We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Savita Sastry. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Savita below.
Savita, we’re thrilled to have you on our platform and we think there is so much folks can learn from you and your story. Something that matters deeply to us is living a life and leading a career filled with purpose and so let’s start by chatting about how you found your purpose.
The pursuit of unveiling purpose has taken place within an ongoing journey rooted in love, compassion, and creative expression. At its core, purpose feels like an alignment with something greater than myself—a way to tap into the mediums that awaken not only my own spirit but also the hearts of others. Love and compassion has been a practice I have always leaned upon to guide this long-winded and worthwhile quest of finding purpose. Cultivating feelings of love, kindness, and compassion towards oneself and others as a foundation reminds me that when I believe in myself and follow my intuition, I can create space for others to experience joy, healing, and connection. In many ways, pursuing this purpose has become a form of service, and when executed authentically, this service enriches my life as much as it can uplift others.
My path has unfolded at the intersection of science and music, two deeply intuitive and creative fields that, while seemingly distinct, share profound similarities. Both require diving deep within oneself, trusting the process, and honing the muscle of intuition—a practice that involves noticing physical sensations, emotions, and thoughts with curiosity, openness, detachment, and awareness. Through this practice, I’ve learned to transmute challenges and suffering into love and understanding.
From a young age, science was a natural part of my life. I grew up engineering small projects with my grandfather and learning about South Asian healing practices from the medicine women in my family practicing herbalism and Ayurveda. In my initial experiences with science through formal education, it often appeared rigid and strictly methodological. However, as I now pursue a doctoral degree in molecular nutrition at Cornell University, I’ve come to understand that science is also a deeply creative and intuitive process, where discovery thrives on both structure and imagination.
Music, on the other hand, came into my life as pure joy. I remember sitting on my father’s lap as a child as he played the mridangam, an Indian percussion instrument, feeling the rhythm and connection it brought. As a Kuchipudi dancer, I often lost myself in the intricate rhythms and percussive beats of the art form. Each movement became a dialogue with the music, demanding focus and alignment while offering a profound sense of freedom. The complexity of the beats drew me into a meditative state, where I trusted my body’s intuition and fully inhabited the present moment. Through this interplay of movement and rhythm, I experienced the transformative power of music and self-expression—insights that continue to shape my creative and healing journey today and something I deeply wish for others to experience as well. Music became a space of healing and self-expression, a way to access elevated states of consciousness and imagine new realities.
Despite their differences, science and music both challenged me to trust my intuition. Over time, I began to see them not as separate paths but as complementary forces shaping my purpose. As I continue in science and music, I realize the discomfort I feel when faced with learning curves or limiting beliefs isn’t a signal to abandon the field but rather an invitation to approach it differently.
As a DJ and budding producer, I’ve seen firsthand how music can transform not only individual lives but entire communities, creating moments of deep joy and shared humanity. In 2023, I co-founded a DJ collective named Playhouse with Tara Verma to share this joy more widely. What started off as a simple idea to throw house parties blossomed into a depthful mission is to create platforms for people of color and women to artistically explore themselves and connect with the healing power of music. Through world dance music and multicultural sonics, we aim to foster spaces where creativity thrives and where music becomes a bridge to connection, healing, and celebration for large groups of people. Music allows us to dream of bigger realities, to imagine a world where love, understanding, and inclusivity take center stage. It is not just an art form but a tool for collective healing, and through this collective, I hope to continue building spaces where others can experience its transformative power.
Finding your purpose isn’t a smooth journey, and it certainly doesn’t converge on a single pursuit or even a handful of pursuits. It’s messy and rocky, often requiring you to learn new skills, confront fears, and navigate the discomfort of our messy minds. But intuition is the compass that keeps you moving forward. For me, intuition is a daily practice of listening closely to what lights my heart on fire and asking whether my dreams are rooted in love or ego. This introspective attention has been a powerful tool for aligning my actions with a deeper purpose.
Ultimately, purpose is not just about personal fulfillment—it’s about service. When we help others experience joy or healing, we create it in our own lives. Whether it’s through the music I play or the science I explore, my purpose feels most alive when it serves something larger than myself. It’s a reminder that the dreams and desires placed in my heart are not random; they are gifts meant to be shared. By practicing love and compassion, I continue to refine my ability to express these gifts, awakening both myself and others in the process.
