After Kalindi my reading habits have changed. Life has been busier, and I try to find time wherever and whenever possible. So between classes, in the auto, when I can’t sleep, on a floaty in the pool. This has worked well for me because in the last two years I’ve been able to spend a lot more time reading than I had pre-Kalindi.
This year I read 19 books, and here are my top 5 books of 2025.
My first weekend alone with Kalindi was only recently, when she was a year and eight months old.
As a parent living in India, I’m so blessed to be able to afford lots and lots of help. We’ve had help with Kalindi from day 1, and I feel like I’m a more peaceful and relaxed mother because of that. I’ve had enough time to heal, have been able to balance my life with motherhood and have assimilated a lot of tidbits about child rearing, culture and even boundaries.
If you’re a yoga practitioner, chances are you’ve come across Yoga: A Gem for Women. It’s a book that most women yoga practitioners turn to, even if they are from other lineages.
There’s no single comprehensive resource that helps women understand how yoga can support fertility, pregnancy, postpartum recovery, and beyond. Reading this book when I was exploring my own health and trying to find solutions changed this book for me. It gave me a softer view of a woman’s health and taught me to gave me a holistic view of how yoga nurtures women through all of it.
If you’ve followed my fitness journey, you know the long story of my unexplained infertility. I’ve spoken extensively about how yoga and other alternative healing methodologies helped me during that time. That’s when I turned to Yoga: A Gem for Women again, hoping to find a solution and some solace.
When Agi Wittich started a book club to read Gem again, I decided this was the perfect time to read the book cover to cover, something I hadn’t done before. Agi, herself a yoga practitioner, has also been influenced deeply by Geeta Iyengar’s teachings. You can watch our conversation about her pregnancy and postpartum experience, and the influence of yoga on her life.
This is the last night of the workshop. As always, I feel like I’m taking a lot back with me – things I may not even be aware of yet, but that will manifest themselves in my practice, my studies and in my life.
Something I really like about classes at RIMYI is that they aren’t so much about learning asanas, but about the wisdom woven into the teachings. Students often ask
How do I practice?
How do I know I’m doing it right?
How do I sequence?
There’s a pigeon who has laid eggs outside the window of my bathroom. Every time I open the door of the bathroom, no matter how quietly, she gets disturbed. I feel bad, acutely. When I was shown into this room Dheeraj told me they noticed the eggs for the first time when they came back from Diwali break, and they didn’t have the heart to push them out. Every time the pigeon flutters in alarm and walks away from her eggs I feel an ache in my heart. I know how the pigeon feels. I don’t want to be responsible for its fear, I want it to know her eggs are safe.
In 2019, on my last trip to the Iyengar Yoga institute in Pune, I would have never thought it would take me 6 years to come back to the Iyengar institute in Pune. Over the years many visitors I was in touch with have told me about the changes – there’s a new entrance, even a waiting area. The old order (Pandurang Sir), has given way to the new.
A pandemic and a baby later, here I am, back in Pune’s verdant climes awaiting the commencement of the weekend workshop at the Iyengar Yoga Institute in Pune.
I’ve visited very few Jain religious sites, the most notable being my visit to Shravanbelagola. A few months ago I also got the chance to visit the Shri Mahaveerji temple in the Karauli district of Rajasthan, another important Jain pilgrimage site.
The temple is regarded as a Digambar Jain Atishaya Kshetra, which means signifying a miraculous site within the Digambar Jain tradition. Lord Mahaveer, the 24th tirthankara (an enlightened spiritual teacher who has conquered the cycle of birth and death), is the principal deity here.
…began with a plan.
We’re almost done studying the Kena Upanishad in my Vedanta class. The Kena Upanishad is the third upanishad we’re reading (after the Katha and Mundaka) and the 5th Vedantic text (including the Bhagavad Gita and Tattvabodha). This text delves into the nature of Brahman, and through the dialogue format common to Hindu scriptures, helps the reader understand that the Self is Brahman. For the last few weeks we’ve been discussing a story that comes in the third canto of the text. It’s a story about the demi gods becoming proud of their strength after winning a battle. In this story the Guru appears as a woman, Uma Devi. This story is relevant during Navratri, when we worship the various manifestations of Durga. I was also pleasantly surprised to find a literary example of a female Guru.
I’ve been studying Vedanta since 2020, when I began my master’s program, which is where I met my teacher. The first text we studied was Tattvabodha, then the Bhagawad Gita…and a couple of Upanishads later, we’re now almost done with the Kena Upanishad. My Vedanta study is in the guru-shishya style – Subhadra ma’am is a direct disciple of Swami Dayananda Saraswati, and she teaches us just like she learned from him. When she asked me to start teaching, her directive to me was the same – teach everything I’ve taught, just like I’ve taught you. Learning in this style is slow but steady. Brahman, Aatma, guru etc are some of the the cornerstones of Vedantic philosophy, and my understanding of these ideas continues to evolve as I deepen my studies.
Subhadra ma’am often says that the subject of Vedanta is the Self. Everything we study, every concept, every story is relevant to our experience as human beings. Once this is clear, then Vedanta becomes a lived subject. Here are a few concepts that are the cornerstones of the Vedantic path. These concepts form just a small part of what we explore in class, and I know my grasp of them will continue to mature as the study unfolds.