LIFEFORCE

Season 2 of the Netflix/Shondaland hit show BRIDGERTON introduces the Sharma family from India into the world of the Bridgerton siblings and Regency-era England. Join me to hear writer Geetika Lizardi talk about writing for the show and holding steady to her dreams, passions, and vision as a storyteller.

Almanya Narula, actor, fight choreographer, and writer, speaks about her solo show, Noor Inayat Khan: The Forgotten Spy, playing the Hollywood Fringe Festival. In 1943, Noor became the first woman and Indian to be sent out as a spy & wireless operator under Churchill's orders in Nazi France. Her story is one of bravery and betrayal.

Storytelling: Beyond Western Narratives, the third episode in The Artists's Journey series, is now available on Spotify, Apple, Google, rukusavenueradio.com, and most podcasting platforms. In this jam-packed 14-minute episode, I explore two common western narratives and their complicity in the colonial enterprise. I also explore three non-western story structures (more to come in part II). * LIFEFORCE airs regularly on Sundays @ 1pm PST, 4pm EST, 9pm GMT, and Monday 1:30pm IST at rukusavenueradio.com * #storytelling #storytellinglife #lifeforce #prana #nonwesternnarratives #indigenousstories #brownstories #southasianstorytelling #southasianstorytellers#southasianstories #desibooks #desibooklovers #desiwriters#desiwriter #desireads

International award-winning filmmaker and director, Pan Nalin, speaks about his latest film, LAST FILM SHOW, the Opening Night movie at the 2022 Indian Film Festival Los Angeles. LAST FILM SHOW is the story of 9-year-young Samay falling in love with filmmaking and how friendships and love collude to help him achieve his dreams despite all odds. Pan Nalin's previous films include ANGRY INDIAN GODDESSES, SAMSARA, VALLEY OF FLOWERS, FAITH CONNECTIONS, and many others.

Join me in the second episode of our Storytelling series. Today we speak about vasansas, a Sanskrit term meaning psychological seeds. In storytelling, these types seeds shape your characters' psyches and motivations, and they are also the unconscious motivations or tendencies behind all actions.

Documentary Film Director, Sue Carpenter, and Co- director Belmaya Nepali, speak about the making of their 2021 feature film, “I am Belmaya,” which is a story of Belmaya's own journey from a conservative hill village of Nepal to self-discovery, creativity, and agency. The film has won numerous international awards, including Best Documentary at the UK Asian Film Festival and Best Documentary at the Pame International Film Festival in Nepal. Ending song "Stronger" by Simi Carpenter from the 3min film Stronger, about women in Nepal wanting to break free from family and societal chains, and to be themselves.

Storytelling can be a radical, revolutionary act that's not only about entertainment, but transformation. Join me as we discover how to enter into this transformation process - of ourselves as artists and the world. Hosted by Shilpa Agarwal, author of the bestselling novel, Haunting Bombay.

Author and academic Namrata Poddar talks about her debut novel, Border Less, from 7.13books (2022), and the diasporic experience of crossing borders.