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
Right now, my focus is on growing as a DJ , producer, and scientist while incorporating philosophies of love and compassion into my creative processes. These practices, drawn from meditation, have become essential tools for stimulating creativity in both my music and my work in science. They remind me to root my efforts in service, which has brought unexpected and transformative growth. The teachings I hope to share with others are rooted in Buddhist, Hindu, Sufi, and non-sectarian practices that revolve around transforming our thoughts and physical reality to work towards a better world for all living beings. In my music, I layer meditative spoken word on top of dance music and regularly use healing frequencies and sounds of nature to ground the body. One of my greatest guides in incorporating the depth of these practices into my creative pursuits is my dear peer and teacher Furwa Hussain, a South Asian wellness educator I met during my first silent meditation sitting in 2022.
In 2023, I co-founded a DJ collective called Playhouse with Tara Verma, and much of our energy has been dedicated to creating inclusive spaces where women and people of color can explore their identities through the lens of multicultural sonics. Our mission is not just to play music but to foster environments where creativity, healing, and connection can thrive. Rooting our ideas in service has been a powerful catalyst for growth, both personally and within our community—a realization that took Tara and me by surprise as the collective evolved.
Since starting Playhouse in September 2023, we’ve had the privilege of supporting and collaborating with incredible pioneers in the dance music space, including KSHMR, Jai Wolf, Indo Warehouse, Bombays, Madame Gandhi, Ria Mehta, MEMBA, Anish Kumar, Sofia Kourtesis, and many more. These collaborations have fueled our mission to redefine what it means to host a party. For us, it’s not just about gathering people—it’s about creating opportunities to connect, heal, and elevate consciousness through the mediums of music and community. I truly believe our success has shaped because of our genuine desire to want better for the people around us rather than a self-centric desire to only see one or two individuals thrive.
Our work has primarily been centered in San Francisco and New York City, where we continue to push boundaries, challenging traditional ideas of nightlife and building spaces that celebrate inclusion, creativity, and love. Music is so much more than sound; it’s a tool for transformation, and through Playhouse, we aim to amplify its potential to inspire and unite. Follow @playhouse.sf on instagram to learn more!
Alongside my creative pursuits in music, I am also deeply focused on completing my PhD, where I study the molecular and microbiological mechanisms that govern inflammatory bowel disease through the lens of nutrition. My work bridges experimentation and computational analysis, all with the goal of empowering individuals to take charge of their wellness. Nutrition is a powerful reminder that our choices play a critical role in our healing—that true wellness lies in our own hands. While traditional academic science often focuses on reducing variables and studying individual components in isolation, I strive to bring a more holistic perspective to my research. I do this by studying biological environments from a systems based lens, incorporating a multitude of data types to derive insights about health and disease.
My ultimate goal is to merge the wisdom of ancient healing practices with the rigor of modern science. I envision nutrition not just as a cornerstone of health but as a preventative tool in medicine. By combining traditional approaches with scientific discernment, I hope to unlock deeper understandings of how we can heal and sustain ourselves in a way that honors both evidence-based practices and time-tested wisdom.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
1. Cultivating Compassion: One of the most transformative practices I’ve embraced is wishing everyone well, even those who may have caused me pain. We cannot create a harmonious world for ourselves if we hold on to harmful thoughts about others or ourselves. At the core, there’s a thread of unity connecting all living beings, and when we project ill will, we amplify suffering—both in our inner world and in the world around us. Practicing detachment has been essential in this process. It’s about observing our feelings and thoughts without judgment and approaching our triggers with compassion and love. This doesn’t mean ignoring emotions or suppressing them; it means holding space for them, understanding they are temporary, and choosing not to let them shape our reality negatively. By wishing others freedom from suffering, we free ourselves as well.
Advice: Begin each day with a simple intention to visualize a perfect world for yourself and all living beings. What essence or version of yourself would you show up in this ideal world? Can you offer yourself the opportunity to show up that way today? When challenging emotions arise, pause and observe them without judgment.
