‘She lives in Bangalore, in consonance with her beliefs, with her beloved family, animal menagerie and her spiritual self’. Anyone with an introduction like that would sound interesting. So it was with some curiosity and expectation that I went to meet therapist, life-coach and entrepreneur Priya Rajagopalan. She turned out to be unusual indeed but also, in many ways, like the average woman –– nurturing and caring –– and yet seeking self-expression and an individual identity beyond these traditional female roles.
Which is why Mother Tree, the organisation she has founded, consists of a team of professionals that guide and support women to find their unique identity and power as women. “I created Mother Tree because I wanted a place where women can get in touch with their inner selves and carve out a niche of their own. Women are forever being someone else’s daughter, mother, sister, or have a tag of their profession. Beneath and behind all this, their true identity and all their innermost desires tend to get hidden or lost. I wanted to make a place which changes this and helps women reach their full potential as individuals, experience total fulfillment, and find happiness through bonding with other females. Mother Tree was a longstanding ambition of mine.”
Priya herself arrived at this fulfilling moment in her own life after a long journey where she says she sometimes lost her way.
As a child, she says she was psychic and loved to be among plants, trees and animals and communicate with them, those who are in closest communication with God and the universe, she adds. “I would spend hours talking to or remain in silent communion with the plants, pets and even rocks around me with which I was completely at ease. Also, I would come up with predictions about people around me as if by an inner prompting.”
Finding the inner self
As she grew up, many of these tendencies wore off and she enrolled in a Sociology course for graduation, made friends and boyfriends, and then joined the corporate world as a manager in an NGO. “I had become more normal,” she laughs, “and was now pretty much a part of the ‘real’ world.” Then she moved to advertising and was caught up, like most people at this stage of life, with the struggle for material success and financial security.
However, a few years later, the old tendencies resurfaced and she began to feel she was not doing what she was meant to do. This dissatisfaction and restlessness led her to seek a spiritual guru. She learnt meditation and yoga from him. The fact that she had grown up in two faiths –– one of her parents was Christian, the other Hindu –– and her interest in Buddhism all helped in her quest, she says. Along the way, as her interest in alternate therapies and divination grew, she began to study many of these subjects through formal courses or voracious reading of books on the same.
With the result that she acquired knowledge of many things –– colour therapy, Reiki healing including animal Reiki, Tarot-card and Egyptian Cartouche reading, Bach-flower therapy, Angel Cards, crystal therapy, Dowsing or Pendulum divination, etc. Finally, she chucked her job, moved to Bangalore with her husband Rajagopalan and began “in earnest, the journey of finding myself.”
Mother Tree was one consequence of this quest, she says. “Here we offer try to offer all we can for the evolutionary needs of women.” And what would that specifically be, we ask? She replies: “I am a counsellor and I offer consultations on all the subjects I just mentioned. Besides we have a team of professionals who also offer consultations in alternate therapies. These staffers as well as visiting experts hold workshops and seminars on spiritual subjects and self-help topics.”
What are the other consequences of this journey of hers, we ask? “Well, I have begun to find great joy in helping and healing other people through my knowledge. Above all, I continue to try and improve myself too. I work on my spiritual evolution too every day,” she smiles.