We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Namrata Katira a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Namrata, 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.
Purpose, whenever we hear this word, we imagine that one day some big magical ‘AHA’ moment happens in our life, and we find our purpose and we spend the rest of our life blissfully living this purpose!
While this may be true for some but, there’s so much more to this. I feel it’s never about finding the purpose; it’s about finding who we are, it’s about finding what lights up our souls, it is about listening to those nudges, those feelings, those whispers of our souls that we can’t quite put into words. And most of the time, this does not happen overnight, in fact it happens in one of the darkest times of our life when we are ready to let go of who we think we are and embark on this journey within.
To me, purpose is a way of living, it is constantly evolving and changing with us.
For the longest time I thought I was living my purpose as I was checking off all the ‘TO DO” lists of having a happy life. Good education, marriage, kids, home, 9 to 5 job. Yes, I was on the surface, but slowly this ripple of there’s something missing started to come up, I ignored it at first, I don’t know what it is, I don’t have time for this, I don’t understand why I am feeling or what I am feeling, I have everything that I could ever dream of, what more could I ask for, and I shoved this feeling within. Until one day it became a tsunami within and forced me to walk out of everything that I had known.
I walked out of my job, without any plan, without any future commitment and decided to take some time off. It was very uncomfortable, I had no future goals, no plans, no vision. It is in this unknowing of who I was, I started asking questions that I didn’t have answers to. It wasn’t easy at all, every part of me was uncomfortable and wanted to run away into the safe shelter of my past life.
I tried anything and everything just to find some answers, and just like that one of my friends offered to host an online sound bath. I signed up to support her, little did I know this decision alone would change my life forever. I didn’t even know what sound bath was, I just showed up and she explained that she is going to play some bowls and chimes to help us relax. I was prepared to relax and let go but instead ended up releasing and crying so much! That’s when I realized the power of sounds, and frequencies and music and healing instruments.
After that incident, I went on this journey to learn sound healing, understanding how it can heal us in the deepest ways. As I dove deeper into this practice, I realized that true healing happens in our body, our mind is just a representation of our conscious reality. I began learning all different modalities to connect with mind and body, which lead me to becoming a breath coach, and currently working on mind body coaching certification.
I now host group & private sound bath sessions using Crystal bowls, Tibetan bowls, and drums. And I combine various tools & techniques like breathwork, meditation, body work. I share practical tools that my clients can use to connect to their deepest self and discover the power within.
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?
I love to call my sessions “Empowered Sound Bath” Sessions where I share empowering tools like breath work and somatic work to help my clients connect to their mind body and spirit. I share various breathwork techniques that they can use anytime to regulate the nervous system, I teach various modalities that help them connect to their own voice & energy centers and access their power within.
My website is https://nourishasoul.com/ and I am currently working on a few different projects as below to be rolled out later in the year.
Nourish your mind- I am creating tools & templates to simplify decision making process. This will have simple no nonsense planners, downloadable meal planning sheets, and other empowering tool sheets.
Nourish your life- This is a program that I am really excited about! I am curating a video and downloadable worksheets that will help you live your life intentionally. It is a unique blend of creativity, accessing your intuition, connecting to your body and living in alignment with what matters to you most.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
I think for the longest time I got stuck into “fixing” myself mode, I was too afraid of failures, every time I failed at something I felt that I wasn’t doing enough or I was not good enough. I tried different things to “fix” myself and was unconsciously attaching my self-worth to my work/business. It is only when I let go the idea of perfection that things shifted for me energetically. Here are some of my life examples for better context.
For as long as I can remember, it was always hard for me to do typical 9-5 jobs, I would get tired after a few years and feel stuck. I always thought something was wrong with me. Now I look back and see all this time, my soul wanted to fulfill its desire to go out and experiment with different things and experience life in a different way. When I accepted this, I saw myself so differently.
Another example, I have tried so many different profiles, accounting, web designing, tech programing, painting, banking, insurance, karate, and the list goes on, I always saw them as failures things that I never finished. But now I see them as things that didn’t light up my soul and I am glad I tried them.
So, my first advice is don’t be too hard on yourself, have compassion for your efforts, for your journey, and for your growth. You may not see the bigger picture yet but everything that doesn’t work out is just adding a different color to the beautiful tapestry of your life.
The second thing that has truly helped me is having a beginner’s mindset. The more I dive deeper into the mind body connection, the more I realize how little I know. I like to think of myself as a student of life and not in rush to graduate. I think it takes a lot of pressure off in business and life to “Be A certain” way. Stay curious, have fun along the way and make sure you enjoy the process a lot more than being solely focused on the goal.
The third aspect that has tremendously helped me is having a set of sacred rituals to connect to myself most of the days. My sacred rituals are journaling, my yoga and meditation practice, cooking and being out in nature. I think these are my anchors in my life, no matter what happens externally, these rituals make me come back home to myself. My advice is find something that helps you connect to yourself, it can be anything that melts away the sense of time and space, find that thing within you that brings you home and do more of it. This is the highest form of self-love that you can practice.
Before we go, maybe you can tell us a bit about your parents and what you feel was the most impactful thing they did for you?
I grew up in India, a very culturally diverse and a strongly religious society. It would have been very easy for us as a family to succumb to the social pressure of being a certain way, but my parents never followed those so-called rules. They made rules that worked for us as a family without trying to “fit in” in the outside world. I think this had a huge impact on me, while I couldn’t appreciate it fully as a 20 something year old, I now understand it so much and applaud their courage to make such bold decisions.
Another very important thing that we had as a family was open communication; my home was always the place where we can be ourselves and say whatever we felt like. My parents allowed us to tell them if they made a mistake, there were no stereotype gender roles, and everyone was accepted just the way they were. Even as kids, we were part of every decision-making process and our opinion mattered. I think that has shown me the strength of authenticity and unconditional love. It gave me the courage to take big decisions in life and trust myself through the hard times.
I strive to create a similar environment in my home with my husband and two kids.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://nourishasoul.com/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100085322529447
Image Credits
Portfolio pics credit- Vik Chohan photography Las Vegas
