best. I cannot control the outcome. I cannot control what will be the result. I can only control my actions. My words, my thoughts, my speech, and my actions. So, everyday, my focus is on action. What can I do? Not how the world is, but how can I serve the world? How can I make the world a little bit better place than before? And so with that, I work and by not worrying, not being anxious, not being fearful, not being angry, that also keeps me healthy and well. 

MV: Well, it’s great advice to all of us, which is the only thing you can control is yourself.

SK: Yeah, exactly.

MV: Sometimes we can’t even control ourselves. But you mentioned just now meeting Martin Luther King and he gave you his book, and on the way here, you were telling me that he was probably one of the most, if not the most, interesting person you’ve met in your career and in your journey around the world.

SK: Yes!

MV: And now now you have this really wonderful perspective on wellbeing. Do you feel that within the social change space, talking about changemakers in the broadest sense of the term – artists, politicians, humanitarians, human rights activists – do you think that over time, has the conversation around their wellbeing grown and changed over the years? What have you noticed? 

SK: Yes, I would say that there is a greater awareness, especially among young people about our wellbeing and wellbeing of planet Earth as being interconnected. So I see more and more young people in universities and even in schools. When I meet them, I find that young people are very much interested.

There’s a rising awareness among young people. Still a long way to go. Still they are in minority. The majority of our schools are still teaching young people for jobs. But many young people are saying, that what kind of jobs are we going to do, and what kind of jobs they will be, which will impact the Earth, and maybe destroy the Earth or damage the Earth or harm the Earth.

So that is a good question. And, Martin Luther King, as I said, was one of the great inspirations  that I discovered or I felt or I encountered. Because he was an embodiment of love and action  because he said that we don’t know what the results will be. But we have to fight however we can with love.

And so he said, the white people as much my brothers and sisters as black people. And I’m not against white people. I’m against racism and racism is bad for white people as it is bad for black people. And so, how we can live without discrimination? Without judgement? Live as brothers and sisters? I don’t choose my color. I’m born with whatever color I am given. And so I have to live with my color. Whether you are white or black or brown or whatever colour you are. Doesn’t matter. All colors are beautiful. Black is as beautiful as white is beautiful. And brown is beautiful. And yellow is beautiful. So yhat kind of generosity of spirit, and inclusivity, and yet radicalism, he was a radical lover. So my book, Radical Love, in a way he embodied that. He was an embodiment of love. And I always felt after meeting him, the truth comes second, love comes first.  And because in truth, we disagree.  My truth is different than your truth. And my point of view is different from your point of view.

And, I can say I’m right, you are wrong. So that kind of, disagreement can lead to conflict. Whereas love unites. Anger and hatred divide. And so, what I learned from Martin Luther King is whatever you do, your fight, your struggle, your action should be inspired by love rather than by hatred and judgment and discrimination. And that has stayed with me all my life.

MV: That’s beautiful. And you talked about children now, we’re educating them around mental health and wellbeing and they’re becoming a bit more aware of it. But what about for adults? I mean, in 1964 when you met Martin Luther King, were both of you talking about your own inner wellbeing when you had that meeting, or would that have been something that would have never crossed your mind at that point? 

SK: I mean, the word wellbeing is now much more in a common language than at that time. At that time, peace was much more common in our language because of the nuclear threat. And there was also a kind of, you can say, justice. Martin Luther King always said, justice delayed is justice denied. So we cannot afford to have justice delayed. And so, peace and justice were much more prominent in our thinking, in our consciousness. 

But, the source of lack of wellbeing is our social conditions. And if people are exploited, or ignored or dominated, then people feel unwell, psychologically unwell, and psychological unwellness is connected with physical unwellness. And therefore, if we can treat people with love and with respect and with dignity, then I think wellbeing will be a natural outcome.

And so, social wellbeing, ecological and planetary wellbeing, and a personal spiritual wellbeing are all interlinked. And that way, even in the 60s, I think, the underlying message was there, even if, the word wellbeing was not so much in common.  

