May what I do flow from me like a river. No forcing and no holding back – Rainer Maria Rilke

As I announce the Designing Your Life program I’m offer at Dularia every January, I reflect on the question: do we design our lives? Or does life design us in her wisdom?

My best guess is that it is a bit of both.

We have concepts of how our lives should look like, and that is guided by the question: What do I want from my life? Designing our lives in a quest for happiness and around what we want out of it seems like a common-sensical approach. It certainly was the only way I knew about for the first 35 years of my life. I strove for my goals, operating from a conditioned mind, and aimed to fulfil expectations set by others. I was extremely successful in my career, had a great group of friends, the ability to travel to some incredible places, and a comfortable home. The only problem was that I felt hollow inside. Fleeting happiness was often followed by anxiety and depression, and the haunting sense that I was put on Earth for something bigger would not leave me.

Then, one day, or perhaps more truthfully said, over a period of time, something in me broke. It was as if the floodgates of life trying to flow through me finally shattered, and all I could do was to surrender. Ever since then, my guiding question shifted to: What is life asking of me? When I listened deeply, the answers were sometimes scary, sometimes soothing, and invariably led to wholesomeness when I followed the guidance.

The life I lead today, a decade or more later, is one I could never, ever, have conceived with my mind or logically arrived at. I’m able to express my creativity, serve people around the world with my work, lead an organisation with nature and humanity at it’s core, and experience giving and receiving love in ways I never imagined before. I feel like my potential as a human is unfolding like the petals of a flower, and that life lives through me rather than me leading my life. There continues to be fear, challenges, pain, and loss, but it’s accompanied by a deep faith within that all is well.

I’ve come to see that we are nature, and the incredible life force that causes a seed to germinate, a leaf to unfurl, or that gives a sea turtle precise coordinates to come back to nest in, flows within us. We have to learn to simply move out of the way. As simple as this is, it is also extremely difficult to embrace this state fully. We have layers of fear, conditioning, and self-doubt to overcome, and have to cultivate a level of stillness and listening that takes deep practice.

I’ve been incredibly fortunate to have received some transformative teachings over the years that allow me to listen to my whispering voice of wisdom, to discern it from the voice of fear, to overcome the harsh and overwhelming inner critic through humour and compassion, and to choose my commitments from a place of intention. As an offering to the world, I have compiled all of these as well as my own interpretations and understanding into a program called Designing Your Life, which I hold at Dularia, a regenerative centre of learning I founded in deep collaboration with the indigenous tribal community local to the region.

The Designing Your Life program starts by looking at life around us through the timeless principles of nature that are the basis of permaculture and biomimicry. It then invites us to take a deep look at our own nature- our life’s intentions (a term coined by Maria Nemeth in her profound book Mastering Life’s Energies), our fears and doubts and their underlying physiology, and practices that support us to overcome them. We go into stillness in nature to listen to our inner wisdom, and ultimately create a life design that is aligned with nature, both outside and within. If we want to manifest something in the world, we learn a design-thinking game based on biomimicry that guides us to design anything - an organisation, a program, a website, a built space,… - in alignment with nature’s principles. We close with a look at the stunning patterns of sacred geometry in the world around us and co-create a celebratory piece of art that brings these patterns to life.

On the last day of the Designing Your Life retreat in 2025, we drew a life-size pattern of one of the forms of concentric expansion found in biological forms, especially flowers. We left our participants with a deep, embodied reminder of what is sacred within them.

All the while, as we do our reflective practices, we combine them with working with our hands on the farm- harvesting from the garden, plastering with mud, immersing in the indigenous tribal culture and their practice of weaving biodegradable plates using the leaves of their holy Saal tree. This work with the hands using natural materials grounds us, cultivates deep observation, and supports us to embody nature’s wisdom.