Author and poet SJ Sindu, author of the hybrid nonfiction and poetry chapbook, Dominant Genes, forthcoming from @blacklawrencepress, speaks about transforming the rage of injustice into action, and how we accept/resist/harmonize with our ancestral inheritances. “That's part of the collection too, this wrestling with the places we come from, the people we come from, and the very complicated relationships – especially queer people and artists – have with our birth families.” - SJ Sindu --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Poet and educator from Toronto, Kenya, Kutch and Gujrat, Sheniz Janmohamed talks about how we receive reminders as travelers on the path of life and how these reminders - whether we perceive them as beautiful or ugly - can bring us wholeness. We talk about her most recent collection of poetry, published by Mawenzi House: Reminders on the Path (2021). “What do I need to hold onto and what's holding me down? What are the inheritances that I need to release, that are no longer serving me as I move forward my own path? And also, with that, there's this disorientation because once you've released those habits, ideas, beliefs, ways of seeing the world, you suddenly have to find your own orientation, so you can get lost, you can veer off a path [but] you can come back to a path, you have to remake a path.” - Sheniz Janmohamed --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Author, performance poet and filmmaker from Liverpool, Malik Al Nasir, talks about the ways in which we can liberate our minds from society's conditioning, and by corollary, liberate ourselves. He speaks about his book, Letters to Gil, a memoir of his years of abuse in state care and how mentoring by poet, musician, and social justice activist, Gil Scott-Heron, changed his life. “In Britain we were being bludgeoned into believing that we had no right to be anything other than what they told us to be and sought to make that a self-fulling prophecy. It's only when you have insight that you can understand the structures of society and how they're being deployed upon you that you recognize how it manifests itself within you, and you have to do what the Last Poets use to call – dewestoxification. It's about unpicking everything they've implanted in you because if you don't think freely and independently, then you become a surrogate for their ideas." - Malik Al Nasir --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Executive Director Samip Mallick and Special Projects Coordinator Nivetha Karthikeyan of SAADA, the South Asian American Digital Archives, speak about the launch of their bold debut collection: “Our Stories: An Introduction to South Asian America.” “This is a book that has been a long-time coming. It started with a recognition of a need that young South Asians very rarely get to see themselves reflected in the American story and wanting to make an intervention, wanting to change that.” - Samip Mallick --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Director Arpan Bahl and Producer Vijaykumar Mirchandani speak about their inspiration, struggles, and revelations in making the 2021 short film “The Last Jam Jar,” a story of romance and loss, and the sweetness of eternal love. “[The film] changed something inside me. It gave me the drive to tell more stories. It gave me the power of conviction in this film. And it told me that maybe I'm on the right path.” - Arpan Bahl “I believe in making a film, or putting something on cellulite which is going to make a difference and let the people have a conversation or feel it.” - Veejay Mirchandani --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Award-winning producer Jane Charles talks about aging, dying, and finding new life in her 2021 film East of the Mountains (based on the novel by David Guterson, author of Snow Falling on Cedars). East of the Mountains is the story of Dr. Ben Givens, a retired heart surgeon and recent widower who learns he has terminal cancer, and his journey back to the beauty and connection of life. “I always believe when you're telling a story, you end up living the journey of that film…You live the journey and when you finish the film, it's like giving birth to all those stories and emotions that you went through but we're changed by the art and the stories that we tell.” --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Ruchi Kishore, creator of the award-winning, hip-hop Bollywood musical “Dirty Chai," talks about what it means to be your true self in a family that wants you to be someone else. "Dirty Chai" plot: "Before the start of an arranged marriage set by her traditional interracial parents, Chaya Chandrika Gopi, aka Chai, a rebellious Indian-American bride-to-be falls for a fearless American girl, Ronnie, who is off limits for more than one reason!"

Award-winning author and finalist for the Bellwether Prize for socially-engaged fiction, Jyotsna Sreenivasan, talks about her 2021 story collection, These Americans, inspired by the immigrant experience. She writes not only about the early years of adjustment and raising a family, and conflict with children, and the struggle to fit in; but also the later years of this passage into America, its long-terms imprints, and what it means to die in a country far away from one's homeland. "What I want to do is connect with the reader's heart and that feels spiritual to me." --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