MV: Well, that’s one of the things that The Wellbeing Project hasn’t done since then. We were formed around eight years ago as we’ve never defined wellbeing because part of the journey is each person connecting to the concept in whichever way feels right for them and in different places around the world, different communities and different cultures are looking at it through their own perspectives and again connecting with it in whichever way that feels that feels meaningful. 

SK: Yeah. For me wellbeing, personal wellbeing to start with – we can go to social and ecological wellbeing as well later – but to start with, your personal wellbeing starts with  contentment. To have this wonderful planet, wonderful community, a human body: I can love, I can serve, I can think, I can feel, I can write, I can walk, I can see, I can do so many things. So, being contentment with your body and with your two hands and two legs, I can work and I can make things, I can build a house, I can grow food, I can write a book, I can dance. So being grateful and contented within your body and satisfied and contented. That’s the kind of beginning, the first step towards your wellbeing. Discontentment: whatever you have is never enough. Whatever money you have is never enough. Whatever kind of house you have is never enough. Whatever job you have is never enough. Discontentment breeds illness and unwellbeing. So, first advice I can give from my own experience is learn to be contented and celebrate and grateful to what you have rather than what you don’t have. That’s the first step. 

The second step is then whatever I pursue, I try to seek quality of life rather than quantities of possessions. Because quantities you can have more, more, more, and how much you have, they are never good enough because the quality is missing. So if we can focus on quality of food, quality of our clothes, quality of our house, quality of our conversation, quality of our thinking, everything quality. So less is more. So shifting our focus from quantity to quality is for me a source of personal wellbeing.

And then social wellbeing comes with dignity and respect. Every human being should be valued as a human being. At the moment, we see human beings as a resource for running an organization or running a business or running an industry or making profit for an organization or something. So that is creating social unrest and unwellbeing. People don’t feel respected, don’t feel appreciated, don’t feel recognized for who they are. So social wellbeing comes with this. Every human being has their dignity and respect and they are valuable and they are not just a resource for making money. 

And so planetary wellbeing starts with appreciation that nature is not an object. Nature is not an inanimate object. Nature is a subject. Nature is a living organism. If we have that kind of understanding of nature, then we will love nature, we’ll respect nature, we’ll conserve nature, we’ll protect nature, we’ll not pollute nature, we’ll not fill our oceans with plastic, and our atmosphere with greenhouse gases, and our rivers with sewage, and our soil with chemicals. All that we do because we think nature is inanimate and it’s just an object for our kind of economic growth.

So these three things we can learn that I think can move towards a proper personal wellbeing, social wellbeing, and planetary wellbeing.  

MV: So we’ve been talking about quite a few different things. You were just sharing about what you think the definition of wellbeing might be. You’ve also talked about, your entire journey being a pilgrim, meeting with Martin Luther King, things that you admired about him and his perspective. You’ve talked about what you think may be at the root of some of our problems today, which is discontentment, a lack of fraternity or brotherhood or love for others. Taking that all into account, when you look at your own life, your decision to become a monk, your decision to go on your pilgrim, your decision to do the work that you do and have continued to do through your whole life, at the heart of all of that, what has been your inspiration, your motivation, your hope, your message to the world. What has been deep inside of you? 

SK: The inspiration for me has been the word to be a pilgrim. On this planet Earth, we can live in two ways. Either we can live as tourists or as pilgrims. And I wrote a book called Earth Pilgrim. And I even made a film for the BBC called Earth Pilgrim. And I said we all humans are pilgrims of the earth. What does that mean? It means that we are not here to take. But the tourists take.  Whereas pilgrims accept and share. So when you are a tourist, you always want a good hotel, good food, good service, good museums, and then whatever you have is never enough, never satisfied. You’re always complaining.

