Sudha Rani Kailas, MD, PhD - Holistic Psychiatrist

11/06/2025

Tulsi: the Breath of Saraswati
By Sudha Rani Kailas, MD, PhD

There are certain plants that seem to remember us, and Tulsi (Ocimum sanctum, Holy Basil) is one of them. Across the world, she sits at the heart of courtyards and thresholds, catching the morning sun as though gathering blessings to distribute throughout the day. She is tended not merely as a plant, but as a presence: a living embodiment of purity, clarity, and steady devotion. To those steeped in the Vedic wisdom across time, Tulsi is not only sacred; she is kin.

Most commonly, Tulsi is associated with the deity Vishnu and His avatars. Her mythology radiates with stories of steadfast love, protection, and surrender. Yet underneath these well-known tales is a subtler current, one that flows toward the quiet banks where Saraswati Devi dwells. This is an exploration of that gentle confluence: Tulsi as a plant of sattva, clarity, memory, learning, and inner illumination, all qualities governed by Saraswati, Goddess of wisdom, music, and culture.

The Sattvic Signature of Tulsi
In Ayurveda, Tulsi is described as sattvic, a quality of purity, lightness, serenity, and balance. Sattva is the mind’s natural state when free from agitation or sedation. It is the same quality that governs the awakened intellect, inspired speech, and intuitive insight, all attributes of Saraswati Devi.

Tulsi’s fragrance itself is an instrument of sattva. A single crushed leaf releases a brightness that lifts the prana straight upward through the spine, as though clearing cobwebs from forgotten corners of the mind. Tulsi’s slender, flexible stems sway in the breeze, like subtle shifts of intuition and inspiration; and just as Saraswati sharpens discernment, Tulsi’s fragrance awakens presence and focuses awareness, her aroma rising in bright green spirals that clear the mind like gusts of mountain air. Tulsi is not forceful. She teaches gently. Her medicine feels like a hand smoothing the brow, easing tension and allowing surrender.

Ayurveda describes Tulsi as an hridaya herb, opening the emotional heart, and a medhya herb, supporting intellect, memory, and mental clarity. She is known for her pungent rasa, or taste, delivering crisp and sharp qualities at first touch and slowly warming along the tongue. A delicate bitterness may accompany the pungency, finally ending in an ever so faintly sweet note. A light astringency gently lifts, allowing cleansing and clearing, with an expansive quality of both minty and peppery flavors on the palate.

Energetically, Tulsi brings forth a feeling of upward momentum: a brightening behind the eyes, a warm expansion through the chest, and a soft widening of the ribcage that suddenly gives the breath more room to live. Like the long stalks that hold her pale, delicate flowers of white and lavender, Tulsi offers a decadent sensory experience as part of her medicine. Bright, crisp, and slightly spicy, she is warming and awakening, her fragrance lingering in the sinuses like the echo of a mantra, steadying the mind towards a focused serenity.

Tulsi as the Breath of Saraswati Devi
There is a quiet strain of folklore found in South Indian oral traditions that Saraswati once blessed certain plants with the gift of amplifying clarity and comprehension. Among these, Tulsi was considered the most virtuous. In some lineages, Tulsi leaves are placed on manuscripts, altars, and instruments before performances as an invocation of Saraswati. The belief is that Tulsi carries a frequency that keeps the mind from wandering, steadying attention like a flame in a windless room. Whether historical or devotional, the symbolism is unmistakable: Tulsi is a botanical embodiment of focused awareness.

Though Saraswati is not directly named in the classical Tulsi mythology, their energies resonate profoundly. Saraswati presides over mantra, speech, learning, fluid intelligence, flow states, and the subtle currents of creativity, and Tulsi supports precisely these channels within the human system. Even its physical form echoes Saraswati’s symbolism, as the small, tender, lightly serrated leaves of Tulsi are reminiscent of the veena strings plucked by the Goddess.

