Business Innovators Radio - Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati – Spiritual Leader – Mark Stephen Pooler

Episode Date: June 5, 2026

Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati, known as Sadhviji, is a global spiritual leader and bestselling author who has lived in the Himalayas for nearly three decades. Raised in Hollywood and a graduate of Stanford University with a PhD in psychology, she left behind a life of outward success to embrace a path of spiritual transformation and service.www.sadhviji.org www.instagram.com/sadhvijiSource: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/sadhvi-bhagawati-saraswati-spiritual-leader-mark-stephen-pooler

Welcome to Business Innovators Radio, featuring industry influencers and trendsetters, sharing proven strategies to help you build a better life right now. Welcome to Brilliant Business TV conversations with leading experts in business. I'm your host, Mark Stephen Pula. We have an incredible spiritual leader on the show today. And who doesn't want to improve on our spiritual practice, becoming more spiritually aware and being more conscious so I'm really looking forward to a conversation with Sudvi. We are streaming live on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube. We're on the 360 TV network. We're on MSP NEASGlobal.com, business innovators radio network.

We're on USA Global Radio and Television Network. So let's bring in our incredible guest, the incredible Sadvi, Saraswati. Sadri, welcome to Brilliant Spiesenys. Namaste, thank you so much. It's so wonderful to be here with you and with the whole community. I'm really looking forward to a conversation with you today, Sadri. So in a nutshell, just share a little bit about who you are and what you do, Sadri. Sure.

Well, as you can probably tell from the way I look in my accent, I am not Indian by birth. I come from the United States. I grew up in Los Angeles in Hollywood, quite literally, hence the Hollywood to the Himalayas title of my memoir, literally grew up there. In a world in which we had everything that we were told you need to be happy, the prosperity, the opportunity, the education. I graduated from Stanford, university. I was in the midst of getting a PhD in pediatric neuropsychology. If you had looked at me from outside, you would have said, this girl has everything. But inside, there was an acute emptiness.

And it's something that I think so many of us go through. And I ended up at 25 on what I thought was going to be a short adventure trip to India with a backpack and ended up having such a deeply profound personal spiritual transformation experience standing on the banks of the Ganges River in the lap of the Himalayas that I actually realized that this is where I was meant to be. So my life took a huge 180 degrees and I ended up shifting here and I've been here now for the last 30 years. And it's been an extraordinary experience and opportunity to go deeply into what we call sadna, which is the spiritual practices, the meditative practices, but also service. because the spiritual community that I'm part of is really founded on the idea that service of others, service of the planet is the highest expression of love for the divine.

And it's the highest manifestation of an awakened spiritual path. So a life of Sadna, the internal practice, and the external expression of that practice. practice in service and whether the expression is in teachings or books or it's in the construction of schools or medical clinics or women's empowerment programs or tree plantation programs or river cleanup programs or whatever it may be life becomes this expression of spirituality in action faith in action that's a beautiful journey. you've been on, Sadrvi. And what an adventure for you, an incredible journey. And I just think it's amazing that you have the courage to follow your dreams and do what you want to do. And that's very,

very courageous of you. Now, what qualities define a truly conscious and impactful leader today, Sadr, Zadvi? It's a great question. And it's such a pertinent question because we are most definitely suffering from a lack of really good leadership in the world, whether it's politically, whether it's spiritually kind of whatever way we look, we are in dire and desperate need of more leadership. I would say what we need is, number one, leaders who themselves are deeply rooted and anchored and connected. And it doesn't mean. matter what their religion may be. It doesn't matter what their tradition may be. But it matters that they have a personal anchoring and grounding in something beyond their own bank account or their

own power or their own prestige. And if you look at history and you look at the leaders who have made such profound differences that they ripple out not only across January, but across countries, you look at leaders, for example, like Gandhi or like Nelson Mandela, or like Martin Luther King. And every one of them was a leader, although from different parts of the world, different religions, different traditions, but every one of them was deeply connected within themselves to something that was deeper, bigger, higher, more united than just me versus you or my house, my cars, my power, my prosperity. From that connection comes actually the courage that you were talking about. Because in order to really be courageous, we have to have a connection.

If I don't feel that there is a foundation that is nourishing and nurturing and holding and sustaining me, it's very difficult to have courage because then I'm afraid, oh my God, what'll happen if I fail, if I fall, if I make a fool of myself, what will people think? but when I'm anchored into either a source of just truth, I have to do this because this is truth, or a source of what we could call God's love, what we could call unity, what we could call oneness, what we could call compassion, values, virtues, whatever that fertile soil may be, if I'm not anchored in it, I can't have courage. Like a tree can't grow tall and strong if it doesn't have strong roots in the ground. So from the connection arises courage.

