By Akanksha Tiwari
There was a particular kind of tiredness that no amount of sleep fixed. Not the kind that comes after a long day but the dull settled kind of tiredness that had made itself at home in me. For several years while working as a Product Marketing Manager at Cisco, my workdays slowly shifted to nights. US Pacific hours became routine until my circadian clock quietly gave up keeping time. Sleep became unreliable and then rare. My immunity had never been strong since childhood and during those years it began to falter further. My hair fell in clumps and skin broke out. On the paper, my career graph was always progressing, but I was always feeling low and listless.
Somewhere along the way I had accepted that this was simply the price of a good career. You pay it and move on. I moved on to Senior Product Manager at Amazon Web Services. It was a bigger role and a different kind of responsibility.
Two years ago, a senior leader at AWS introduced me to Dhyan Foundation. I walked into my first session with no grand expectation but a quiet hope that something might shift. What I encountered was not a wellness programme or a meditation class. It was an entire way of life rooted in ancient Vedic wisdom.
What the Practices Did
Under the guidance of Ashwini Guruji, I began practicing Sanatan Kriya. I attended many sessions on the Science of Dhyan, mantra chanting, Science of Yagyas, Spiritual Healing and other advanced practices. All of it offered freely. No transaction attached.
I started experiencing the Law of Karma. The changes came slowly then unmistakably. The insomnia loosened. My lung health strengthened in ways I could not have anticipated. The hair fall stopped and the skin cleared. Dhyan brought a stillness I had not known I was capable of. Mantra chanting refined something in my inner state that is difficult to put into words.
Each practice held its own gift and together they began healing me and rebuilding a Foundation, without me putting in conscious efforts. Within the Dhyan Foundation family, I also interacted with many doctors who had turned to these same Vedic practices for their own wellbeing. That was a powerful thing to witness. Parallel to all of these positive changes, something else was quietly at work. Something I had not expected.
Magic of Gauseva
Dhyan Foundation has more than 45 animal shelters. I started volunteering for gauseva about a year and a half ago. I had signed up almost impulsively. That decision turned out to be one of the best I have ever made. My first morning at the shelter I remember standing at the entrance uncertain what to do with myself. A large Nandi turned his head and looked at me with that slow unhurried gaze that cows carry. Not judging or assessing. Not needing anything. Just present. Something in me settled. A stillness I had not felt in a long time. That stillness became a pattern. No matter how heavy the week had been, a few hours at the gaushala would return me to something grounded. Some describe it as the calming influence of alpha waves in the presence of cows. I only know the stillness, which I experience in the gaushala.
The relentless mental chatter of a demanding work life replaced by warmth that asks nothing in return. I began participating in treatment sessions of injured and rescued animals with paravets, monitoring feeding and helping with other work in the gaushala. Unglamorous but demanded a quality of presence that is simply non-negotiable; which I found blissful. Seva quietly evacuates the EGO. In professional life we are constantly measured by metrics, reviews and recognition. Seva dissolves that framework entirely. You prepare fodder and ensure the cows are cared for. There is no applause at the end. There is only the ACT itself. And that I discovered is exactly where the healing originates from.
Finding Purpose
Gaumata and Nandi seva was no more volunteering but gradually becoming purpose of life. I have stood in the middle of a shelter surrounded by rescued cattle and felt a contentment that a demanding professional life rarely allows. It's neither excitement nor achievement. Something quieter and far more durable than both. Charity and service have been another layer of this journey and I have found that seva without any expectation changes something quietly but permanently in how you carry yourself.
Dhyan Foundation has become family now. Doctors, engineers, media professionals, homemakers, entrepreneurs and students brought together by Dhyan and seva and a shared willingness to go inward. These are not relationships built on professional utility. That kind of bond is rarer than I had realised and more sustainable than most of the things I have collected in many years of a demanding career.
Ashwini Guruji's guidance has been the constant thread through all of it. A clarity without fog. Not always comfortable but always true. I still have demanding days. AWS is not a slow-paced environment and I carry real responsibilities. But something has permanently shifted in how I hold all of it. The healing did not come from a better productivity system. It came from learning to give time and effort and presence without any tangible returns.
Last week at the gaushala I rested my forehead against a cow's neck. It felt like exhaling something I had been carrying for years without knowing its name. That is what Karma Therapy is. The quiet cumulative miracle of showing up for something other than yourself and discovering again and again that this is what heals you most completely.