Saraswati’s presence is often felt in the quiet moments of breath before speech, the pause where insight is born. Tulsi is one of Ayurveda’s greatest herbs, restoring the truth of prana: vitality, energy, and clarity. It clears the internal energetic nadis, decongests the chest, and supports the breath’s natural rhythm. A plant that steadies breath automatically harmonizes thought. In this way, Tulsi prepares the inner landscape for Saraswati’s presence.

Traditionally, teachers, speakers, singers, and orators across India imbibe in Tulsi tea before recitation. Its heat is gentle, opening the throat without drying the mucosa. The voice emerges clearer, richer, more resonant. Saraswati Devi, whose vehicle is the swan, a graceful symbol of discernment, governs the subtle purity of sound. Tulsi’s influence on the respiratory passages and vocal cords make it a humble but powerful ally in vocal and musical arts.

During the festival of Saraswati Puja, students in Vedic households place a Tulsi sprig near their books or on the altar. The intention is not worship of the plant, but the pairing of two energies:
(a) the wisdom, eloquence, and discriminating insight of Saraswati Devi and
(b) the purity, devotion, and clarity of subtle Tulsi Devi.
Together they create an inner ecosystem in which learning becomes joyful and luminous.

Musicians keep a Tulsi plant near their practice space. Writers sip Tulsi tea before settling into the creative flow. Meditators burn a drop of Tulsi essential oil to sharpen concentration. In all these practices, Tulsi acts as a subtle doorway, a plant that ushers the mind inward with softness and precision.

The Healing Medicine of Tulsi
Modern neuroscience confirms what Ayurveda knows: Tulsi is an enhancer of mental luminosity. She enhances cognitive flexibility, supports neuroprotection, and clears mental channels, freeing them from kleshas, or cobwebs, that decay the mind. All of these processes restore mental clarity, lifting brain fog, so the light of consciousness may shine bright. That clear light is Saraswati’s domain.

Tulsi is one of those rare herbs whose medicinal spectrum touches nearly every biological system. She serves as an adaptogen for stress modulation, working along anti-inflammatory pathways through the modulation of NF-κB, reducing cortisol, normalizing endocrine dysregulation, and improving general stress management. She supports the nervous system through anxiolytic and neuroprotective actions mediated by phytochemicals such as eugenol, rosmarinic acid, and ursolic acid, all which provide their protective effects through antioxidant pathways that reduce neuroinflammation and harness protection against toxicity. Tulsi has both anti-microbial and anti-viral properties, and through her heating qualities, balances the digestive fires of the belly. She provides a pranic lift without agitation.

Holistically, this mirrors Saraswati’s power to organize chaos into harmony. She is the Deity of coherence, the one who turns noise into music, confusion into understanding, and raw information into wisdom. Tulsi’s medicine reflects that same harmonizing principle within the body, allowing Saraswati’s energies to flow with ease and vibrancy.

The Spiritual Psychology of Tulsi
Tulsi offers a quiet spiritual psychology, a set of teachings that mirror the subtle guidance of Saraswati’s path. Her first lesson is one of purity without severity. Saraswati does not demand renunciation or harsh austerity. She invites refinement, a gentle clearing of what obscures our inner light. Tulsi echoes this invitation. She cleanses without stripping, restores without overwhelming, and reminds us that true purity arises from balance, not force. Her medicine is soft, steady, and precise, like a ghee lamp clearing and illuminating a stagnant room.
Her second lesson is presence over perfection. Both Tulsi and Saraswati reveal their gifts only when we pause long enough to notice them. A single breath with Tulsi, the slightly camphoraceous scent of a juicy leaf pressed between the fingers, the warmth of tea blooming in the chest, invites us back into the immediacy of experience. Saraswati’s wisdom, too, flows most freely when the mind is quiet and receptive, unbothered and unclenched. Together, they show that insight does not arise from striving but from a kind of relaxed attentiveness, a willingness to simply listen, breathe, and notice.

