pictured below with ESTHER PEREL AT THE COMPLETION OF THE RELATE TRAINING IN 2017 IN BOULDER COLORADO. THIS TRAINING HELPED ME WITH MY JOURNEY TO BECOME A CENTERED AND LOVING MAMA DESPITE PTSD, DIVORCE, UNDIAGNOSED NEURODIVERGENCE, AND IMMIGRATION-RELATED ESTRANGEMENT IN MY FAMILY!

BIO

pronunciation: Bidisha (bi-di-sha), n. another name for the Goddess Kali; an ancient indigenous capital sacred to Buddhists in India; now abandoned.

pronouns: she/they

I grew up between India and the U.S., the only child of a single mom social work professor. After earning two Ivy League degrees, and winning $25k through the Yale Entrepreneurial Institute for a cleantech company I co-founded based on indigenous wisdom, for five years, I served as a program and founding curriculum director for the Dalai Lama Fellowship, which empowered millennials addressing community needs at the intersection of justice, peace and ecology for hundreds of leaders from more than 30 countries. I created a Heart, Head, and Hands coaching program and flagship experience (including a week-long in-person summit and a year-long virtual journey) focused on self, collaboration across differences, and designing ethical systems. Today, my Heart, Head and Hands curriculum continues to be offered at Stanford, University of Virginia, and other institutions. I strive to bring the feeling of, wisdom, playfulness, joy and possibility inspired by His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama to all my work.

In conjunction with my team, I presented about this work to His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama, and secured funding from him — and millions more from several foundations.

I was featured in this micro-documentary, and at a panel at the 2013 Festival of Faiths in Louisville, KY. Check out my post about "The Power of Secular Sangha."

Harvard Divinity School invited me to join its cohort of 80 spiritual innovators who are community leaders. And the Association for Contemplative Mind in Society for invited me to speak about Radicalizing Contemplative Education.

In 2017, I became a parent, and in 2020, I began living with an autoimmune condition called celiac disease that increased my social isolation and limited my choices because I have to cook almost all my meals and can’t eat out. I had to learn to set non-negotiable boundaries around eating, sleeping, resting, and breath work. And I also dove deep into the autoimmune paleo protocol, recommended by one of my former mentees. I also started doing more visualization and embodied meditation after joining a container called The Formation Project, facilitated by the Afro-Brazilian Zen priest called Gabe Wilson and by elders and peers I respect who still hold me accountable to be my truest self today. I’m honored to call Mirabai Bush, co-author of Walking Each Other Home with Ram Dass, is my spiritual mentor.

Then the pandemic hit, and I co-created a homeschooling parenting pod with my closest BIPOC sisters called Earth School. I was grateful to my partner for the chance to slow down, reconnect with my breath, and heal my sleep apnea through mastering the Swiss made, gamified, medical didgeridoo.

In 2023, I received a late diagnosis of ADHD after being told by a previous doctor that I was “too successful to have ADHD.” all felt like too much. I was overwhelmed and struggling to regulate my emotions and harness my mind’s tendency to gallop in four different directions while caring for my child and balancing the hormonal shifts that come with midlife. Luckily, I realized I was part of a lost generation of women who were all receiving late diagnoses. Together, we began to wonder: what if neurodivergence is the earth’s way of healing itself?

I had already been reading a lot about ADHD and using a lot of practices recommended by ADHD’rs for many years prior. It felt like a relief to receive a formal diagnosis. I began coaching neurodivergent teams and individuals looking for stronger relationships, and the rest is history.

I also joined an online support group called NeuroQueer. As I began to learn from neurodivergent folks who were embodying their own leadership, I finally felt more able to be with my own challenges, without medication. Learning to hold my contradictions has allowed me to bring my full self into all my relationships and show up as the parent, family member, and meditation guide and contemplative experience designer I was born to be.

I can help you bridge the gap between letting go of difficult emotions, rejection sensitivity, disorganization, procrastination, and ideating and innovating anew.

As an embodied leadership coach and facilitator, I support social innovators, BIPOC, and neurodivergent leaders and their loved ones to strengthen their most meaningful relationships in face of conflict, pressure, and self-sabotage because the quality of our relationships is the quality of our lives, as my teacher Esther Perel says.

I am a somatic leadership coach and bodyworker, immigrant, respectful parent, and author living between Potawotomie land (Lawrence, KS), and Chochenyo-Ohlone territory (Oakland). I cut my teeth as a sex educator and AIDS activist at 13, in the mid 1990’s. Fast forward to my making an award-winning documentary film about sex trafficking in Nepal when I was 20. After studying Ethnicity, Race and Migration and Global Change Science and Policy at Yale, I’ve spent years as a climate activist working for Ashoka’s Environmental Innovations Initiative, for the Tamil Nadu Organic Farmers’ Movement, and for 350.org. Harvard Divinity School recognized me as one of eighty spiritually innovative community leaders. I excel in coaching highly sensitive social innovators who are cultivating healthy habits and overcoming challenges (healing anxiety, parenting, preparing for major events, addressing stress and  anxiety including grief related to our polycrises).

I’m trained in Cognitive Behavior Therapy, motivational interviewing, and Dialectical Behavior Therapy and certified as a mental health coach; I have supported individuals and family members affiliated with companies including Udacity, Palo Alto Networks, Asana, Booster Fuels, Hubspot, Figma, Rivian, Heap, Blueshift, Mercy Corps, and Boston Beer. I’ve completed multiple somatic bodywork courses, and Somatics, Trauma, and Resilience with Staci Haines, and the Relate training with Esther Perel, author of Mating in Captivity. I’ve been certified as a somatic coach through Strozzi Institute since 2017 and at the PCC level with ICF also since 2017. I’ve been coaching since 2011, so this is my fourteenth year as a coach.

Inspired by Joanna Macey, Akilah Riva Safiyah and many others, I have experience designing embodied workshops focused on:

1) Gratitude, Grief, and Active Hope

2) Navigating Conflict (lessons learned from marine mammals inspired by Alexis Pauline Gumbs

3) Rupture and Repair trainings, organization-wide, for Richmond Community Foundation, where I’ve been a mentor coach since 2021

4) customized topics for groups as a consultant for the U.K.’s Sustainability Sector, The Rest of Activism community, and the Balaton Group Meetings focused on speaking Truth to Power and applying Systems Thinking in Budapest, Hungary and Kiyosato, Japan.

JOIN MY LIT AND LAID BACK MEMBERSHIP NOW! (FALL OFFER EXPIRES AT MIDNIGHT CT ON OCT 20).

How I touch you is, was, and always will be the true revolution.