Well, the pilgrim never complains, but the pilgrim always helps to make things as good as you can and supports and celebrates. So, my inspiration has been in my life is that live on this planet as a pilgrim and a whole life is a pilgrimage. I mean, I’ve been to all the pilgrimages as well, but I would say life is a pilgrimage, not just in a kind of religious sense that you as a kind of Christian or Hindu, you go to a holy place as a pilgrim, but living on this planet. Thinking the whole planet is a temple, the whole planet is holy, the whole planet is sacred and it’s our home and we have to live lightly on this planet and celebrate life and accept life as it comes with warts and all. We love winter and we love summer and we love spring and we love winter. Uh, dark, and we love light, and we love every moment of our lives. That is a kind of mentality of a pilgrim, in my view. And so if we live like a pilgrim, then we will be well in our own lives, and we’ll make planet a lovely place. So that has been my inspiration in my life.  

MV: And that has been your inspiration. Now, if you were to share one message with everyone listening, what would it be?

SK: One message I would like to share is the mission of our life should be to make everything beautiful. Beauty is source of nourishment for the soul, for the spirit. Nature is very beautiful. The flowers are beautiful, the trees are beautiful, the birds are beautiful. 

MV: This day is beautiful!

SK: Day is beautiful, nature is beautiful, but humans in their kind of pursuit of economic growth make things quick and ugly and functional, but not beautiful. So one message I would like to say, I walk in beauty before me. I walk in beauty behind me. I walk in beauty above me. I walk in beauty below me. I walk in beauty all around me. The whole world is beautiful. The whole world is beautiful. The whole world is beautiful. Ho! 

So that’s my one word message: seek beauty. Beautiful thoughts. Beautiful words. Beautiful actions. Beautiful things, beauty all around. If we can pursue beauty, we’ll be happy.  

MV: Oh, thank you Satish. Out of among the many things that you are in life, you’re also a mind reader. Because I was going to ask you to sing that song because you sang that for us at The Wellbeing Summit in Brussels. It was so wonderful in that moment of everyone standing up and singing that with you. Really, really moving. Thank you for sharing that with us today. 

SK: My pleasure, my pleasure. Thank you for inviting me on your podcast. Thank you so much. My pleasure.

Thank you for listening to this episode of At the Heart of It. For more news, research, and stories about wellbeing and social change, visit wellbeing-project.org. The Wellbeing Project is the world’s leading organization advocating for the wellbeing of changemakers and for wellbeing in changemaking. We believe wellbeing inspires welldoing. Thanks for listening and see you next time!   

Indian Wisdom and Conscious LeadershipIndian Wisdom and Conscious Leadership

Stories from the Hearth

Hearth Summit Higher Ed Session Featuring:

Nilima Bhat

Distinguished Professor in Gender and Conscious Leadership Studies, Tec de Monterey
🌍 Querétaro, México

In México at the annual Wellbeing in Higher Education gatheringNilima Bhat, distinguished professor in gender and conscious leadership studies, introduced changemakers us to the concept of Shakti Leadership: a powerful fusion of ancient Indian wisdom and emerging knowledge. Learn about the essence of Shakti Leadership, which balances feminine and masculine energies in leadership, and how practices like mindfulness can strengthen your leadership and daily wellbeing. Watch the session (in English).

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Dive Into Stories From Around the World

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Meet and hear stories from the changemakers championing wellbeing in higher education.

Wellbeing Wisdom From India: An Interview with Dr. Mala Kapadia on Intergenerational Trauma and Ecological Belonging Wellbeing Wisdom From India: An Interview with Dr. Mala Kapadia on Intergenerational Trauma and Ecological Belonging

A CONVERSATION WITH:

Dr. Mala Kapadia

Director, Anaadi Centre for Indigenous Knowledge Systems, Anaadi Foundation
🌍 Tamil Nadu, India

What can traditional Indian Knowledge Systems teach the world about wellbeing?

Dr. Mala Kapadia, director of the Anaadi Centre for Indigenous Knowledge Systems at the Anaadi Foundation, shares knowledge and practices from the Indian sciences of Ayurveda, Yoga, Aesthetics, and Poetry, around Ecological Belonging and intergenerational trauma.

Watch the full video for her teachings, or read the highlights below.