Finally, Tulsi teaches devotion to the path of Truth. In the garden she stands upright through storm and sun, resilient yet tender, offering herself to the world without demand. Her devotion is not to any single deity but to the continuum of life itself: to breath, to clarity, to the ever-unfolding present. Saraswati’s devotion is similar; she is the guardian of truth as it reveals itself moment by moment, guiding us toward understanding with compassion rather than judgment. Tulsi and Saraswati whisper the same message: that wisdom unfolds through relationship, a love affair with knowledge, nurtured through sincerity, curiosity, and the courage to see clearly. In this way, Tulsi thrives in the garden as an act of love.

Tulsi as a Teacher for the Modern Mind
For the anxious mind, Tulsi says: Breathe here.�For the scattered mind, Tulsi says: Come home.�For the burdened heart, Tulsi says: Let me help you carry this.�For the creative seeker, she whispers: You were born to remember.

Tulsi is a botanical bridge between physiology and divinity: an herb that honors the intellect, intuition, and sacred breath. Goddess Saraswati responds through the clarity that follows, the insight that arises naturally when the mind is soothed and bright. Tulsi is both a medicinal plant and a cognitive ally. Her actions on mind, breath, and voice, reflect core aspects of Saraswati Devi’s gifts to humanity. Through her biochemical constituents, Tulsi exerts quantifiable neurocognitive benefits. Through her Ayurvedic attributes, she supports both the heart and the mind, and through cultural practice, she supports rituals of learning, creativity, and spiritual discipline. Tulsi may be understood as a botanical extension of Saraswati’s consciousness: a plant whose healing properties activate the physiological and psychological foundations required for wisdom, insight, and creativity to unfold.

To sit with a Tulsi plant is to sit with a living mantra:
Om Tum Tulasaaya Namaha!�

Her leaves smell of sweet serenity, her roots hold ancient memories, and her presence sharpens the inner ear through which Saraswati’s guidance is heard.

If you close your eyes and breathe near her long enough, you may feel what generations before us have felt: Tulsi is not merely grown but invited, not merely consumed but befriended, not merely medicinal but illuminating. Even in a simple cup of Tulsi tea, we taste the meeting of earth and divinity: a quiet infusion of clarity from the Goddess of wisdom herself. She is, softly and beautifully, a plant of Saraswati.

10/21/2025

Shubh Diwali! May Light triumph over darkness in our universe, leading us to the sweetness of amrita! Though rather unorthodox in celebration of this time of year, I hope these musings over Datura inspire each of us in this growth. Datura continues to bloom in Northern New Mexico, a manifestation of Lakshmi Devi as Bhoomi Devi. In this way, I celebrate Lakshmi Devi in one of the many forms of her spleandor! Jai Sri Mata!

"Om Shrim Hrim Klim Hrim Shrim MahaLakshmayae Svaha!"

How to Digest Toxicity: as inspired by Datura
By Sudha Rani Kailas, MD, PhD

Opening Invocation
“He who drinks poison becomes immortal, so the flower that holds poison is offered to Him.”

Under the silvery eye of the moon, the Datura metel opens its ghostly blossoms: pale, spiraled, and fragrant like the breath of forgotten dreams. In India’s sacred geography, this is no ordinary flower. Known as Unmatta (the maddening one) and Shivapriya (beloved of Shiva), Datura has long been woven into the ritual fabric of Shaivism, an offering to Nataraja, the form of Shiva who dances at the edge of destruction and creation, in the limbo of transformation.

In Vedic thought, every plant carries both soma and visha, nectar and poison, the twin forces that sustain the universe. Datura embodies this paradox perfectly. It is both healer and harbinger of madness, medicine and toxin, illusion and revelation. And so it belongs to Nīlakaṇṭha, the form of Shiva who holds poison in his throat and transforms it into blue radiance: luminous like the bioluminescent fungi, brilliant like the rivers under the light of the full moon, resplendent with the quietude of cold twilight.