2.Believing in Your Dreams: One of the greatest gifts you can give yourself is the belief that you are worthy of the dreams that bring you feelings of peace, joy, and love. If others can dream big, why can’t you? The dreams we carry aren’t random; they are placed in our hearts because a path exists to bring them to life. Visualizing these dreams helps align our mental perspective with the reality we want to create. When we show up each day embodying the essence of that envisioned reality—whether it’s confidence, creativity, or abundance—we invite our external world to reflect that shift. This isn’t just about achieving goals but about fully embracing the possibility of what we’re capable of. I spent the first 8 months of my PhD walking home every day and visualizing myself one day playing on stage with a music collective I really look up to. I rooted my thoughts and visualizations in my true desire for wanting people to experience healing and community through music, something I experienced in my first concert as an attendee for this collective. I have now been booked as an artist with this collective twice which deeply affirms my purpose in music and the responsibility I feel to share and develop new ways in which people can heal with music.
Advice: Spend time regularly visualizing your dreams and imagining what it feels like to already live in that reality. Take small steps toward your goals while maintaining a mindset of openness and belief in your worthiness.
3. Following Your Intuition: Intuition is our internal compass, guiding us toward clarity and alignment. Learning to trust it requires tuning into the physical sensations and emotional cues within us—like anxiety, excitement, or peace. Following intuition often means confronting fears and letting go of limiting beliefs, but it’s a practice that strengthens self-trust and resilience over time. Developing self-awareness has been key for me. By paying attention to how my body reacts in certain situations, I’ve learned to distinguish between the pull of fear and the quiet confidence of intuitive knowing. This practice has helped me navigate challenges and stay grounded in my purpose.
Advice: Practice stillness, whether through meditation or simply taking moments throughout the day to pause and check in with yourself. Look at the leaves, touch grass, look at your friends and yourself in the eyes and be present. Notice how your body reacts to decisions or situations—what feels expansive versus what feels constricting. Intuition often speaks in subtle ways, so giving yourself space to listen is essential.
For anyone early in their journey, know that these qualities are like muscles; the more you practice them, the stronger they grow. Start small, stay patient with yourself, and trust that the process will guide you to where you’re meant to be.
Any advice for folks feeling overwhelmed?
When feeling overwhelmed, it’s natural for thoughts and emotions to spiral, often manifesting as physical discomfort—a racing heart, weakness, sweating, tight chest, or restlessness. In those moments, I’ve found that the simplicity of focusing on my breath can be an anchor. It brings me back to the present and helps me find clarity amid the chaos.
Calming the mind is rarely easy. Sometimes it feels almost impossible, especially when the discomfort feels so real and so strong. But I’ve learned to gently bring my attention to the sensations around my nose—the coolness of the air as I inhale, the way the air touches my upper lip when I exhale, the feeling of my nostrils pulsating and the light air of a room brushing against my nose. It reminds me of something fundamental: as long as I have my breath, I have my vitality. And as long as I have that vitality, I’m equipped to face whatever mental or emotional challenges come my way.
In Vipassana meditation, this practice is called Anapana. It’s a simple, yet profound way of focusing on the breath as a starting point. There is no privilege, special resources, or money needed to access this incredible tool we are all born with. Meditation can feel intimidating at first- and rightfully so. Understanding the thoughts that feed our reality and their consequences is a task that takes an immense amount of patience and commitment. But when I allow myself the grace to just focus on my breath—even for a few moments—it becomes easier to remember that my uncomfortable thoughts and feelings are not permanent.
Keeping the impermanent and changing nature of everything at the forefront of my mind allows my perspective to slowly shift from a reactionary phase (feeling anger or sadness from the discomfort) to an objective phase (simply allowing myself to observe the range of sensations we are given as humans). Can we love ourselves enough to offer this attention with our breath? I just have to breathe, to notice, and to trust that I can move through whatever I’m feeling. The breath reminds me of my resilience, and is something nothing can ever take away from me as long as I am alive. The power we hold in our breaths is equivalent to the power we hold within our existence.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/savsastry/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/savitasastry/
- Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/savita-sastry/tracks
- Other: https://www.instagram.com/playhouse.sf/
Image Credits
Name: rgbtv photography
https://www.instagram.com/rgbtv_photography/
@rgbtv_photography
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