United Nations Goodwill Ambassador to fight Human Trafficking and Oscar-winning actress, MIRA SORVINO, talks about modern global slavery and how we can join the fight to end it. This special episode of Lifeforce aired in honor of the 2021 United Nation's World Day Against Human Trafficking. We end with the song, “One Light At A Time," from the Rukus Avenue album, "Music to Inspire: Artists United Against Human Trafficking," in collaboration with the United Nations to help fund victims of human trafficking. "They laughed at us. They thought we were nothing. That this is what we were born for. They thought of us as cockroaches. But we were born for so much more than this." - Mira Sorvino quoting a sex-trafficking survivor. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Writer/director Iram Parveen Bilal talks about her acclaimed feature film I'LL MEET YOU THERE, a dramatic thriller following the father-daughter journey of Majeed, a Chicago policeman, and Dua, his teenage ballerina daughter. This is a story about faith, forgiveness, and meeting in a field beyond judgement, where there is only love. "I'm always yearning to be in that field. When communication breaks down, we can share love. And I feel that love is the answer to everything. It's important for the conversation to be flowing. That doesn't mean you need to agree, it just means you need to have some sort of exchange of energy so you can then impart the tenderness, and love, and care that you need to for all of us to continue to evolve.” --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Leah Garza, veteran teacher, activist, healer, and practitioner of the Akashic Records, talks about healing through dismantling colonial narratives and through accessing a field that exists in another dimension, but that which also exists within us – what originates in India as akasha - the fabric of existence - and has become translated and transformed in the West as the Akashic Records, a field of unconditional love. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Ashish Pant, writer/director of the 2021 feature film, ULJHAN (THE KNOT), speaks about class tensions in Lucknow between an upper-middle-class husband and wife who hit a rickshaw driver with their car one fateful night. Uljhan (The Knot) explores poignant questions of morality, compassion, and what happens when boundaries are crossed. "Can we exist trustfully in our intimate relationships when the moment we step out of our door, we don’t trust anybody? How you react with society is ultimately who you become." --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Danielle Dejoie is a certified Flower Essence Practitioner and Holistic Health Coach whose passion is supporting women on their path of self-empowerment. Danielle brings healing, strengthening and balancing through flower essences, whose energetic vibrational pattern calls us into alignment with divine healing and wisdom. “It almost feels magical when you start to open up to plant spirits in that way and when you develop a relationship with yourself…because plant spirits reside in you anyway so you’re tapping into that inner well of wisdom.” --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Founder and CEO of spice company, Disapora Co, Sana Javeri Kadri, talks about how her equity-based, sustainable spice company aims to overturn the supply chain of the spice trade that has “relied on enslaved people to grow, harvest, and transport goods…[thus] erasing Westerners’ consciousness that you should care about your spices and where they come from.” --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Composer, producer, songwriter and the only female double violinist in the world, Gingger Shankar, talks about film composing, empowering girls and women, and reclaiming the unsung story of the women of the Shankar family, her Grandmother and Mother, two extraordinary artists who helped bring Indian music to the West in the 1970s along with Ravi Shankar and George Harrison. “This story has been written so many time; it’s been told so many times, but we have left out this entire lineage of women. It’s not just my mother and grandmother, there are so many women that are part of Indian classical history that we have no clue. It’s at every level. Their names are not in the archives…” --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Wellness, yoga, and mindfulness teacher and consultant Anusha Wijeyakumar speaks about the spaces of wellness, which includes yoga and meditation. How have these practices been distorted here in the west and how can we reclaim their true authentic messages – to not only transform our lives but to become agents of transformation in the larger world? “Each one of us has a path of dharma, of right conduct, of personal power in this life. And are we stepping into it or are we ignoring those divine messages?” --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Writer/director Shaina Ghuraya jokes that she is a triple threat - she’s a wheelchair-user, Punjabi, and a woman, and she doesn’t shy away from tackling issues of disability, race, and gender in fierce films that compel us to rethink limiting beliefs and reimagine a more compassionate world. “When I was four, a person in my family said, ‘We should just leave her in a room and throw away the key.’” --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Ethnographer, ethnopoet, and criminal investigator Vítor da Silva speaks about human rights violations endangering indigenous peoples and our earth, and the ways they continue to resist and revitalize their communities. "Storytelling was and continues to be a form of resistance against cultural, linguistic, and identity loss." --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Rajiv Bhateja, co-founder of They See Blue, a national organization to mobilize South Asians in America, and Anu Banerjee of They See Blue’s Georgia Team, speak about inspiring, educating, and activating South Asians across the nation to help win the U.S. presidential election and flip the Georgia Senate in one of the most-watched election seasons in history. "We just got to work. We knew what needed to be done. we chased every single vote." --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Electronic Bhakti Music pioneers Aks and Lakshmi of Eclipse Nirvana create powerful spiritual experiences for their audiences while presenting the peace, love and pluralistic vision of poets such as Adi Shankara, Kabir, Mirabai, and Surdas. In 2013, their music and media company Eclipse Nirvana released “The Bhakti Movement”, a project that modernized traditional songs and was distributed worldwide by Sony Music. "These are stories about ultimate love, ultimate surrender, holding onto something that is much, much beyond human consciousness." --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Licensed MFT, a Buddhist practitioner for over 30 years, and founder of MET(T)A Protocol, a design for mental health agency treatment currently being utilized in trauma and addiction treatment centers across the country, Dr. Stephen Dansiger speaks to us about his own journey of healing from trauma and addiction, and how Buddhist teachings can inform a modern-day trauma-centered approach to therapy. After years of addiction, he describes how his "fever broke" twenty-one days into his meditation at a Zen monastery, and how that "started a torrent of other future-based, mostly positive, thoughts - like 'I'm going to live.'" --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Founder and Executive Director of Climate Healers, Dr. Sailesh Rao, shows us how - through the study of ancient texts - we can transform ourselves from the voracious consumers we’ve evolved to as homo sapiens into our next evolution as “homo ahimsa,” catalysts and caretakers of a sustainable planet. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