“Om Haum Joom Saha, Shiva Yogeshwaraya Namaha”

I. Vedic Roots and the Doctrine of Poison
Though Datura itself is not explicitly named in the Rig Veda, its qualities are sung through the hymns to Soma and Rudra. In the Vedic worldview, poison (visha) is not merely a substance, it is a force of transformation. Atharva Veda, the volume that holds the wisdom of Ayurveda, speaks of herbs that “stupefy the senses to awaken deeper insight,” echoing the plant’s later associations with trance and tapas, that transformative fire that burns away impurities, ego, and ignorance, preparing the practitioner for spiritual awakening.

Shiva, already evolved into the roaring ascetic Rudra, is the deity who not only endures poison but transfigures it. The legend of Halahala, the poison churned from the cosmic ocean, defines the archetype of Rudra: he drinks what others reject and bears darkness without being consumed by it. In this sense, Datura is a living metaphor for the Rudraic path — the acceptance of toxicity as a means to transcendence. When Shiva drank the Halahala, the world’s poison flowed into his throat, preventing it from destroying the world. Yet he was not consumed. In that act, he becomes Nīlakaṇṭha, the blue-throated one, and his stillness surpasses death. The poison doesn’t vanish, it transforms. His throat becoming a lustrous, cerulean blue is a living paradox of danger and beauty. It shimmers like the iridescent feathers of a peacock, gleams like the carapace of a poisonous beetle, and glows with the mysterious shadows of twilight spilling over a mountain lake. In that transformation, the poison itself becomes a mirror of consciousness: terrifying and alluring, deadly yet sacred, a radiant invitation to witness the alchemy of shadow into illumination. Through this cobalt glow, the world glimpses that what threatens us, when embraced with awareness, can awaken a deeper, radiant life.

Just as Shiva’s throat beamed with the alchemy of poison, so too does the Datura bloom carry its own paradoxical light. The flower’s pale trumpet unfurls at night, glowing against the dark, as if echoing the deity’s inner radiance. Its fragrance is intoxicating, a subtle warning of its power, yet like Nīlakaṇṭha’s mystical throat, it holds both danger and awakening. To offer Datura to Shiva, or to meditate upon it, is to confront the duality of life and death, poison and nectar, fear and illumination. In the flower’s fragile yet potent presence, one glimpses the same transformative truth embodied in Shiva: that what threatens, when embraced with awareness and devotion, can become a source of sacred light.

II. The Mythic and Ritual Role of Datura
In Shaivite temples, particularly in North India and Nepal, Datura flowers and seeds are offered to the Shivalinga on Mondays and during the sacred dark moon of Maha Shivaratri. Its presence signifies surrender to the paradoxes of life: the beauty that kills and death that liberates.

In ta***ic traditions, Datura’s unmatta shakti (energy of divine madness) is invoked to dissolve the boundaries of ordinary consciousness. It is said that various ascetic lineages of Shiva, such as the Aghoris and Kapalis, used Datura in small ritual doses to enter altered states where maya (illusion) falls away. Datura’s effects were always revered with intention, mantra, and discipline. The sacrament was taken as a confrontation with the shadow, a dance with death guided by austerity.

“Move into the central darkness of the flower, becoming mesmerized and intoxicated by it’s fragrance, beauty, and iridescence. Fold into the self, and begin again. Begin again… begin again… with each breath, each inhalation, each intoxication, we begin again. Hold the exhalation, and be free. Be free of this life, this tie, this self.”

Tantrics do not imbibe for pleasure or escape. They do not partake in random ingestion on some egoic whim. The intoxication we experience isn’t the dull intoxication suited to the modern culture of consumption. Instead, we reach a heightened state of being in which one is enraptured, mesmerized, and hypnotized by the beauty, power, and presence of that something being experienced: the Datura flower, her five-pointed vision, the intoxicating fragrance, and perhaps even her song, all inspire a sense of connectivity and oneness. It is the soul’s surrender to awe, wonder, and the numinous, allowing perception to expand and ordinary boundaries to soften. There is a dissolution in the experience, a receptivity inside a world glowing with a subtle pulsatility in its vibration.

