Please note, this is an automated transcript so it is not 100% accurate. 

Ishita: [00:00:00] Looking outside was a way of escaping the knowing that was here. I don’t care what happens, but I will not use my life force energy for anything but healing. I just wanted to know what would happen if there was no structure imposed on my life from the outside. The belief that comes when you know you’re living in integrity with yourself. That was, that was my biggest feeling.

Guy: There we go. We’re recording. Ishita, welcome to the podcast. 

Ishita: Thank you for having me, guy. 

Guy: It’s been a long time. Come in. I know it’s been like three or four different, um, through my fault basically more than anything, but, uh, rescheduling and changing around. So it, it is wonderful to finally get down and, and have this conversation today. And I wanna start the podcast like I, I start every week, and that is, if you were at a little intimate dinner party sitting next to a complete stranger and they ask you what you did for a living, what would you say? 

Ishita: Wow. [00:01:00] Depends on the stranger. Honestly. It depends on who and where and what is showing up in the room. Um, but in, in essence, I might say something like, I try to show up and do the needful and go from there. And that’s not satisfying enough for a lot. But, so maybe we might say, um. I, it’s so funny you’re asking me a question that, uh, that really, that I’ve sat with for a long time. ’cause it was a part of me that in the beginning of my journey, felt like I had to have an answer to give it a shape and a form and like, if I could just speak it out just right and just so that I could somehow convey.

The essence of something that to me still feels really ineffable, [00:02:00] you know? Yeah. And that illusion’s gone. I, I don’t think I can, so sometimes I might be really tongue in cheek and say, you know what I do can’t really be described. It has to be experienced. And if you’re curious, we can dig into what that is, but. I just don’t, I don’t, I don’t know. There’s no more than that. It’s a, 

Guy: it’s a challenge. Yeah. And I, I always ask this ’cause I love to and literally every guest has the same problems answering it. Honestly, I think it’s ’cause the conversations we are having and hence why I love podcasting. ’cause it allows us to, and anyone listening to really start. Dig into and have a deeper, meaningful conversation around it, which gives us context and an understanding, or at least then of what it is we do. Because I find bios and things like that quite boring. You know, we read them and it’s all official and it’s like, well. You know, what does that really tell us?

We could write anything down, you know, so that’s why I don’t really read the bios out in the intros or anything like that. That’s just me personally, [00:03:00] you know? Um, my favorite answer is actually, I always jokingly say I do as little as possible when they ask me. And then Exactly, yeah. You know? 

Ishita: Yeah. As little as possible and just what’s needed. Yeah, 

Guy: yeah. Yeah. So I’m fascinated, um. With your journey, ’cause I’ve got you, you grew up in the foothills of the Himalayas, the Indian Himalayas, is that correct? 

Ishita: And then 

Guy: you ended up in North Carolina. 

Ishita: I sure did. 

Guy: So what happened? What was it like growing up in the foothills of the Himalayas? Uh, ’cause I’ve been to the Himalayas in Nepal, which 

Ishita: Oh really?

Guy: It was one of the highlights of my traveling ever. You know, it was, I spent a month in there and it was incredible and I’m just fascinated. What’s it like growing up there and how did you end up in North Carolina and there, there must be a bridge somewhere to what you, why you do that today? There’s a lot to, to cover.

Ishita: I’ve thought about this [00:04:00] too. What is this? See, growing up in India is one thing, and growing up in the Himalayas is a whole other thing. And if you’ve been there and you’re energetically sensitive, you might know what I’m talking about. ’cause you, you can’t escape the grandiosity. You cannot escape just this really, I, I, I struggle to even find the words like there’s a sacredness that’s built in that is.

There’s an attention to that dimension of life in all of Indian culture. The whole land is permeated with it, and of course it’s destroyed many ways, but when you’re on the mountains, the mountains are a repository now. Now I understand what the hell was happening when I was a kid. It was just, it was just what life was.

That’s what. [00:05:00] I knew, but even then I felt the energy. And as I said to a teacher like 30 years later, I was like, I did, I could feel this energy, but I didn’t know what to do with it. And he said, yeah, but it knew what to do with you. And so there’s this way that the landscapes that we live in, they live in us and they work us. And I can still feel like I live so far away from those mountains, but I know the movements that have been shaped by those mountains are still very much alive and throbbing in my heart. 

Guy: Yeah. Wow. So why did you, why did you end up leaving? What prompted you to 

Ishita: There is the question of how to study everything I possibly could at one time in university and um. You know, if for some reason my parents really wanted me to go abroad and I did not really, I wasn’t excited about it at first [00:06:00] until I realized that, you know, it would be nice to be in a, in a situation that is completely foreign and I would have to really find my own feet in, and there’s something curious about that to me.

