Where it began
I was born in Calgary, Canada to Punjabi immigrant parents who were building a life from the ground up.
Almost every year, they would take us back to India — and I absolutely loved it.
The excitement of packing… getting ready for the airport… the feeling of getting on that plane.
It felt like an adventure every single time.
When we landed, something would change.
I remember watching my Dad just light up the moment the pilot announced our descent into New Delhi. The smiles. The tears in my parents’ eyes.
This was a kind of love I had never experienced anywhere else.
My grandparents. My extended family. Strangers dancing in small street lanes, celebrating our arrival. Both sets of grandparents lived in very simple homes — and yet the vibration of love and abundance was exuding from every corner.
My body felt safe there. Held.
Like I belonged.
And so I kept returning - through childhood, through adulthood, through every attempt (there were many!) to escape the West and find my way back to the land that always felt like home.
What India kept showing me
From the ages of 21 to 42, I lived with constant panic attacks and anxiety.
And yet… every time I was in India, something shifted.
And here’s what’s interesting - India is not quiet. It is not still. It is colour and chaos and horns and heat and a thousand things happening all at once.
And somehow… within all of that… my body exhaled.
Calmer. Softer. More at ease. More at home.
India wasn’t showing me peace instead of chaos. It was showing me that both could exist at the same time. That something in me could be held - even in the middle of all of it.
That was the shift.
In the fall of 2019, my body finally stopped me from all the "doing" I contacted a severe eye infection, 42 days without vision - that same feeling emerged in the darkness.
I recognized it deep in my bones.
It was India.
And within that stillness, a vision began to form. A home in the Himalayas.
That became the seed of my own retreat centre in the Himalayas : Araam Retreats & The Rested Human™.
The journey
Every lotus begins beneath the surface.
Hidden in still waters.
Rooted deep in the earth below.
Patiently waiting for the right conditions to bloom.
This retreat was created as a reflection of that journey.
Our journey begins in the holy city of Amritsar, at the sacred waters of the Golden Temple.
For centuries, people have come here carrying prayers, grief, gratitude, longing, and hope.
The energy of these waters soften the heart.
This is where we plant the seed.
Through temple meditations, sacred sound, stillness, and presence, we begin the process of returning inward, gently quieting the noise of everyday life and reconnecting to something deeper within ourselves.
From there, we travel north into the Himalayas to Araam Retreats near Dharamshala, arriving during monsoon season - a time when the mountains become alive.
The rains nourish the earth, the forests deepen in colour, the air becomes rich with renewal, and everything begins to soften.
This is the nourishment stage of the journey.
In many ways, we are no different from nature.
When given rest, space, breath, and care, something within us also begins to open.
Through Kundalini yoga, meditation, sound healing, ceremony, deep rest, nourishing meals, and time in nature, the days at Araam are designed to help you slow down enough to truly feel yourself again.
And finally, we arrive in Kashmir.
Surrounded by the still waters of Dal Lake and the vast Himalayan landscape, we enter lotus season - the moment where the flower rises fully above the water and blooms toward the light.
This is the flowering…remembering who you were beneath the noise all along.
The lotus teaches us that beauty can emerge from murky waters.
That growth does not happen by force.
And that even after darkness, we are still capable of beauty.
This retreat is a sacred unfolding.
A pilgrimage through water, mountains, sound, stillness, and self.
From the sacred waters of Amritsar,
to the nourishing rains of Dharamshala,
to the blooming lotus fields of Kashmir
each part of the journey mirrors something within you.
Welcome to Journey to the Lotus of The Heart Centre.