III. Botanical and Symbolic Dimensions
The Datura bloom, with its delicate trumpet and five pronounced lobes, is more than botanical elegance: it is a sacred geometry that mirrors cosmic principles. In Vedic symbolism, the number five (pañca) carries profound spiritual significance. The Five Elements (Pancha Mahabhutas) of Earth, Water, Fire, Air, and Ether are the building blocks of the universe. Shiva, as the cosmic dancer Nataraja, harmonizes these elements through his dance. The five lobes of Datura echo this cosmic balance, reminding the devotee that life, death, and consciousness are woven through the elemental fabric.

The Five Senses mediate human perception, while the mind serves as an interpreter and filter of experience. Offering or meditating upon the five-pointed Datura is symbolic of transcending ordinary perception, awakening subtle awareness beyond illusion (maya), just as Nataraja’s dance reveals the hidden rhythms of existence. The Five Faces of Shiva (Panchamukha) are responsible for overseeing creation, preservation, destruction, concealment, and blessing. The Datura flower, with its five-fold symmetry, mirrors this divine multiplicity: the bloom itself becomes a microcosm of Shiva’s manifold nature.

Vedic philosophy describes five layers of existence: physical, vital, mental, intellectual, and eternal cosmic blissfulness. These are the the Five Koshas, or layered sheaths, of the Self. The Datura’s points remind us that true devotion or meditation engages all layers of being, guiding the aspirant from the gross to the subtle, much as Shiva’s presence transforms ordinary perception into conscious awareness. The five-pointed bloom is visually striking, especially under moonlight, its symmetry a natural yantra, weaving its sacred geometry into our very existence. In ritual, this geometry reinforces order within chaos, echoing Shiva’s mastery over destruction and creation, inviting the devotee into contemplation of the divine pattern within apparent disorder. Each of the Datura’s five points reaches outward like a finger of light, tracing the rhythm of the five elements, the five senses, and the five faces of Shiva. In its symmetry, one sees not only the elegance of nature, but the sacred geometry of consciousness itself, a reminder that the poison it carries can, in awareness, become a key to the infinite.

III. Biochemical Nature of Datura
The Datura plant grows where few others dare: in wastelands, by cremation grounds, near temple ruins, at garbage sites, and here in the streets and mountains of arid, high desert Northern New Mexico… places consecrated to impermanence. Its trumpet-like flowers open at dusk, symbolizing the mind’s awakening in darkness. The white and violet varieties mirror Shiva’s dual aspects: Shiva as pure consciousness and Shakti as the creative force permeating nature.

Datura is abundant with a rich profile of chemical compounds. Because of its diverse bioactive nature, is at once narcotic, sedative, antispasmodic, and antiseptic. Used by societies across both the Old and New Worlds, it has long offered relief from asthma, burns, pains, and hysteria. Just as these compounds both heal and harm, so too does the universe oscillate between creation and dissolution. Considered ornamental and beautiful by some, yet feared as a noxious w**d by others, Datura dwells in the realm of paradox: a being of limbo, mystery, and conundrum.

While terpenes bring out her sweet fragrance and glycosides offer anti-inflammatory support, the elusive trinity of alkaloids within datura, namely atropine, scopolamine, and hyoscyamine, embody the triad of illusion, expansion, and surrender. These tropane alkaloids link her to a secretive, shadowed lineage within the Solanaceae family, the so-called “Nightshade Sisterhood.” These plants share a liminal energy, each capable of shifting perception, opening doorways between the ordinary and the uncanny, the mortal and the divine. These properties are that divine energy of madness, of unmatta shakti.

Atropine blocks the neurotransmitter acetylcholine in the nervous system, potentially causing delirium, confusion, and hallucinations. It can create maya, illusion: distortion, a sense of bended reality, where perception is altered, mirroring the Vedic idea of the world as deceptive. Scopolamine crosses the blood-brain barrier more easily and affects memory, perception, and motion. It creates a sense of expanded consciousness, often associated with dreamy states, dissociation, and a feeling of “floating out of the body.” It induces a loosening of ordinary perception, similar to meditative or trance states. Hyoscyamine also inhibits acetylcholine, but in peripheral nerves, where it relaxes smooth muscle and reduces secretions. It can produce muscle weakness, decreased motor control, and cause delirium and hallucinations in higher doses. The motor effects may paralyze one into stillness, allowing the suspension of ordinary movement to experience transcendence.