Plus I wanted to study so many things, and like in India, you can’t double major and double minor in all the things. And in the States I could go in, just dive into the whole thing anywhere I wanted. And I was really attractive. So I showed up here when I was 18. Oh wow. And I didn’t know anybody. And, and, uh, once I graduated, I decided to stay.

Guy: Okay. 

Ishita: And one thing led to another, and I, I’ve lived sort of in five different corners of this country where we moved down to the mountains in North Carolina about two years ago in the [00:07:00] pandemic, and now we live sort of in the middleland and it’s a really beautiful, also energetically potent landscape.

Guy: Yeah, makes sense. Mm-hmm. So you, you studied to be an architect, is that right? Have I got this correct? Architecture. So where, where was the bridge then from architecture to do what you are doing now? Mm. Was it, was it, was it your own, I guess, healing journey to be had or, or, or pain or, uh, metamorphs, 

Ishita: all of the above. As you, as you said to me in the beginning. Right. Um. There’s a way in which I always knew that my life’s work would involve without knowing it in words, spirituality, um, meditation, presencing, embodiment, [00:08:00] but mostly like living an aligned life. Like that’s the most important thing in my being, is being in, in my alignment.

As much as possible since I was a kid. There’s just no question about it. But I couldn’t understand that that could be a thing that you could do or so to speak. Right. Um, and at some point I. As you know, right? Your experience starts to open up, or mine certainly did when the questions that I was asking of life and I was studying lots of different disciplines, I was looking to physics for all the answers to my biggest questions.

I didn’t think religion could do it. I didn’t think anyone else knew, but I thought science, maybe like science is gonna help me understand who we are, who I am, what this is, why we’re here. Because they seem to have answers. But the closer I looked, the farther I [00:09:00] felt and I turned away from the sciences and I said, okay, let’s make beautiful buildings and let’s build form that connects people to spirit and each other and you know, let’s do that.

And even that was, that was a beautiful thing. Like I loved my work. I knew I was doing something meaningful and, um. As I was asking these big questions, like I was doing many, many different. Different disciplines. I was writing, I was doing photography, I was a journalist, I was a painter. Like all of the inquiry was full on in everywhere.

You can’t, not even in architecture school. My thesis was the Center for Self-Reflection, otherness and Narcissism. A building that is the lens to examine the self from. I mean, I was looking at the side of the. Detroit riots where Rosa Parks Avenue now lives, [00:10:00] and I was asking the big questions through my discipline.

I was asking the question of how does violence originate? Where does it come from? Where, how does it happen that people are so otherized? And that opened a whole inquiry into the nature of self. Wow. Look at that. You can’t escape it. Right? These were the questions that I’d been asking anyway, and they were coming and ripening until it was just clear that nothing outside of me was gonna give me the answers.

And looking outside was a way of escaping the knowing that was here. And when that happened, the drama was up and the unfolding began, and a series of openings in my own experience, like direct experiences of truth, love, God, whatever you wanna call it, kini awakening, blah, blah, blah. Use your choice of words. [00:11:00] But the flood, the flood of openness was so big. And I was still working as an architect in those days.

I was still moonlighting as a designer and whatnot, and there was something cooking in me and my nervous system was finding an expansion I’d only sensed without ever knowing. Wow. And at some point that was so clearly the movement forward that to deny it was not possible. It was just not possible. Like I.

I remember saying to someone, someone, my father-in-law said, when are you gonna do your life’s work? I said, oh, when I’m old and I have gray hair and you know, like people will take me seriously. He said, why? And my whole world fell apart. I said, what do you mean, why? That’s how it is. And he is like, you are scared of coming out of your closet.

I said, yeah,[00:12:00] obviously I’m sitting in my spiritual closet as I called it. Until, um, and I’ll share the story. This is, this was the turning point. You know, people had been coming to me under, people have been showing up who were having dark nights of the soul, like, um, unpleasant awakening experiences where the nervous system was out of sink.

There was like ungroundedness, there was all kinds of issues showing up, and I don’t even know how they were finding me, but like quietly friends or. People would just show up and I would say, you know, just hear whatever we did happen here, move on and don’t tell anyone about it. Like don’t, don’t tell anyone, just go to the woods, be alone, be quiet, integrated, you know?

And um, and I was, I was fine that way until I was going to work and I was an architect in Boston, right. And we were designing this courthouse. [00:13:00] We are designing a trial court where eight judicial courts were gonna come together in the same building. And I was very excited about this project ’cause we’re doing public service.

I’m like, here we are at the center of the trauma field. Like everyone in the building is traumatized. The judges, the people who are on trial, their families, like it’s a stress field. And here I’m so grateful. Like I am the one who gets to come in and I’m gonna design this building and like give, like, you know, the detention center that we used to draw at the basement, you know, every day I would say so.

Glad it’s me. I’m gonna give them as much dignity as I can by placing the toilet. Just so, and the shade wall, just so, so, you know. And like I was trying to infuse healing into the space in every move we’ve made, we were designing gardens and like all these ways for people to find ground and center in a really stressful situation.

