Writing

Hindusim, Indic Psychology and indigenous Nature Worship

Hinduism isn’t a political party, a state, a language, a book, a religion or a formula. To me, it is nature worship in its very essence- nature exactly as she is — queer, nonbinary, complex, loving yet harsh, beyond gender, caste, race or class — no egoic delusions are allowed for too long even if a sadhak starts there- you can worship something deeply and also take from it for your gain, you can benefit from something and also care for it because you are a micro-cosm of the larger spiral you’re engulfed in, that you can’t see. When you’re taking from the other, you’re taking from your own self, when you’re hurting, you’re hurting also this same cosmic self. The outside lives inside and the inside shapes the outside.

It is an indigenously formed organic understanding of land, human and element, which has happened through thousands of mystics using their own bodies as practice and evidence (yoga). It has the capacity to become one with each individual nervous system’s needs – for as many people as there are , there can be those many paths. There is a privilege built within it to be agnostic, aetheist (naastik), to choose manifestations that suit your personal likes/dislikes, to follow orthodoxy, to break orthodoxy at your own risk, to engulf everything as you, to reject everyone as “not-you” and so on and on and on. 

What people over centuries have done to this metaphysical inquiry is a matter of absolute sadness and everyday I’m thrilled when young people take the time to read the written work of the mystics of their lineage, to talk to people who follow panths that their own families don’t, to attend celebrations that aren’t local to their own path, it adds depth to all of our lives today, depth that is sorely being forced into wisecracks and one-line slogans. 

Inner work is at the core of it, mystical work – which lives so organically in the Indian “zehen”.

This land is so very deep.

#innerworkisdeepwork #hinduism #mysticism #indigenous #yoga #nature #ego #sitting

Navigating Friendships when you’re the ‘Helper Type”

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Feeling lost in empathy land?
Reflecting on this past week, conversations with therapist/helpers/social worker types of friends across genders:
Seems like there’s a pattern in the lives of these folks (including me) of being a kind of one-sided emotional sink for our friends. People from our communities seek us out for our listening/ empathic skills and look to us for advice about their lives on love, parenting, grief, sex etc. This is wonderful. Being generous with our time in community is a gift to this world. But there’s also a whole negative aspect to this- and that is, this one sidedness. While I understand that empathic listening or solution finding might not be a strength for many, a reciprocal give and take of care is absolutely essential in relationship.These past few years, I’ve had to say goodbye to many such one sided friendships. It took a while to learn how to compassionately communicate the problem to my friends and let myself not be guilty for distancing myself from friends who did not understand.

Here are some tips if you find yourself in a similar position:

– Is someone that reaches out to you only about themselves really your “friend”? Have you defined for yourself what friendship is?

– Notice in yourself the tendency to reply to cries of help immediately. Before replying, ask – what is my intention with this person? Then, wait atleast 20 minutes before you reply.

PROCESS TIP:

If your friend seems to be not receptive to your help and you’ve spent 10 minutes of your day talking or texting with them, about their problem, ask them what exactly they are looking for, from you. If they communicate what they need and you can offer it, do it. Then let them know a bit about yourself.
Talk about your feelings, your thoughts.

Notice their response. Did they reciprocate? Did they ask about you? Did the conversation become about your day/your feelings/your relationship stuff too?

– If not, scroll back to your communication with this friend and check, have they been asking about you this past month at all? Is this a habit for them to reach out to you spontaneously, talk, seek help and say goodbye, without ever checking in on you? How does that make you feel? Have you enabled them to depend on you as their emotional sink?

– Often people will assume that the ‘helper type’ is strong and doesn’t need anything in return. The assumption is that if they need help they will ask. But I know, for a fact, we don’t ask. Due to our own childhood stuff, we have trouble asking/ we ask out of pent up resentment and then explode/snap. So, ask yourself- what blocks you from asking for support in return? If the answer is that this friend isn’t able to provide you the support you need too, then why are they your friend?

– Creating better dynamics for yourself will make space for you to welcome people who truly care about you too. Trust me, there are people like that out there and they can only come into your life, if you allow yourself the care and respect that you deserve.

 

Our community’s most marginalized deserve a unified nation

As Indian trauma-focused therapists with a social justice bent, I deeply believe that one of our most important roles is to continue to support our most traumatized clients as they heal from the shadows of their heritage. We have a responsibility as systemic-focused healers to advocate for more opportunities and empowerment across the board for a less fragmented, more unified nation, which is still very young and healing from the most basic survival trauma of rising from abject poverty and malnourishment.

As a social-justice focused therapist, I believe the most educated must reach the least privileged. I enjoy working with sociopolitical ideologies of all sorts, even if I don’t agree with them and work across the board with people and organizations of all political leanings who ask me to come in and do a workshop on trauma work and the Indian mind (from “far-right”, “centre” to “radical left” to put in western terms). There are anti-caste leanings in a majority of these spaces and it is not even an argument anymore to even suggest that someone believes they *should* be allowed to discriminate someone on the basis of their caste. It is known that caste-based discrimination is a regressive Hindu problem (shadow) that has been loudly declared as wrong for years together, which is why the majority of this community, across caste lines has been wanting access to education, money, power and more on equal grounds.

Nothing is more immature currently than Indian leftist politics, its understanding of what is happening in the Hindu majority’s grassroots mind and the speed at which it is losing its membership because of its absolute idiocy. It is worrying to say the least as someone who advocates for values on all ends of the spectrum.