Most fascinating is that we receive the energy of Datura through the senses more deeply than we may imagine. Yes, we see her pale, watery structure, the spiraled architecture of her bloom; we inhale her intoxicating perfume rich with terpenes and alkaloids that mingle invisibly with the night air. But the exchange does not end there. Every pore of our skin, every filament of hair, even the mucosa of our breath, becomes an instrument of reception. The plant’s volatile oils and subtle aromatic molecules enter the body through the air, through skin, through the field of awareness itself.

She does not require ingestion to teach or to heal. Her vibration communicates through proximity, through scent, form and presence. Like the hum of a mantra, her soundless signature frequency alters perception, shifting inner tides in those sensitive enough to listen. She informs us, guides us, and heals us simply as we walk along city streets where she blooms in quiet rebellion, growing through cracks of concrete, whispering her lessons of resilience and surrender. Datura reminds us that the body is not separate from the environment; it is a living sensorium, attuned to the subtle music of the world. And she, among all flowers, plays one of the most hauntingly beautiful notes, calling us back into the wildness and madness, the unmatta shakti of our femininity.

IV. Datura as Inner Alchemy
To meditate upon Datura is to contemplate the alchemical act of Shiva: the transmutation of poison into amṛta (immortality). The yogic path mirrors this chemistry: transforming visha (pain, anger, ego) through the fire of awareness. In Kundalini Yoga, the ascent of serpent power through the chakras is itself a form of “poison rising,” a purification through awakening. Going deeper, amṛta (अमृत) literally means “not-death; ”“a” = not / without, and “mṛta” = death (from the root mṛ, “to die”). So amṛta is immortality. More subtly, it is the pure essence of that which cannot decay: the nectar of undying consciousness. In the Vedic and Puranic imagination, amṛta is both a divine elixir churned from the cosmic ocean (Samudra Manthana) and a symbol of inner liberation, the realization of the Self beyond birth and death.

When Shiva drinks the hālāhala poison and holds it in his throat, he prevents it from destroying the world, and in that act, he becomes Nīlakaṇṭha, the blue-throated one. His stillness turns death into amṛta; the poison doesn’t vanish, it transforms. So whenever we speak of amṛta in the meditative or alchemical sense, it is both literally the nectar of immortality, and metaphysically, the state where awareness transcends mortal life. Thus, Datura’s lesson is that of transformation. She teaches the adept to walk fearlessly through delusion, to find nectar within toxin, and to bloom even in the wasteland of one’s own shadow.

Closing Reflection
“Where the wild datura grows, there Shiva’s laughter echoes.”

To understand Datura is to understand Shiva’s compassion: fierce, paradoxical, liberating. The plant’s poison becomes a mirror for our inner toxins, its night-bloom a symbol of the soul’s hidden blossoming. Datura does not invite us to consume her; rather, she invites us to contemplate her. To see, in her white spiraled petals, the secret of spiritual evolution: that transcendence is not in denying the poison, but in holding it, as Shiva did, in the cosmic spiral and sacred churning, until it turns to Light.

May we continue to be blessed by that radiant Light and her abundant bounty. And if we can remain fully present, breathing, witnessing, becoming, then perhaps we will find ourselves exactly where we are meant to be, whether it is now, tomorrow, or somewhere beyond the reach of time.

"For the soul, there is never birth nor death. Nor, having once been, does it ever cease to be. It is unborn, eternal, ever-existing, undying and primeval. The soul is not slain when the body is slain." ~Bhagavad Gita

“Om Tryambakam Yajamahe Sugandhim Pushtivardhanam, Urvarukamiva Bhandhanan Mrithyor Mukshiya Mamritat Om”
We worship the three-eyed One, who is fragrant and who nourishes all. Like a gourd organically detaches itself from the bo***ge of the stem, may we be liberated from death, and realize our immortal selves, amṛta.