And then one day we were walking [00:14:00] through the building, uh, I was doing a walk with my team as a precedent. We were studying a different courthouse, and it was the day that BB King died. It was meaningful to me. I studied in Louisiana, right? And I love BB King, right? So I remember that. That was when I got in the elevator, someone said, oh, BB King died today.

I’m like, oh my, what’s happening? Right? Get into the walk. And this was the courthouse where, um, there was a footballer, I guess a soccer player, sorry, footballer American Footballer Hernandez. He was on trial that day for murder in the building that we were walking through. And, um, it was also the day that we, in the United States Federal Court, uh, I can’t remember exactly, but I think the verdict for, do you remember there was a Boston bombing, there was a marathon bombing in Boston.

Mm-hmm. And the person who [00:15:00] bond was, um, there was a, there were two brothers. The older one had died, I think, and the 19-year-old, uh, at that time, I think he was 19 at the time he was 17 when it happened, was sentenced to 30 years of solitary confinement, followed by the death penalty. And I was just like, you know, just feeling this, the weight of the system.

And I’d been studying reformative judicial systems versus what we have here in the States, which is privatized prison systems. And I was walking through this detention area where, which I’d been drawing right for this new building every day, just feeling the gravitas of this built form. And a young woman, like really young, I can’t, she must not be in juvie.

So. Or I wouldn’t have been able to see her. Must’ve been like 19, [00:16:00] comes to herself, puts her hands on the glass and just looked at me. I was probably like 15 feet away from her and just her look made this whole thing real in a way that I couldn’t have imagined. My whole energy feel was pulsing, like this is the face of a person who is.

Who is suffering the consequences of a system that is so deeply punitive and I could no longer, you know, push away my responsibility for her suffering, even though I had the best of intentions, whatnot. I went home, got in the car, drove my two hours. And cried the whole time and I knew it was time to stop because where I put my energy, where I put my attention matters, and the most traumatized society is there in [00:17:00] prison.

My tax dollars, my everyday energy is going into supporting a system that is completely run on monetary interest. Even. Yeah. So even though I was not an American and I was an Indian citizen at the time, you know, it’s so easy to say, this is not my country. This is not my system, but it is. And I was just so clear, and I knew I was on the wrong side.

I said, I don’t care what I do, I cannot do this anymore. That was the opening. That was the opening into the unknown to go say, okay, we’re gonna listen to exactly what wants to come through. I don’t care if I don’t make a dollar, I don’t care what happens, but I will not use my life force energy for anything but healing.

Guy: Wow. Yeah. What year is that? 

Ishita: Oh goodness. I feel like that pivotal. That was probably [00:18:00] 20 15, 20 14, something like that. 

Guy: Okay. And when you got to that, this, you triggered about five questions as you spoke whole time. And, and I don’t, I don’t want to go off on tangents and, and just keep the theme going from a minute I’ll, I’ll loop back hopefully to some of the things that are going through my head.

But one thing that fascinates me is that. As human beings, we all have a desire to live our tru truth like it’s innateness, isn’t it? And, and we’ve become so disconnected from ourselves, from others, from nature, from we, we just become numb to that and, and lose that connection, I feel, anyway. And, but when we start to. Go on this inward journey and reconnect to that aspect of ourselves, then it starts literally screaming at us, 

Speaker 5: you know,

Guy: which is [00:19:00] terrifying at the same time, because it’s beyond. What, or who we think we are or what we told ourselves, our identity, whether it’s an architect or you know, a fitness trainer at the time, or I was a plumber. You know, like there’s all these different, um, aspects that we think we are, or business owner.

But I guess the point is, is that when that moment happened and you said, I’m done. I mean that, that to me is the, is is true courage. ’cause I, I had to go through that initiation myself too. What happened then? Because if you come in, like, that’s it, I’m done. I’m a hundred percent in I’m, I’m no more. Were you terrified? Were you excited? What was that transition look like then into the, the world in which you’ve created for yourself from that moment on. 

Ishita: Thank you for asking. You know, often in these stories. That nuance gets left behind. [00:20:00] What happened was I came home and I was crying, and I was like bawling to my husband and telling him all the things that I was feeling, and, um, just the deep release of a long held, held back pain. Like real, I, I, I don’t know how to say this. Maybe the closest thing is like real grief. For the Unowned responsibility until that, that moment, and like if you ask anybody, they’ll be like, you’re the most responsible person. I know, blah, blah, blah. But what I mean is like that’s the pain of that separation, the pain of that.

Like, oh, just a little bit of denial. Just a little bit of like. Oh, just far enough to where I don’t have to directly reckon with the consequences of my action. That really hit home. [00:21:00] And Eric, my husband, he helped me and he said, so when are you quitting? When are we quitting our jobs and leaving? We’ve been talking about, um.