Throughout the process, we’re building deep connections with the others in the group through vulnerability in a safe space. We’re also developing a common language. The group becomes a great resource as we go home from the time at Dularia, and we continue this connection through online sessions that give courage and clarity as we implement the principles into our daily lives.

We keep the group size to a small number of eight people, so that I can give each person the attention they require. If you feel called to attend this program, do connect with me to see if we have a spot for you. Nothing would give me more pleasure than to witness life’s design expressing itself through you.

Sensory homunculus model by Sharon Price-James

So a really important question arises: what are we using our hands for in the modern world? Are we doing justice to this fine-tuned evolutionary investment? And if not, what consequences may it have?

In my middle-class upbringing in India, I was not particularly encouraged to learn how to use my hands for crafting. My schooling had us dabble for a few hours in a few “hobby” classes such as candle-making or pottery, but the main priority was definitely to study and retain copious amounts of information, and regurgitate them in exams. The main use of my hands was to write pages and pages of notes. Fast-forwarding to my life as an academic, even writing by hand was considered too slow and tedious. I was now typing away on a computer, and later, using my hands to swipe on a smart-phone. Sadly, I believe, a large proportion of the educated and so-called privileged population worldwide are doing just that; investing this incredible sensory gift of hands we have into typing, swiping, and operating other gadgets and machinery.

Not only does our education system teach us that working with our hands is menial, capitalism drives home the point by making it much faster and more convenient (values we have been taught to honour) to order something on Amazon than make it ourselves. We feel disempowered, disconnected, agitated, depressed, and numb from not using our hands and sensory system the way they are meant to be used.

It was only a few years ago, when I had the great fortune of starting to learn pottery with my wonderful teacher Elio Pereira, that I started sensing the immense benefits of working with my hands. Touching and sensing the clay, moulding it with my hands, and creating objects of beauty were immensely calming, satisfying, and grounding. My mind was focussed on the present that felt meditative, and all of life seemed to flow with more clarity and ease. Yes, you heard me right- not only was playing with clay fun and calming, it shifted my entire attentiveness to what matters most in my life.

A kurinuki I made by gouging out the clay from inside the outer shape I had made first, and then fired using the Raku method where the cracks emerge spontaneously. Making Kurinukis might seem like an absurdly time-consuming way to make a little coffee cup, but I can vouch for the delight I felt as I spent many hours mindfully gouging out the insides so that the walls remained uniform and didn’t cave in. I’m endlessly grateful to my teacher Elio for introducing me to this art. Photograph by Chris Sprague.

Since then, I have been truly fortunate to discover the art of woodworking with my partner and it has had a very similar effect on my mind. Wood has very different qualities to consider than clay, and I had to learn how to understand the grain and work within the constraints of it. It also required me to be much more attentive to precision, and this added complexity of coordination seemed to light up even more of the “real-estate” devoted to my hands. An added benefit emerged, as we could co-create objects of beauty, which brings delight and harmony to our relationship.

Proudly displaying a chopping board I made with the beautiful deodar (cedar) wood available locally where I live in the mountain region of India. I chiseled the red butterfly key carefully from a small piece of precious hardwood from southern India, and then inlayed it into the board. It took me a week of concentrated work to learn how to make the butterfly key! Photograph by Chris Sprague in our woodworking studio at home.

Another great opportunity for me to honour my homunculus has been to learn mud plastering from the wonderful ladies of the Santhal tribal community at Dularia. They work slowly, rhythmically, and incredibly mindfully. When working together with them, I’ve experienced a feeling of oneness like never before- we seem to all melt with each other and the mud, silently, gently, and harmoniously. Here, the added benefits of discovering community and connection have been invaluable for me.

No matter the material or the context, I’ve found that working with my hands daily is something I not only value, but I need. And it is working with nature’s materials that brings about the most benefit, as they are unpredictable, responsive to my hands, and never quite uniform. And crafting something of beauty, that I can use in my daily life and cherish, adds all the more value to my life. Igniting the sensory system of my hands has been extremely empowering, as the first question I ask myself is, can I make what I need? It is by asking this question that I surprised even myself by designing and making myself a leather satchel that is perfectly sized and suited to my needs. I had never before sewn anything in my life, let alone out of leather!