“In India, I realized that the ideal could be that India becomes the voice for humanity — where you see the vibrancy of people practicing Ayurveda, practicing Yoga, living their civilizational, cultural values, which is slowly happening post-pandemic. It is slowly happening.”

WHAT ARE THE SCIENCES OF AYURVEDA AND YOGA AND HOW DO THEY RELATE TO WELLBEING?

Ayurveda, as they describe it, is a manual of life skills. It’s not just a medicinal system. It’s Veda- knowledge of ayu. Ayu is life. Ayurveda actually describes Life, and the beauty of Ayurveda is that it is for everyone. It’s not only for Indian people. It’s not for the people from a certain region, but the Sages talked about humanity at large. They say that our life has purpose and meaningfulness and to achieve that, there are paths, right?

The path begins with dharma, a Sanskrit word coming from the etymology  Dharayati Iti Dharma. Meaning, anything that sustains you, holds you together, is dharma. I feel it’s a beautiful way to look at our life. It’s only psychology that has taken more than 200 years to reach positive psychology where Martin Seligman and others are talking about meaningfulness. And here there are sages many, many millennia ago who wrote about how life has to be meaningful for us to be healthy and happy. They describe life as Hita, beneficial to self and others, because they always saw life as a continuum: we and the Cosmos, we and everyone else, are interconnected. And only when we are leading a life which is interconnected and integral, can we be happy. And happiness is, not the pursuit of happiness that we understand today in a modern language, but it’s all about the State of Being. With the wellbeing crises that we see today, I realize that Ayurveda beautifully connects the wellbeing of the planet and wellbeing of an individual.

With the wellbeing crises that we see today, I realize that Ayurveda beautifully connects the wellbeing of the planet and wellbeing of an individual.

WHAT DO AYURVEDA, YOGA AND OTHER INDIAN SCIENCES TELL US ABOUT NEUROSCIENCE, EMOTIONS, AND HEALING?

What Yoga, Ayurveda, and the science of Aesthetics are talking about is being rediscovered and not just rediscovered, it’s being validated scientifically by some modern theorists. Today a lot of scientists talk of neurotransmitters, et cetera, but they look at only the brain. If you revisit our biology or anatomy from a Yogic perspective, our physical body that can be seen and studied or x-rayed is one reality, but we are also energy sheets.

So we are still stuck learning biology and anatomy from a Newtonian or Cartesian perspective dividing body and mind. But what is mind? People are still struggling to understand it. While in Ayurveda and Yoga, the body-mind continuum is very beautifully described. We have seven chakras, the major chakras, and many minor chakras. And I’m glad today chakra, like mantra and dharma, is a word in Western vocabulary as well. These are what Georgetown University neuroscientist Candace Pert talks about nodal points of neurotransmitters. The neurotransmitters on those nodal points of the chakras are either blocked or they are open. So when they are blocked, naturally the energy flow is restricted and therefore the energy or Prana does not reach those organs which are connected with those nodal points. She was one of the, I think, first Western scientists to say that body and mind is a continuum.

HOW CAN THIS KNOWLEDGE HELP US WITH HEALING FROM TRAUMA?

So when I go back to Yoga and Ayurveda as ancient sciences as I said, “If we all are integrated, we all are connected, then my energy and the world’s energy is somewhere merging together, right?” Energy, we all know, cannot be created or destroyed. It needs to be transformed. So when we look at trauma, trauma is an energy block as I see it personally. If it’s a blocked energy, then which chakra is it impacting? Is it impacting your security? Is it impacting your relationships? Is it about your power or victimhood? Is it about your heart experiencing gratitude or is it about your heart experiencing a closed xenophobic existence where you switch on to a survivalistic mode? This is what scientifically people talk about trauma and the response to trauma as fight, flight, or freeze. But that fight, flight, freeze is not just limited to the brain. It travels all over the body. So, if my mind is in every cell of my body, then my trauma response is also coming from every cell in my body. It’s not only a cognitive skill.

This is where Yoga and Ayurveda come into play because they have a lot of practices which can help you dissolve these traumatic emotional imprints without wanting to bring them up to the brain, which is not able to cope.