Both of us stopping work and just seeing what wanted to come through. ’cause there was a big part of me that just wanted silence. I wanted nothing. I wanted to do nothing. I wanted to be nothing. I just wanted to know what would happen if there was no structure imposed on my life from the outside. What would, what does this one wanna do? And we’d been talking about it. And that night it was just clear. It was like, okay, how many weeks of notice can I give? The team in a responsible way, and there was, there was trepidation definitely for,

there was trepidation I guess in that way. Like practical elemental, logistical sense, like, oh, now [00:22:00] we have to, now I have to do this like. Thing, like put my whole life on pause and that has like steps to be followed. Unfortunately, you can’t just be like, turn it off and off. I go to India. Right. But there was such a big relief.

I think the overwhelming feeling in me was just relief of like, oh, I’m not going to be lying about how I want to engage. Like, there’s gonna be, there’s just felt like the sense of, you know, the relief that comes when you know you’re living in integrity with yourself.

That was my biggest feeling. And the rest, you know, it was chaos, but we, it was easy. It was easy to swim through it, like all the stuff that happened. We went on this adventure. We both quit our jobs, you know, which took us both courage. We were both really, you know, invested in our work and we rented our apartment.

We went to India and I broke my [00:23:00] shoulder. You know, like what happens when you go and you finally have this time to do nothing and like do all the things you like, life happens, right? I break my shoulder. I, it’s, it’s a serious injury. I had like all kinds of complications in different medical things and like.

It was a rough gamut. We spent six months traveling through feeling the land like regrounding into a culture that I hadn’t been in since I was 18. Right. And then came back. And then there was the big question of like, now what? What do we do now? Now that we’re home? Right? Like, are we gonna get jobs? Are we gonna blah, blah, blah?

And I had said, I’m not gonna make any decisions, but being on the road. Showed so clearly what the calling was like. People would just show up and my husband would point and he said, why don’t you just do this for a living? I said, what am I doing? What is this? I said, it’s not a thing. He is like, what do you think you’re doing?

I said, I’m just living my life. He said, well, then you can live your life and help other [00:24:00] people and pay for it. I said, really? You think so? And that’s, that was kind of the foundations of how this thing started, came back home, sat in our house. And again, I was like, I’m not gonna walk in and get a job for anyone.

Like, there’s nothing. It has to be honest and clear. And people started to come and once I decided it was gonna happen, I took a week off, went and beat the shit out of the woods. I was like, I had to release years of pent up anger for not listening to this. That was when my father-in-law challenged me. He said, when are you gonna do your life’s work?

I said. When I’m old, when I’m 80, and then he, and it freaked me out and I said, okay, I’m gonna go to the woods and make my peace with this because it’s either now or never. And the movement was so clear. I went camping alone for a week. I cried. I sat on the earth. I like literally rolled around. I said, okay, I’m done resisting this.

I’m [00:25:00] here. Show me what to do and where to go. And I will. And I sat in my car in a rainstorm, there was a thunderstorm and I like came up with the logo for come to center. It was the top part of the om. It was clear. I said, it’s gonna be called come to center and I’m gonna show up and I’m gonna do what I can to share what I know.

And that’s all. I didn’t know there was such a thing as transformational work. I didn’t know there was coaching. I didn’t know these were businesses and I didn’t care. I said, you know, I know another way and people don’t seem to remember that other way. So here we are. We’ll just remember the other way together and it’ll be good. And here we are.

Guy: I love, I love it. I’m getting goosebumps as you share. Honestly, it’s because it’s so, it’s, it’s the true. Um, it’s the, it’s, it’s our actions that are speaking, isn’t it? Like, you know, you, you completely surrender to something far greater than ourselves to live from that place and to [00:26:00] go basically fuck it and see it, see what happens, and.

When we’re in that, it’s so freeing, it’s so empowering and just liberating. And when it actually then starts to, the way starts to appear because we are taking the steps first there, there’s not no greater feeling. ’cause we know like in our core, that we are on purpose and we’re doing something that’s not only serving ourselves, but serving others and, and something. I guess the whole, it binds the whole universe together. 

Ishita: That’s so true. That’s, I guess what you’re naming is that feeling of alignment, right? 

Guy: Yes. 

Ishita: It’s just very simple in that place, and not to be very clear, like I was scared shitless for so many things. I didn’t wanna, I mean, it brought to the surface everything that I’d ever run from. [00:27:00] All my fears, it was the quick route to meeting everything I’d avoided in myself. I was afraid of taking money from people I didn’t like. I didn’t want to take money from people that I did, like I didn’t wanna receive money for spirituality. This was my Indian baggage, right? Like all of that. And then I was trying to start a business, right?

And so there is that like beautiful, like sword, clean, sharp. Arrow of alignment, and then there’s all this stuff that’s dancing around it that you’re like, you have to meet and greet and finally like really attend to in a, in a way. 