06/02/2025

May we return poppies to our lands in all her splendour and wonder, beauty and tranquility, sweetness and softness. May we be inspired and breathe her medicine as nature intended. ❤️❤️

03/06/2025

Honored to be invited to speak at Creativity and Madness again this year! Please join us, and use the code SUDHA2025 at checkout for a discount on your registration. ;-)

🎭 Speaker Spotlight 🌟

Sudha Rani Kailas, MD, PhD - Holistic Psychiatrist

Dr. Sudha Kailas explores the profound role of sound on mental and physical health, its influence on shaping our inner and outer worlds, and the universal significance of sound across spiritual traditions. As the most subtle form of matter, sound transcends boundaries of culture and belief, weaving emotion and connection through the human experience. While the noise of modern life can disrupt well-being, the intentional and conscious use of sound—especially through mantra—offers a powerful tool for healing and transformation.

This session delves into the science and mysticism of mantra, illustrating how sound vibrations influence physical, emotional, and mental states. Dr. Kailas will guide attendees through the art of harnessing sound as a therapeutic practice, offering insights into its tangible effects on well-being and consciousness.

✨This isn’t just another CE/CME event—it’s an experience designed to ignite your creativity, deepen your professional insights, and inspire personal growth. Creativity and Madness 2025 is where continuing education meets transformation.

📍 Santa Fe, NM & Live-Streamed Virtually
📅 July 31 - August 3, 2025
🎓 Earn 16+ Hours CE/CME (ACCME, APA, ASWB, NBCC, ANCC)
👩‍⚕️ Physicians can claim AMA PRA Category 1 Credit™

Be part of this extraordinary journey—one that blends art, psychology, and healing in a way that leaves a lasting impact.

🌟Learn more & register: creativityandmadness.com/santafe

02/18/2025

Exciting News!

I am looking to create online courses on integrating Ayurveda into clinical practice.

Learn how to enhance your patient care around the topics of psychiatry, psychology, and mental health by incorporating Ayurvedic principles and techniques.

I would love to hear your thoughts and feedback on this idea before I finalize the product. Your input is invaluable to me!

10/30/2024

⭐️⭐️⭐️ Shubh Dhanteras! ⭐️⭐️⭐️

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Happy Diwali! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

On this brilliant Dhanteras, second night of Diwali, Lord Yama is revered! Also known as DharmaRaja, YamaRaj determines the fate of our souls as we depart our bodies by collecting them in a mace at the time of death. This beautiful imagery makes the transition potentially inviting! Based on the virtues of the soul’s lifetime, Yama either purifies the soul and grants it the freedom of Swarga Loka, or the soul moves on to Naraka, or Pitru Loka, where its actions are assessed. While Naraka is comprised of 28 various chambers of temporary purgatory across the universe, some of them are quite dark, and souls may become trapped in the density, without an opportunity for rebirth.

In balancing the energies summoned forth in the worship of Yama, Diwali concludes with Lakshmi Puja on Karthik Amavasya, the new moon of October/November, when the sun and moon both reside in Tula Rashi, or the sign of Libra, known for its generous, conscientious, peacemaking values. The most magnanimous, inextinguishable illumination of Maha Lakshmi Devi sustains the sign of Tula and her presiding graha, Shukra, aka Venus. Shukra is presently residing as the evening star, one house down in Vrishchika Rashi, and is most revered as the planet of love, beauty, stability, balance, and harmony. It is the ever-present golden light of Maha Lakshmi Devi that both illumines and illuminates Shukra and also us here on Bhoomi Devi, our dear planet Earth.

⭐️ Om Shreem Hreem Kleem Hreem Shreem Maha Lakshmayae Svaha! ⭐️

May the luminescence within you glow brightly as we surrender to the oncoming darkness of winter. May YamaRaj observe our loved ones in Pitru Loka with kindness and bring them back to us in a gentle and loving manner. And may we all continue to remain in service to one another with humility and grace until our time comes to transition into the hands of Yama.

Jai Sri Mata!