A satchel, wallet and eyeglass holder I designed and made quite spontaneously within the span of a few days. I believe this is a spontaneous gift of reigniting the Homunculus.

From my personal inquiry I have come to believe that we humans thrive when we are working mindfully with our hands, with nature’s materials that feel, smell, and look alive to us. Especially when we do it in community, in our collective commitment to creating beauty, we experience oneness, wholeness, and a sense of healing. We reclaim an essential part of ourselves and become empowered to live lives of dignity. In this way, slowing down and working with our hands to make or grow whatever we need might be the most radical form of activism there is in modernity!

It is for this reason that I ensure that each learning experience we offer at Dularia emphasises work with the hands- through botanical printing, gardening, mud plastering, woodworking, and weaving in the Santhal tribal tradition. It might seem strange that an effort to heal our minds, our relationships, and societies could begin with working with our hands, but I don’t think that it’s far-fetched in the least.

The visible delight on Saumya’s face as she participates in the timeless task of plastering with mud and cow-dung during a workshop at Dularia. Photograph by Meeri Shenoy.

I’d love to leave you with a question- how are you honouring your homunculus? Has there been a longing to take up pottery, woodworking, weaving, gardening, sewing, cooking… that you’ve put away “for the moment” because you’re too busy doing something more important? I urge you to listen to this longing, as it might be much deeper, more urgent and essential for your life’s quality than you can even begin to imagine. And please do share your stories, as we become richer together by reclaiming an ancient part of our beings, and healing our disconnection with what is rightfully ours.

I had reached a station in a small town in India well on time to catch my train. As I reached the platform, I heard an announcement that the train was delayed. I sat down on my bag, joining hundreds of people waiting patiently. Vendors came by selling chai and snacks, and people were sharing food and conversation with strangers or with their families. After an hour or so of waiting, I asked the man sitting near me, "Do you know when the train will arrive?" He gave me a blank and perplexed look and answered, "Don't you know? The train is delayed!" Oh yes, I realised, what a stupid question. The train was delayed and that was that. We went back to eating, staring into space, or watching the people around us. Except for an Asian-American woman who was frantically pacing the platform, no one seemed to be bothered. The train rolled in about five hours later and our journey continued.

Such periods of empty time – when I was doing nothing in particular and simply being – had been a valuable part of my years growing up in India before smartphones invaded our culture. It was time for relaxation, rejuvenation, and for not taking life too seriously. But having lived for more than seventeen years in the West, I had forgotten its value. My life had become full of plans and schedules and I had adopted the widespread feelings of guilt if I wasn't doing something "productive".

Until I received a large medicinal dose of empty time during a vision quest I signed up for in the Black Forest of southern Germany. All I knew before I signed up was that vision quests were important during times of transition, and I was facing an important one: I was leaving behind my academic career of seventeen years for an unknown future where I had only a vague sense of what my work in the world would be. Though I was terrified, I felt called to make this transition intentional.

As part of the quest, I was required to spend four days and nights alone in the forest, fasting on water, and living in a small shelter I had rigged myself with two tarps, some string, and a few logs I found on the forest floor. Being alone in nature was something I loved, and I cherished even the dark, silent nights. I was warm enough thanks to my sleeping bag. Hunger came in tides and I tried to keep thoughts about food away as much as possible. But surprisingly, it wasn't so much the hunger that bothered me, but the complete lack of structure to my day without having to cook and eat or even being able to make a fire. When I went out to explore the forest in the afternoon, I would catch myself planning my dinner – only to realise there was none to be had.