Guy: Wow. So I, I got, there’s two questions I wanna ask you, and one I wanna loop back ’cause I, I think it’s for some, I’m getting pulled back to a question and then pick it up from, from this moment.

But when you were speaking earlier, you talked about the [00:28:00] spiritual closet that you kept yourself in for a while, which I love, which I completely relate to. And, um, and that you, um, had. These moments of true awakening, was it a definitive moment, like in a moment in time that you can re recall? Or was it more of like a gradual kind of over months period?

Ishita: Hmm. Yeah. I Sodom talk about it and I’m sure you understand why. 

Guy: Yeah. 

Ishita: And I. I don’t know. That’s a great question. Probably both. You know, like the first time I can clearly remember having, um, having that experience of like just deep coherence was when I was in high school playing [00:29:00] piano, and it was like the piano was playing me and I was like, hmm.

Hmm. Interesting. You know, and then there were punctuations. I, I don’t know if this is true of everybody, and I suspect it is, a lot of people don’t notice, but those experiences that we call awakening experiences, enlightenment experiences, they’re happening. They’re happening, but there’s somehow, there’s like a lack of metacognition sometimes.

Mm-hmm. But everyone has experienced a state of flow somewhere or the other. Okay. For me, the big opening began in the middle of a crisis when I was, I was going through a rough time in my job as an architect. I was breaking up with a long-term relation, but I was asking these questions and I was just fine tuning in myself, you know?

And there was this moment of clarity, and you [00:30:00] can call that the first opening. Where I separated, what I knew from what I understood, understanding and knowing became two different things. And so there could be a surrender to the knowingness that always knew the oneness of life. Cannot explain, cannot even try to explain.

But that trying to explain was what was keeping me away from the knowing. Right. And once that happened, like there was a gradual and steady opening. It was just a way clear. ’cause I wasn’t trying to get anywhere. I hadn’t imagined any of it could happen to me or you know, who knew I wasn’t. I was just really curious about life in myself. I was the clearest. Shortest experiment 

Speaker 5: to 

Ishita: like check out from the inside. And um, it was a series of months, like I just started sitting and meditating. I never intended to. [00:31:00] I never learned how to, it just could not, not happen. It was like it had to happen. I had to do it. I just wanted it. So it was such a gift.

And then over time, like I could feel, I now in retrospect makes sense. Like it was a gradual sort of like big open-heartedness, like a big love becoming. And then there were moments that were very clear, like there were moments over weeks, over months. Where I was in different, um, states of consciousness, you might say that’s not exactly accurate, but I do remember one particular, the first one where I was like, oh, I’ve been sort of out of my body in a way.

And I was talking to my mother about this. I say, oh, you know what? And she recognized the state I was in. ’cause in India you do, but. Yeah, like both and like together and [00:32:00] pinpoints, and that just keeps opening up. I, I don’t think there’s any end to it, 

Speaker 5: you know? Hmm. 

Ishita: And I’ve even forgotten your first question. I don’t remember what that was. 

Guy: No, that was perfect. It was basically, was there any specific moments that happened to, with your, your own personal openings and, and things, uh, along your journey, which, which, you know, you, you shared beautifully then. Why once you, um, so once you spent a week in the, the forest and you know, like, like a, like I said, you said, did you say get angry in the woods for a week? I think that’s what you said. Yeah. Yeah. I 

Ishita: had to get, you know, this is a, this is something that I didn’t know at the time, but we all have to choose to live and we all have to at some point. And in my experience multiple times, [00:33:00] choose and agree to live the life that we have come here to live. And in that moment there was, you know, eons of oppression. Not just personal, but also cultural as a woman, as this being there. Lots of repression in me where I had disowned the anger in myself for, for years. I, I had been slowly and steadily inculcated to be really obedient. That’s what Indian culture does.

That’s what all my education, my, uh, growing up, all of the things, you know, and part of it was for me to claim my voice and say, no, I actually do have something to teach. I know this and I’m going to now allow myself to know this and, and so scary let other people know this too. ’cause when you have a [00:34:00] business, you have to tell other people about it.

But if you don’t wanna talk about yourself, well that’s a problem, right? Mm-hmm. There was this big charge that had to be released and cleansed just to claim it’s the life force claiming it’s fire, saying, no, I’m going to be here. I’m gonna do this, and I’m gonna show up in this way. That’s my commitment to myself because it’s about nothing else.

It’s just about me. You know, the, the good that happens is good, and it is the intention, but it’s not the focus. It’s for me. This is my way of living in integrity with myself. It’s purely for me that way. No one is I own, nobody owes me anything. It’s my pure joy to show up and do what happens and is needed and as best as it can.

But that was the claiming, that was the anger, that was the saying. No, I declare that I’m going to put both feet into the fire. And I’ve had to do that at [00:35:00] least twice since it’s not a one and done deal, unfortunately. 