"At what cost are you going to keep going with these old ways of thinking?" Licensed Professional Counselor Sandhya Sharma speaks about mental health and recovery of the self. As South Asians in America and in other communities in the West, how do systemic inequalities, racism, micro-aggressions, and white idealism impact our perceptions of ourselves, our mental health, our families and their values, and ultimately how we define our worth? This episode features special guest Devi Kumar, who shares her own powerful story of overcoming anxiety and depression to reclaim her authentic self. This episode of LIFEFORCE is brought to you by TSB Victory, not affiliated with any candidate or candidate's committee. TSB stands for They See Blue, a grassroots organization that mobilizes and engages Americans of South Asian origin in the democratic process. Make sure to check out theyseeblue.com. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Canadian filmmaker and television personality Asis Sethi and Canadian Crown Prosecutor and writer/producer Armin Sethi speak about the often-hushed issues of menstruation, stillbirth, and postpartum depression. Their live-action short film on menstruation titled ‘A Bloody Mess’ won a REMI Award at the 53rd WorldFest – Houston International Film Festival and is being screened at over 24 film festivals worldwide. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

International speaker, mentor, author, healer, and creator of the Healing Parents Knowledge, Hannah Pilnick shares the Ten Pillars of Healing and the Seven Secrets of Healing: deep knowledge and practical tools you can take into your life today to heal yourself and those you love. “The solution for children’s suffering is hidden in their parents,” Hannah says, meaning that we hold the key to our children’s healing as well as to our own. Join me for a lesson in unlocking your human powers.

TV producer, founder of South Asian Women in Entertainment, co-founder of South Asians in Entertainment, Bhavani Rao spills the tea on the importance of creating family and on building community amongst a global network of artists, activists, and industry leaders. "Run with the pack that you vibrate with; run with the pack that you want to vibrate with."

Singer-songwriter-actress-poet Monica Dogra has been labeled one of the “50 most influential Women” by Elle Magazine for her work in defining the independent music scene in India and her power as a woman, creator, and truth-teller. She has toured the world with her band Shaa’ir and Func, and now as a solo artist, she is charting a bold, new path. She speaks about embracing life with a "secret sauce" - the title of Monica's latest hit song and also what she describes as “someone whose blood courses through their veins with the pursuit of finding vibrant lifeforce in everyday, all the time.”

Internationally-award-winning humanitarian and recording artist Emmanuel Jal was recruited as a child soldier at age 8 to fight a war in Sudan. He now speaks and performs around the world, spreading a message of peace, reconciliation, and self-empowerment through his program My Life Is Art. “I turn my eyes into me,” Emmanuel Jal says of his journey to wholeness, joy, and life of miracles. Turn your eyes into you, and find your way too.

Tony-winning Broadway financier/producer of Mel Brooks' The Producers, A Raisin in the Sun, The Addams Family, Green Day's American Idiot, and currently a production based on Alanis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill, and also NYT’s bestselling author of “The Fifth Beatle,” Vivek Tiwary talks about finding a passion, working for yourself, and reframing the idea of failure. "No dream is too impossible, and no person too unlikely to realize that dream."

Musician Vijay Iyer was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Jazz Instrumental Album in 2010 for his album, Historicity. His 2017 album, Far From Over, was cited by Rolling Stone as “2017’s jazz album to beat.” He is a MacArthur Fellow and professor at Harvard University. Iyer, however, does not call himself a jazz musician but a creative musician, a term he says that, “has been in circulation for more than fifty years” and was “made up by Black musicians...[who] have resisted the racial tag in their music because they want to assert that their music can mean something to anyone, and they want to define the terms in which that happens. That’s the history and the legacy that I’m the beneficiary of.”