Without a watch, the passing of time had a very different feel to it. I sometimes sat looking for what felt like an eternity at the trees, ferns, and mosses. I observed ants as they busily carried pine needles to build their large mounds. I watched leaves flutter in the wind. On day four, it rained for about 6 hours straight, and I lay watching raindrops rolling down the tarp, collecting speed as they joined others on their way down. I experienced the entire spectrum of feelings from deep sadness to incredible joy, from intense boredom to bursts of creativity, and from restlessness to serenity.

In one of my creative moments, without even realising what I was doing, I started making a sculpture out of twigs and stones. A vision flowed through me- of a sacred place dedicated to protecting nature. Our Vision Quest facilitator had explained to us that the name can be deceptive- it is not that we are going actively to seek a vision, but that the process we go through could keep working in the subconscious, and guide our lives for years to come. In my case, the nebulous vision that arrived manifested three years later into the regenerative livelihood project Dularia I founded in India. I cannot be sure of the details of the guidance I received in the silence of the forest, but I know that Dularia was conceived there, in what felt like precious moments of wordless communion with Source.

My solo in the forest left an indelible impression on me, and since then, I have gone back to my childhood habit of spending plenty of empty time in my everyday life. These are moments without any particular purpose, free of interruptions from my gadgets, when I am listening deeply with all my senses. They are healing, nurturing and essential for my creativity.

I am convinced that we humans need medicinal doses of empty time. It is for this reason that in the Designing Your Life retreat I facilitate at Dularia, where we come together to envision a regenerative life expressing our full potential, I include a solo in nature. We also include a solo in a pivotal moment of the BioLeadership Fellowship programme that I am one of the design leads for. Though most participants are wary before they embark on it, they come back with shining eyes, with stories of magic, and feeling more alive.

In our fast-paced world where being productive and efficient is valued above all else, and restlessness pervades our minds and bodies, empty time has disappeared almost entirely. Not only are we too busy to go out in nature aimlessly, we’re listening to podcasts while going for our morning walks, we’re scrolling while waiting for a friend to arrive, and we plan ahead for delays thanks to the accuracy of travel apps. For those of us who are working towards environmental protection or social change, empty time seems frivolous when faced with such urgent goals. And to make things worse, experiencing empty time requires us to face extreme discomfort- of feeling our restlessness and being unable to divert our minds from it. Given all of this, I wouldn’t be surprised if you said that empty time is the least of your priorities, or something you simply can’t afford.

But what if I were to tell you that it is in moments of empty time that Source itself has a chance to speak to us in whispers, to guide us gently through our next steps. and give us the resilience we so desperately need in today’s world? Would you believe me?

I'd like to sign off by sharing a poem that emerged during my vision quest:

Oh time, you laugh at me
by stretching to infinity!
How you play
with my soul
that needs to bare
truths to be told.

Oh time, you laugh at me
by stretching to infinity!
In constant doing, I can hide
my deepest pain and my pride.
In simply being, I am forced to see
who I can and cannot be.

Oh time, you laugh at me
by stretching to infinity!
You force me to surrender
all my expectations and hunger;
hunger to be seen,
hunger to be heard,
hunger to remain 
under cover.

Oh time, you start healing me
by stretching to infinity!
The light now shines
on my inner darkness
encompassing all
my joy and my sadness.
How you soothe me,
how you invigorate me
by simply stretching 
to infinity.

Crystal clear glacial waters near my mountain home that bring me alive!

Each of us has a relationship with wealth that influences our peace of mind and the choices we make. Although we acknowledge that wealth has many components- physical, financial, spiritual, relational, experiential- our single-pointed focus on money often influences our decisions and the shape our lives take. In my coaching conversations people often bring up the theme of money when they are considering life changes. Letting go of an unfulfilling and stressful job that is misaligned with their dreams and values is nevertheless daunting, especially when they start staring down the black hole of financial uncertainty.