Guy: Okay. No, it’s not. Is it? So, so why, why, why do, um, not why, yeah. Why do people come to see you? Like what are you finding after being now? Helping others, um, where people are at, what is going on, and, um, what their biggest concerns are. Do you think? 

Ishita: Beautiful. I mean, guy, you’ve, you named it yourself. You know this. Right? And I, I feel really privileged at this point in my journey that those who come to find me are just so deeply aligned.

That they’re not looking for a quick fix to things. They’re not [00:36:00] looking, you know, to have that. I mean, everybody wants to have the enlightenment experience and whatnot, but there is a wisdom path, right? And it, the work that I think we both do is an invitation onto the path. Knowing that the path is endless and it has its own wisdom.

So those who come there are people who are in existential pain. There are people who are in existential curiosity, kind of like me. We tend to bring along the folks who, who mirror our, sort of echo, our own nervous systems evolution, you know, so I, I work with a lot of people who. Who have found the sort of typical ideas of success.

Those are, those have been met. There’s like, mm-hmm. You know, the many degrees from the prestigious institution, the good job, they’re like lots of money. They’re [00:37:00] like success and fame and still something missing. There are, there are folks who come because they’re excited to know themselves. There are folks who come because there is something resonant in the field, right?

Like there’s a listening and an honoring of that movement that says, oh, there’s something here. And I sometimes we don’t even know what that is, but there’s just something that wants to be learned through the connection of being together, of sharing presence together. That’s the most fun, right? But often folks come because there is.

There is that beautiful way that life gives us, you know, exactly what we need to heal in a, in a tight bundle. And there’s difficulty, which appears to be a problem, right? And then there’s that way of softening and integrating it as a gift on the path. But those are, [00:38:00] those are just some things, but a lot of it is relational. There’s a way of losing relation with ourselves and each other and all of life when we forget who we are at core and how. The ramifications of that are infinite, as you know. 

Guy: Absolutely. And how do you, how do you live yourself then these days now being, having a business and, and stepping into the fire? And, and I’m always curious as well, because, you know, our business here in Australia, it’s, it’s a business too. We run retreats and workshops and online programs and things. Far out. Like I get decision fatigue sometimes, and you know, there’s precious and there things, and I have a 2-year-old daughter, and sometimes I, I, I lose my, lose my flow.

I lose myself in just being, being human, you know? Um, so I’m curious to know what it [00:39:00] each day looks like for you in that sense. Mm. And yeah, 

Ishita: I forget. And then I remember. Happened. Um, yeah. I’m lucky in that I still, I have very little responsibility in the sense that we, you know, I don’t have pets, I don’t have children. I have a partner, my husband and I. Our relationship is my biggest teacher, is my wisdom path. As you may, may have discovered, I come to center the business and the, the most intimate relationships, like it’s all over, right? But there are moments of turmoil. Like yesterday, we were having worked on our house.

The roofing went so that instead of getting the roof on top, we had rain basically pouring [00:40:00] into. Six rooms in our house, right? So now there’s a flood. These are everyday things that happen. And now I get to just sort of, there’s no separation between the path and life. There never was, never was. But now it’s just so obvious that like everything that has ever happened, that ever happens is a opportunity for me to live into.

You know, those places to really show up as, as presence, as love, as truth, and learn what needs to be gleaned. So there’s no illusion, like I’m so flawed and so human. And there’s even less, I guess, efforting to be anything that I, that I’m not No perfect human here. Um. Yeah, but I, I don’t know, does that even answer your question? Like, what is it? Yeah, yeah. 

Guy: It, it is, yeah. You know, because I mean, [00:41:00] God, our companies even call live in flow, you know, and, and I have this romantic idea that I’m just constantly living in flow, but it’s, it’s not quite like that. But there, but there are definitely moments and I, I strive for those moments, you know, that, that, that reconnect back.

Ishita: And I imagine you, you might notice that you find your way back to the flow quicker and quicker as you go, you know, and that, that seems to be the only measure I can find of on the path. It’s like, yeah, you know, the roof was leaking in 16 places yesterday. I was angry. I was like, are you kidding? Like this is what we are doing to prevent this from happening, but doing this roof is making this happen.

What the heck is going right? And then I got to like really use all the learnings and like put them in the play. [00:42:00] And today we had a team meeting with the roofer and like the contractor who’s coming to now. Redo all the drywall and take out our walls and ceilings, not just the roof. And my husband and I, and we were all laughing and, and he was so scared.

He was like, you know, you don’t have to pay me money for the roof. And I was like, you know, okay. Like we’re in this together. We’re, you are a team, we’re a team. This is nobody’s fault. Like we get to like walk those lessons and you could feel how much joy there is in transacting in that way, right? Mm-hmm.