And they can be dissolved with a lot of Ayurvedic treatments, Ayurvedic lifestyle guidance meditations and Yogic lifestyle. And when I say Yoga, it’s not just exercise or breathing exercises or physical postures. Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, one of the oldest texts of Yoga talks of Yama and Niyama, which are the behavioural codes at the individual level and collective level. So unless we practice them, doing breathing exercises and doing postures will not give us results.

DO INDIAN SCIENCES TELL US HOW INTERGENERATIONAL TRAUMA AND ECOLOGICAL BELONGING ARE CONNECTED?

In all ancient indigenous cultures, I found one thing common is, apart from being connected with nature, they’re also connected with their ancestors. Our history, our ancestors, are living within us, not just genetically, but psychologically and spiritually. Ancestor healing is a major ritual in most of the indigenous cultures, including India. In India, we have birth charts. The moment you are born, depending on the time of the birth, a birth chart for every child is created. Most of the birth charts have a problem with ancestors. It’s called Pitru Dosha. Pitru are ancestors and Dosha is some problem. Now, obviously, we really don’t know what our ancestors were going through, right? Beyond a certain generation, we don’t even know our ancestors.  And we don’t even know what their life was. We don’t even know what trauma they went through. But whatever their trauma, we have inherited it and the trauma of Mother Earth. That’s also an ancestral trauma. There are a lot of rituals connected with the five elements – the element of sky or ether or Akaash; the element of air or Vayu; Fire; Water; and Earth – because many ancient indigenous cultures believe that the entire universe and our body all are made up of these five elements. 

WHAT IS AN EXAMPLE OF AN INDIAN PRACTICE ONE CAN DO TO WORK ON INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE HEALING?

One ritual we have is ending all the prayers with saying, “Shanti hi, Shanti hi, Shanti hi.” Shanti means peace. Why do all prayers end with saying peace three times? Just one time could have been enough. The three “peace” is invoking peace at three levels: one, individual, me and myself; two, collective, which is the community around me, society, Nature around me, my nation; and three, the global level and Universal level. 

Today, when there are wars happening, when there is so much destruction happening, when there is so much human suffering, working on peace and giving it priority is very important. I realized that, unfortunately, most of the Western researchers define peace as an absence of war or conflict. Peace is not seen as a positive construct in itself, which is there in India. In Indian literature, in Indian philosophy, peace is a positive construct. Health is a positive construct. Health is not as opposed to disease and peace is not opposed to war or conflict. So, if peace is a construct in itself, how do you arrive at it? How do you actually start experiencing peace from within? And chanting mantras, chanting simple Om, is one way.

Why do all prayers end with saying peace three times? The three “peace” is invoking peace at three levels: one, individual; two, collective ; and three, the global level and universal level. 

YOU’RE DESCRIBING HOW MODERN SCIENCES ARE “VALIDATING” TRADITIONAL SCIENCES. DOES THIS MEAN THEY ARE THE SAME?

We talk of ancient or indigenous wisdom at one level and modern at another. And a lot of people have this misconception that ancient is outdated and modern is more scientific, or modern is the complete know-how. Unfortunately – or fortunately – we realize that what is ancient is being rediscovered by many modern theorists. So we as humanity, we just have to take a U-turn and go back to our own cultural roots, civilizational roots. I realize that most of the indigenous cultures, they were connected and rooted in nNature. I’ve been to Hawai’i. I’ve met some of the Kahunas, the wisdom holders. And one of the Kahuna, I still remember, she held my hands and she said, “You are one of us.” I realized that she felt that and I felt that because of the Mother Earth. We could have lived in different lifetimes. We could have lived in different geographical locations, but ultimately, it’s all One.

I’ve been to Hawai’i. I’ve met some of the kahunas, the wisdom holders. And one of the Kahuna, I still remember, she held my hands and she said, “You are one of us.” I realized that she felt that and I felt that because of the Mother Earth.

