Photography by: Lesley Xiaohan Ma

Produced by: Her Studio New York

Directed by: Stephanie Rommelt

Interviewed by: Shayna Viola

I truly believe I can be an inspiration for other woman who have experienced similar life paths, especially the underrepresented poc, south Asians, dark skinned gals, and help show them that they can alchemize their karma into dharma and that their essence is truly one of a kind.

What is the first step towards healing?

The first step towards healing is to allow yourself to rest, to regulate your nervous system, as you may have been in fight or flight or deregulated states of being. I personally have been leaning on breathwork, guided meditations from insight timer

I love Sarah blinding heart guided meditations, she takes you through a healing journey, helping you reconnect to your heart. Inhibiting your body fully with your prana is so important, often time when we were in environments with cptsd, we left certain parts of our bodies – learnt to associate more with our minds as a safety mechanism. So learning to listen to and love and nourish our bodies again so the prana may return, so we may feel embodied, so we may feel grounded is essentially the biggest thing you can do in your healing journey for yourself, I have realized.  I think it’s so different based on each one of our unique energy signatures, but learning to rely on your intuition to do things that show your soul that even though you incurred trauma or pain ,and may feel broken, this is the journey of alchemy the hero’s journey you are on.

The best thing you can do is hold loving and compassionate awareness towards your pain and those thoughts that may be negative. Starting to repaint your inner child 🫶

How do you define spirituality and how can it help reaching your full potential in a creative career?

I define spirituality as your ever-evolving sacred faith inducing belief system that helps you connect to your higher self, to something greater than yourself to source, in order to be able to see your life’s greatest mission. To be able to serve your dharma and clear your karma. To be able to see the painful lessons as opportunities for loving compassion, for growth, for alchemy, to be able to take that painful lesson and create something beautiful from it. This is the basis for success in your spiritual business. Taking your pain and those parts of you that may feel wounded and unseen and first giving them the love and light they need from adult you, and then transforming that into your creative alchemy, whether it is channeling it through your art, your voice, your writing, whatever it may be.

Once we see that we were given our life’s challenges for a greater purpose to be able to feel abundance and love through its transformation and to help others feel the same, we unlock something within that helps us feel less alone that connects us to this greater cosmic web. 

What experiences do you feel most influenced by?

I have lived in Mumbai, india; Shanghai, China; Dubai, UAE; Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Having left India at 4 I remember my formative years there before I left. I was fluent in Hindi and Tamil (being my mother tongue) originally my family is from Kerala and Tamil Nadu, South india but my great grandparents immigrated over to Mumbai. I liked feeling a sense of belonging and community for those first years the kids in my neighborhood and I would go down to play in the complex everyday and on weekends. The mothers would meet up for tea, I felt like it was a community where I belonged (culturally) I was excited to go to Shanghai though, when I was 4 my parents told me we were moving. This is where I first got introduced to various cultures and viewpoints and I did enjoy most of it, just as you gain new things there’s two sides of any coin, you also learn more about the adversities and problems in the world. So this is when I first experienced racism/colorism. I think it made me more empathetic because I had a lot of experiences being bullied, as a black sheep I was a tomboy as a kid and found it hard to fit in. I think I slowly felt conditioning tamp down on bits of my natural light that I was born with (conditioning skit of any sign up for on earth) I believe that what we experience somehow mirrors themes taking place on a larger scale on earth and as we work through them individually and collectively, raise awareness and parts of our journeys we can aid in a collective healing.

I loved experiencing different cultures, in Shanghai I learned mandarin in school how to read and write from a young age, as a class. I felt like a sponge that was able to soak in different cultures. It grew my appreciation for seeing the beauty in various cultures and the importance of immersing yourself in them as it expands your lens, with richness and color. After that I moved to Pennsylvania in 5th grade, little Anjana definitely subconsciously internally felt ashamed of her culture and her skin tone, and tried to blend in. It was difficult, as I feel like I wish I had someone to tell me your culture is beautiful, so is your skin tone and all the multitudes that make up you, from your trauma to the things you hide, they are worthy of love. This is the medicine little Anjana really needed to here and something I remind myself of to this day. I think the biggest thing I learned out of my many moves was how to begin to love myself and that my love and care is the only constant & feeling of home, so it’s important to cultivate that, as my external definition of home usually changed. Something my generational trauma and life experience of moving a lot has had come to light is the idea of committing to myself. I used to run away from myself and hide in societies perceptions of what is deemed acceptable or ‘in’ I think I got good at shapeshifting, but am finding that through all the many shades of life I have experienced I get to take the parts of it I choose to co-create a new everchanging, ever evolving beautiful  identity, almost like a quilt with patchworks from different parts of the world. I think you can take your painful experiences and alchemize them into gold and wisdom. 

Connect with Anjana!

Instagram: @anahatablooms