Like that’s, that’s the gift. Like, I don’t know, 20 years ago maybe I wouldn’t have been so generous and happy and just like at ease with this ridiculous situation, but it just gets easier and like the whole thing looks like, okay, it’s. The emotions gonna come, the feelings gonna go, and we’re gonna work this out. We’re in this together. Like I’m a piece of life. This is a piece of life, and [00:43:00] that’s the gift of it for me. 

Guy: Mm-hmm. And then you get to jump on a podcast under your leaking roof after everything went upside down at the end of your day 

Ishita: and the generous neighbor’s house. Yeah. So it goes, that’s a day in the life of.

Guy: Yeah, I, I got a few questions for you before we wrap it up. And um, one, one is, I’m curious, do you, do you have a morning routine? Do you, do you have any particular practices? ’cause I know it varies with different people. I, I speak to. 

Ishita: Yeah. Um, I’m not a creature of routine at all. Um, and that said, every day. It just, I, it has to happen. I find space to be quiet and alone. 

Speaker 4: Hmm. 

Ishita: And I usually need lots of time alone. Right. In nature, ideally. And these days, I don’t have a [00:44:00] regimented morning routine at all, but I have space in the morning. My idea of luxury. It is time in the morning just to just feel what wants to happen and follow that.

So I sit at my altar some days. I meditate some days. Um, I meditate every day, but sometimes when I’m sitting, um, yeah, but there’s a lot of finding, finding my feet on the ground. That’s really important. Listening to the birds, feeling the trees, there’re deer in our yard. Like those kinds of things. It’s very, very routine, very mundane. It’s not, um, yeah, and at some point there is body stretching and, 

Speaker 5: Hmm. 

Ishita: Something or the other, what shows up. Sometimes I remember to brush my tape, but that happens every day [00:45:00] and there’s always something, um, energetic basics. Actually. That’s something that I teach and that’s, it’s not even a morning routine, it’s a life routine, like mm-hmm. There’s constantly, my attention is always sort of clearing my space. Grounding and yeah, those are, those are just habits of attention that are Yeah.

Guy: Yeah. It’s so true, isn’t it? I always, I always remember somebody saying to me many years ago, you know, the, the true act of meditations, what you do with your eyes open during the day, don’t much what you, what you do when you sit down in your comfy little meditation bubble. You know, like when life’s happening to you, at you all at once, you know? So 

Ishita: true. 

Guy: Yeah. Have there been any books, I know people listening are always hungry for books and different, have there, has there been a particular book that’s stuck with you or [00:46:00] you would recommend to other people that’s been a big part of your life? 

Ishita: Absolutely. Um. So it’s funny, right? Like the books that began that I, that really helped me recognize myself too. The big questions started to come towards me when I was reading the Autobiography of a Yogi. Yoga and you know, and he was talking about himself and his journey, and he was traveling through places that I lived in, and he was speaking the language of my culture and that understanding of what’s possible.

It was just resonating so deeply. But at that point, I hadn’t quite surrendered my scientific, like deconstructive mind, right? So it caused this upheaval in my system. I said, how can I believe and know the goodness of this truth when I don’t believe it, when I don’t understand it? That is the split between [00:47:00] understanding and knowing.

And he just writes so honestly and from the heart, like I, I just love that narrative. I recommend that not for any reason other than to just really be in the field with a master, just be in the field and know that these words are coming from a deep truth that maybe some of us haven’t imagined yet. 

Speaker 5: Hmm.

Ishita: But it, it’s possible. Right. And then, um. I would say I am that. I am that Tata’s famous book at this point where I was walking by a store and they said, I am that. And I looked at it and I said, Hmm, I am that and that I am, and what do you know? And I opened the book and the first page and he was like, yep, who is this guy?

He gets it right. And then I probably read like, I don’t know, 20% of that book. And it was [00:48:00] served me well at the time when. I would recommend that to somebody who is just curious about themselves. But there is a danger in that one,  there is a dangerous way that, uh, a lot of people I see I encounter who have, you know, used these teachings and met that book, taken it really to hard, sort of leave their bodies in a weird way.

Especially in the West and a lot of my experiences working with Western Mind lived between MIT and Harvard and served that population for a long time. It’s all the neck is their lower body as we joke. And you know, I was part of that, grew myself for a while. So the last book that I’ll leave folks with, and this is part of, you know, when we.

In a lot of the courses that I facilitate and a lot of the work that I do, I am, I make people read this book, it’s called The [00:49:00] Five Personality Patterns by Steven Kessler. What it is, is this beautiful, and I think it’s a service to humanity that he’s done. Because I went out and when I discovered, when I had my awakening experiences and when that sort of wholeness of life revealed itself, I realized how much of the time I’m leaving my body.