IN FACING OUR 21ST CENTURY CHALLENGES, WHAT ROLE DO YOU THINK SPIRITUALITY AND THIS ANCIENT WISDOM CAN PLAY IN THE SOLUTIONS?

The industrial revolution has uprooted people from nature. Nature has become a resource to be used and exploited. People became a resource that needs to be used and exploited and we didn’t realize that we ourselves became this resource. This trauma needs to be addressed because today, corporates have to wake up to the spiritual aspect, which is not a philosophical aspect, it is a practical aspect. Most of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals are far away from being met. 

When we are spending so much money on sustainability goals, climate change, et cetera, what we don’t realize is, we just need to bring back that foundation of spirituality, Dharma, in everything we do. And the moment that foundation comes back, everything will fall into place. Right now, we have lost the bigger picture. We are all struggling with pieces of puzzles, trying to fit them here and there. But spirituality is like a bigger picture, and without looking at that bigger picture, we are not able to fit in those pieces of the puzzles.

mala-kapadia-headshot

About Mala

Dr. Mala Kapadia is a highly accomplished scholar and practitioner with a distinguished career spanning research, education, journalism, human resources, and consulting. She is a passionate advocate for integrating ancient Indian wisdom with modern approaches to wellbeing, leadership, and organizational development. Dr. Kapadia is currently the Director of Centre for Indigenous Knowledge Systems, at the Anaadi Foundation and the Principal Investigator for a Ministry of Education (India) Indian Knowledge Systems Research Project on Wellbeing and Happiness based on Ayurveda. Mala is also a Guru participating in Grateful to Gurus, an initiative by Indica Academy, in which she inspire young minds in ancient wisdom. She is also a member of the Advisory Council of Centre for Indian Knowledge Systems at Chanakya University, Bengaluru, India.

About the Anaadi Foundation

Anaadi Foundation is a spiritual organisation founded in 2015 and located near Palani in Tamil Nadu, India. With key focal areas on Education, Culture, Wellbeing and Sustainability, the Anaadi Foundation focuses on imparting Indian Knowledge Systems through various initiatives including Dharma Gurukulam, IKS-funded projects, publication of books, and training programs. The Anaadi Foundation provides various programs aimed at physical, emotional, and cognitive stability. These include the Mouna Sadhana program, which integrates asana, pranayama, dharana, dhyana, and Bhagavad Gita sessions. The foundation actively engages in sharing and preserving the depth of Indian culture, sciences, and values.

Want to know more about trauma and its impacts?

Watch the first virtual convening in our webinar series hosted by The Wellbeing Project and the Collective Change Lab. You can also visit our new hub for research and stories on intergenerational trauma. Together, we explore how we can move from trauma-informed to healing-centered ways of working for systemic change.

Discover the Wellbeing Movement in IndiaDiscover the Wellbeing Movement in India

Meet and hear stories from the changemakers championing the wellbeing movement in India.

Cultivating Hope Cultivating Hope

Supporting Changemaker Wellbeing

Studies consistently show that when people working for social change feel balanced, they can make a bigger difference. Prioritizing the wellbeing of all changemakers has the potential to amplify transformative change.

Cultivating Hope: Supporting Changemaker Wellbeing is a series of conversations hosted by Rohini Nilekani with leading philanthropists. Together they explore how the pressing funding gap for changemakers’ to have access to wellbeing resources is holding back progress both now and for future generations. 

MELINDA FRENCH GATES X ROHINI NILEKANI

Watch The 7-min Cut Of  The Conversation Between

MELINDA FRENCH GATES X ROHINI NILEKANI

Studies consistently show that when people working for social change feel balanced, they can make a bigger difference. Prioritizing the wellbeing of all changemakers has the potential to amplify transformative change.

Cultivating Hope: Supporting Changemaker Wellbeing is a series of conversations hosted by Rohini Nilekani (Season 1) with leading philanthropists. Together they explore how the pressing funding gap for changemakers’ access to wellbeing resources is holding back progress both now and for future generations.

This 7-minute cut is a recollection of our favorite highlights from the conversation!

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Philanthropy x Changemaker Wellbeing