Where the American Left and the Indian Left differ, is that atleast the former wants its own nation to progress through inclusive change of some sort. The Indian Left however is increasingly seeming completely uninterested in any form of national integration/growth, even at a college-ideas level and when asked for solutions, their options are more theorizing, vague accusations around the same flat idea of “power” and cancelling of even more parts of their own selves with little interest in any nuance. Cutting off your ability to even want to understand religion in a religious nation is just plain nonsense, and people are going to continue to run away from you.

Thank you, Kushal Mehra for naming these themes in simple, blunt language.

#indianpolitics#mentalhealthmatters#godeeper #nationalintegration #bharat #diversityisourstrength

Sexual Trauma in the Therapy Room

Inspired by @jourdfur’s zine, I created this art piece, a fabric vulva. While making it, I felt sad, glad, relieved, in love and obsessed, all at once. Holding it felt so important. Giving it weight and texture, talking to it, asking it what it needed to fully bloom in my hand. Sharing this beautiful poem about the vagina.

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Of Holding Pleasure in my Palm

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The Vagina Of Her Species by Grace Bordois

My vagina loves other vaginas.
Before it sleeps at night
it whispers vagina.
When it wakes up in the morning
it yawns for vagina and prays for vagina
and eats for vagina and goes out
to see fellow vaginas.
When it meditates
the mantra it says is,
vagina vagina, vagina, oh vagina.

My vagina loves other vaginas.
It sees vagina everywhere–
hot vagina on the coffee table,
bold vagina in the senate,
holy vaginas in the church,
zero gravity vaginas in space,
spicy vaginas in Mexico,
frozen vaginas in an igloo.
My vagina sees the world
as a big, may be pinkish,
or reddish, perhaps brown
or black, beautiful vagina.

My vagina loves other vaginas.
Other vaginas love my vagina.
Vaginas love vaginas.
Everybody loves vaginas.
Poets love vaginas.
Heroes loved vaginas.
Penises love vaginas.
The church loves vaginas.
Hell even god loves vaginas.
The universe is in love with vaginas.

My vagina loves other vaginas,
but not its own self.
That little naughty pulse in my vagina
always beats for other vaginas,
but not for its own self.
It gets love from other vaginas
but from itself.
My vagina loves other vaginas
but hates itself.
My vagina loves not itself.
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April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month. While that is super important to discuss, I’m complimenting those narratives by focusing on Sexuality and Pleasure Awareness, since we seem to talk about sex only when there is sexual violence involved. Stay tuned : )

#sexualpleasureawarenessmonth #saam #april #narratives

Pleasure Activism: The Vulva Grounds

“My vulva is a houseboat, an anchor, a secure, soothing refuge, an abundant space of realignment. It has been with me through the vagaries of life, and it has wisdom stored within it that is accessible to me whenever I want it. Pleasure grows from me and transforms me when I connect to it.”:
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April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month. While that is super important to discuss, I’m complimenting those narratives by focusing on Sexuality and Pleasure Awareness, since we seem to talk about sex only when there is sexual violence involved. Stay tuned : )

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Of Watching a Vulva Houseboat

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Yes and No

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Question 1- I’ve been getting a lot this week: What are healthy boundaries really, in a close relationship/friendship? What if I say yes, but I mean, no? Does having a sense of what I need make me selfish when others don’t meet me there?

My answer: Healthy boundaries are beautiful, open, porous exchanges between people that are willing to truly understand each other and themselves in relation to each other. Healthy boundaries are meant to be changed, renegotiated, reconversed because needs change, life changes, time changes us. They take effort and work, and care to keep up but once they exist, you feel loved and understood in a way that makes you feel like someone truly has your back as you have theirs.

What are boundaries that are unhealthy?

From “Yes doesn’t count if you can’t say No” (Googling this article will help):
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Whenever you give up what is most important to you in order to either get what you need, or to keep the peace, you are allowing your boundaries to be violated.
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Ask yourself if you knowingly or unknowingly violate your partner’s boundaries by taking advantage of a lack of clarity on their part. This is too common- “oh, they are unclear and needy of me, let me just get what I need from them until they clarify”
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When there is no opportunity to negotiate, when boundaries become walls without conversation
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When you communicated to your best and your friend/partner just does not want to meet you there, responds with defense after defense or blames you for “making things difficult”.

– :
When you or they overpromise/underdeliver and don’t have or are unwilling to consistently learn how to negotiate differences.
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#therapy #learn #grow #becomebetter #dobetter#boundaries #no #yes #culture #relationship

 

The Perils of Calling Yourself an Empath

“There is something so deeply capitalist, so intensely supremacist, about turning the normalcy of life connecting with life into something special, something unique, that gets traded as a kind of elitism. There is something so dangerous about turning this experience of connection into something fragile, something that has to be protected, the overwhelmed deeply spiritual empath in our midst.”

An excellent article here.

Of Millenial Couples in Therapy

It is such an interesting phenomenon, in my couples and family therapy work, to see more and more women (25-40 years of age), across cultures, mostly middle-class, voicing their struggles in their relationships, pushing their partners to show up better, seeking therapy, earning more than their (male) partners at work, and overall having SO much ambition and drive, while more and more men in that age group are struggling with questions like- what is my passion? What is an empowered masculinity today, and how should I show up? The wiser men are seeking help, the not so wise ones are participating in the buildup of slowly exploding pressure cooker. We are really heading toward an overall crisis in relationship durability, if we don’t invest in our growth, maturity and development urgently. Catch the train!