You know, like how much of the time I’m not actually attuned to the felt sense in my body, especially in the times that I’m overwhelmed. And that was really interesting to me. ’cause I said, well, how can I know and be at one with all of life, but except my body, like what’s happening there? Right. And that led me down a series of inquiries that led me to core energetics.

Which is a healing modality and um, it comes from Freud’s work, from Reich, William Reich and [00:50:00] Alexander Lowen and John. And what it is, is an understanding of how energy shapes, physical, emotional, and, uh, mental form and how to work with each of those patterns. There’s a long body of work about bioenergetics and core energetics and, you know, spirituality and all of these things.

But what Steven’s done is he’s sort of condensed it into a really, um, accessible format, and it’s just the easiest way to sort of understand. How the energetics are shaping you and the stresses on energetics, because that seems to be core in my experience. Like once you understand and align your energy, everything else falls into place.

Guy: Mm-hmm. Wow. 

Ishita: And it’s a really interesting book for me still. 

Guy: Thank you for sharing. I’m gonna get it. I, I’m, I’ve not read it. That’s, oh, yeah. Sounds, sounds fantastic. Yeah. Yeah. What, [00:51:00] um, so with your, at the center, what, what, what are your offerings? What are your, the works that you offer for people? Do you do online? Do you do one-on-one? Do you do coaching? Do you do 

Ishita: Yeah. Thanks for asking. So, since the pandemic, the work is completely online. Um, ’cause I don’t want to get anyone infected, but it’s been great. It’s been great to innovate because of this limitation. We used to, I used to be part of a crew that ran like two, two year long retreats.

I used to do a lot of in-person work. But these days, this three basic things that I’m offering, and the first of them is what we were just talking about is energetic basics. Foundations, these are the foundations. Like these are the things that those people who were coming to me and had their foundations sort of rocked.

Why having too much energy come through their bodies too soon, like too much Kundalini yoga or like too much [00:52:00] inner work or trauma healing. Even a lot of trauma healing modalities, unfortunately can be very traumatizing if one is not established in a base of presence. I was very lucky on my journey. Very lucky, but a lot of people aren’t, and so it is my hope and wish and offering to help people sort of anchor into those basics.

The foundations of presence before they engage in deeper work. A lot, oftentimes, a lot of students have already been doing the work. Most of the people who come to me have done years of therapy, years of spiritual work, uh, practice. And there’s still something sort of not connecting, not sort of, you know 

Speaker 5: mm-hmm.

Ishita: In place. And, um. Even there, we would start with basics. So I teach energetic basics. Um, I was teaching them as two week, two day workshops, and it’s the thing that sort of [00:53:00] helps us get into our bodies, ground into here now knowing our individuation as well as our connection to the everything. So that’s, that’s one of my beautiful like heart things that I love sharing.

Then there is a six month journey, which is also something I really love doing. It’s a six month journey in community and in it we look at how we come together, how we’re being within ourselves and with each other. So it’s a group that’s about harnessing group intelligence and the magic of not a personal awakening, but.

Awakening as a group, healing as a group, what does that look like when it’s lived at larger scales? Like that’s one of the most interesting things to me. So it’s called murmuration because that’s the intelligence. We’re sort of starting to move as a group, and in it we, we do walk [00:54:00] basics into embodiment, slowly, softly over time, looking at spiritual, emotional, and energetic and somatic.

Um. Intelligence. Yeah. Yeah. Those are the two things that I’m really excited about right now. ’cause a new cohort of memorizations are starting, um, actually next month. So September 21st, I’m gonna set the energetics for it. And October 6th we begin. Um, and then I do, I do, um, one-on-one work and I also work with organizations who are really interested in aligning their energetics with. How they’re operating and look at systemic issues using tools like constellations or, you know 

Speaker 5: mm-hmm. 

Ishita: Whatever needs to be looked at in the dynamics between and within people. 

Guy: Yeah. 

Ishita: I go where I fault. 

Guy: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Can you just say your website out loud? The, the link will be in the show [00:55:00] notes as well for everyone, but just, uh, so they can hear it if they’re driving.

Ishita: Sure thing. It’s, uh, come to center. C-O-M-E-T-O-C-E-N-T-E-R. It’s a call to presence for me and for all of us. 

Guy: Amazing. Um, one last question for you. Mm-hmm. With everything you’ve covered today, is there anything you’d like to leave our listeners to ponder on?

Ishita: Man, that was a lot about me. So I guess I would leave you to ponder the places in you that are hungry for that kind of movement, uh, perhaps that are that long to be in deeper alignment in your life. And, um, the invitation is to examine those places with loving curiosity. Yeah. For fun. [00:56:00] 

Guy: Hmm. The joy of it all. Absolutely. Thank you so much for coming on the show today, Ashita. I really appreciate, um, everything you do and this conversation was just beautiful and it’s, it’s been lovely getting to know you on the show. So just wanna know a heartfelt thank you from here in Australia. 

Ishita: Oh, thank you so much, guy.