I've been through this process when I left my secure, well-paying academic job to become a self-employed coach and facilitator, and simultaneously started investing significant portions of my personal savings in a socio-environmental enterprise I founded, called Dularia. After leaving my job, I was often tormented with fears and doubts as I watched my savings deplete. I remember stopping my thoughts by asking the simple question- do I have enough in the now? If the answer was yes, I carried on, while my meditation practice helped me feel the fear in my body and let it go through me like a storm. Slowly, I started embracing and even relishing the uncertainty of my financial status. After all, uncertainty comes with the great gift of freedom- freedom to choose the work I love, freedom to live the way I want to, and freedom to become more of me than I have ever been before. And this is the wealth and abundance my soul rejoices in.

I’ve started thinking of wealth being like water, an idea I first read about in Lynne Twist's beautiful book Soul of Money. She tells the story of a large-hearted African-American woman called Gertrude who donated fifty of her precious dollars to a fund-raiser to end world hunger. Gertrude had said, “To me, money is a lot like water. For some folks it rushes through their life like a raging river, but money comes through my life like a small trickle. I want to pass it on in a way that does the best good for the most folks.”

Reflecting on this metaphor, over time I’ve discovered five principles of wealth flowing like water that have deeply enriched my life.

1. Like water, wealth fouls when it stagnates, and sparkles when it flows. This principle has kept me from accumulating more wealth than I need and I’ve derived great joy from seeing my wealth flow to anything meaningful. I’ve poured significant proportions of my money, creativity, and physical energy into Dularia, where I’ve witnessed not only the remarkable transformation of a barren land into a thriving ecosystem, but also seen people of some of the most socio-economically disadvantaged communities shining as they earn a dignified livelihood from Earth-friendly practices. I’ve also poured my wealth into continuing education for facilitation and coaching, pottery, yoga, and permaculture. And remarkably, I’ve consistently seen the wealth streaming in as I earn my living from deeply meaningful work that benefits people from around the world, and brings me in touch with some remarkable people I would have never met otherwise.

The opportunities for this remarkable young girl from an indigenous tribe we work with at Dularia has expanded multifold as a result of the wealth that has flowed “through” me to the enterprise. This is her participating in a permaculture design course at the age of four.

2. Like water, wealth flows down-hill. I’ve noticed this fascinating phenomenon repeatedly; whenever I take courageous decisions like investing in something for the benefit of all at Dularia, or in “soul-tending” desires like joining a pottery collective, I invariably find money, resourceful people, opportunities, and a whole lot of magic flowing into my life, almost as if it were waiting for a a gradient. The wealth invariably flows in after I’ve committed to these decisions, as if playfully testing my faith each time.

3. Like water, a clean source of wealth nurtures, whereas a contaminated source harms. I’ve become very discerning about the source of my financial income. Whenever I consider a work project, I check whether it aligns with my values and whether it would nourish me and others. Based on this principle, I have turned down lucrative offers that didn’t match my idea of well-being and have come out wealthier as a result.

In my happy place at the pottery studio.

4. Like water, wealth is precious, and needs to be spent with care. I’ve become minutely discerning about how I spend money, time, physical or relational energy. I try to grow my own produce or buy from those who grow and sell food organically with love and care, I travel only when it aligns with my life’s intentions, stay in places where my hosts care for their place and people, and hire those who work with integrity. I invest in high quality, long-lasting, and aesthetically pleasing clothes, shoes, appliances, furniture, or anything for that matter, and make or design as much as I can with my own hands.

5. Like water, wealth comes in waves. Perhaps the most subtle and yet most important principle I’ve discovered is the one of equanimity. When wealth is flowing abundantly in my direction, I watch with appreciation and gratitude. In moments where the flow has ebbed or even stopped completely, I watch the fear and doubt pass through like dark storms that I’m equally grateful for. The waves are what makes the flow of wealth fascinating, and as I surrender to them, the richness of life emerges.

Where is your wealth coming from? Where are you pouring it in? I hope these reflections on wealth flowing like water will bring clarity and ease into your life.

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