Twenty years ago, Urmi Basu walked into the red-light district of Kolkata, India, witnessing the plight of the most vulnerable members of our society, the children of women trapped in the sex industry, the transgendered community, and the children of the Dalit community. Starting with nothing but $200 in her pocket and a desire to change the injustices she saw, she has brought her courageous light to an entire community. This is her story, and the story of New Light in India. "What I told them was my life would have been exactly like yours if I did not have the opportunities and the education so that is going to be the pivotal point that can create a completely different trajectory for your children."

Singer-songwriter Siva Kaneswaran, who reached international fame as a member of the British boy band, The Wanted, speaks about stepping off the pedestal of fame and fortune and into his own as a solo artist and activist. “’Breathe In’ is an introduction to who I am as a person now years later, and the reason why I focused on the breath is because it is one of the most important keys in unlocking your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual wellbeing.”

Mental Health Advocate and suicide survivor Pooja Mehta has struggled with schizoid anxiety for over a decade, an illness that has caused her to attempt suicide three times. “When I hear the voices, when they get really bad, I’m not thinking to myself, “Wow, I wish I could just die,” like I don’t want to be here anymore, all I’m thinking is, “I want to make this stop, make the pain go away,"…It feels like an out-of-body experience. It feels like you’re not in control. Whatever dark tunnel your mind is in is the only thing that’s in control.”

Winner of Canada’s Juno for Best World Music Album of the Year, Kiran Ahluwalia talks about contemporary South Asian poetry and music that brings light to what exists inside us as humans, what binds us, what we yearn for, and what ultimately can free us. “There’s seven billion of us on the planet, and there’s seven billion ways of doing things.”

Dr. Vikram Paralkar, physical-scientist-author, discuses his 2020 novel, NIGHT THEATER, a fantastical story set in s small rural medical clinic in India, about a surgeon’s ethical dilemmas in bringing back a dead family to life, exploring the fraught space between life and death, and our very human yearning for what has been lost. “Is it possible to have meaning and Is it possible to be of use to another human being in moments of radical uncertainty and ambiguity? I hope the answer is yes.”

Patricia Danaher, Masters in Mythological Studies, talks about ritual and mourning surrounding the unborn – babies who are lost to miscarriage, stillbirth, abortion, and unsuccessful IVF – and the ways we can heal from those deep, and oftentimes silent, losses. “The richness of ritual and ceremony…is incredibly healing and calming for us as humans. It’s the metaphor that touches the invisible part of ourselves - our psyche, our spirit, our soul.”

Dr. Puri, Medical Director of the Palliative Medicine and Support Care Service at USC’s Keck Hospital and Norris Cancer Center, and author of “That Good Night: Life and Medicine in the Eleventh Hour," talks about life, letting go, and the human spirit. “Death and dying are not medical problems; they’re human predicaments. Medicine can’t solve mortality; it’s the humanity and spirituality that we bring to bear on our passages and our loved ones’ passages that is far mightier than medicine at the end.” - Dr. Sunita Puri

Rabbi Shergill, Punjabi singer, songwriter, and guitarist, hailed internationally as the “King of Sufi rock” and a pioneer of Delhi’s rock music scene, speaks about art that catalyzes social change and making music that travels from his heart into the world.

Best-selling author of twelve books, Sweta Vikram talks about how we can change our patterns of thinking, believing, and living to awaken our best lives.

Chiropractor and spiritual medium, Dr. Daniel Ryan, speaks about the realm beyond this mortal one and how attuning ourselves to it can elevate and transform our lives: “There comes a point where you trust the unseen more than the seen. When you’re in that place, you’re free.”

Actor-writer-director-composer Shishir Kurup talks about being the audio book voice of Deepak Chopra and the Dalai Lama, reimagining Shakespeare, and writing libretto for the LA Opera. Join us as we talk about the epic journey of storytelling.

New Age/classical opera singer and songwriter, Sangeeta Kaur creates a groundbreaking, transformative, theatrical form of storytelling: the mantra opera. Join us as we discuss her new album, “Compassion," and awakening powers within us that seem superhuman.

Filmmakers Ernesto Quintero and Satinder Kaur uncover the sacred journey of compassion and the power of togetherness. Join us as we discuss their new documentary film, A Sacred Journey, a poignant exploration of ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease), care-giving, and what it means to live when your physical body deteriorates.