And we need leaders with courage because to walk in new directions, to chart new paths, it takes courage. People absolutely will make fun of you. They will try to tear you down. They will compete with you. They may even assassinate you. But the connection to something bigger, higher, deeper is that which keeps us going. And from that courage arises creativity. And you cannot be a good leader on any level without creativity. Because other, Otherwise, we're just repeating what others have said. We're just doing what others have done. We become just like cookie-cutter images of each other. And today, we need creative direction. You know, Mahatma Gandhi said really beautifully, he said, what's the point of that fast speed that has no direction? And we've got so much speed today in science and technology in, you know, AI and engineering, in finance, in so much. But we don't have a lot of direction. And so we're starting up all over the place.

There's so many startups of so many kinds. But so few people actually know where we are going. And in order to have direction, you've got to have the connection. And from that connection arises that creativity of, oh, what might it be like if I actually acted like this or chose that or worked for this or envisioned that or manifested this? We've got to be able to visualize something better where we're going in order to be able to be able to be able to. to lead people. Leaders by definition have to have a clue of the direction we're going in. It's not enough to be charismatic. It's not enough to, you know, catalyze people to stand up. The question then is, well, okay, where are we going? So connection, courage, creativity, and of course, compassion.

because I've got to take everyone with me. If I'm going to be a good leader, not just one who fills my own pockets or my own social media account with lots of followers and then I feel good about myself, that's not leadership. Leadership is taking people with you so that my health becomes their health, my success becomes their success, my prosperity becomes their prosperity. And so it requires compassion and awareness that we are not in this alone. We are intricately connected. COVID showed us that. You can't be healthy unless your community is healthy.

Otherwise, you end up having to stay within the own four walls of your own house. You can't be safe unless the community is safe. Otherwise, again, you're trapped in your house. Beautifully said, I love that. I think having that vision is really important as well. Just beautiful words, Sophie. Now, what inspired the transformation from a Western upbringing to a spiritual life in India?

That intrigues me. So I wish I could take credit for it. It happened really through the power of sacred things. divine presence, which of course is everywhere and available to all of us. But in that moment, through an openness, through a willingness, through a sincerity, through a surrender, I was able to open to the presence of a life purpose that was so much deeper and more meaningful than anything that I had been working for or toward prior to that. I grew up in a world in which we are really taught to ask, what for me? What am I going to get out of it? And we all keep

acquiring and achieving. But at the end of the day, we're not actually any happier. And so many of us need, you know, a few shots of something to relax at the end of the day or a pill to go to sleep at night. And the question becomes, what are we doing? And what I was gifted with was really a mindset shift from a Hollywood way of thinking to a Himalayan way of thinking. And so the Hollywood to the Himalayas was not just of the body. More importantly, it was of the mind. And that's a shift that's available for everyone. And it took me from this Western viewpoint, which actually tragically is now kind of pervasive all over, but a viewpoint that says you are your body. You are its size, you are its shape, you are its color, you are its role, you are its popularity, you are its

prestige, its prosperity, like that's who you are. And you're its historic. And you're its history. What's happened to you, where you've gone, what you've done, what's been done to you. And so we suffer. We suffer because we're not rich enough or successful enough or happy enough or popular enough. And we bring that suffering onto others in competition, in oppression, in suppression, in othering and polarization, in the anger. in grudges that we hold, in expectation and attachment to how others need to live so I can be happy. And the Himalayan way of thinking says you have a body, but you're not the body. You are soul. You are spirit. You are consciousness. You are inseparable from source, cosmic intelligence,

divinity, whatever word we use, it doesn't matter. But the body is simply the vehicle. It's not who you are. And I have found that that mindset shift is really the shift from suffering to peace. And when we realize that I am not the body and I'm not the role and I'm not the popularity and I'm not what's happened, we're able to exercise. We're able to exercise. into an internal wholeness and wellness and completeness that makes us stop needing to gobble up the planet in order to feel okay about ourselves. That makes us stop needing to push others down or out or away in order to get what we want. And that actually enables us within ourselves to access the peace, the fulfillment that we're looking for in possessions and in external success, but never comes from that. And it enables us to become part of the solution rather than the problem to what we're facing in this world, from violence to climate change and everything in between. I love that, Saddvi, and I think oneness, I'm a big believer in onness and that we're all

connected and I just love the journey that you've been on, but how you're of service to others as well. What is one simple practice? Anyone can start today to feel more connected, Sadr. Beautiful. So one of my favorite practices coming out of this shift I was talking about from the Hollywood way of thinking of separation and objectification of ourselves and of others that leads us. And you know, look at our vocabulary in our office places, for example, we talk about human resources. We talk about natural resources. as though somehow Mother Earth, all of the species on Mother Earth, including humans, are simply objects. We are here to be resources for someone else's attainment of their goal. So I can burn fossil fuels as a resource to get the electricity I want. And I can oppress you, exploit you as a human resource to put. produce what I want or to just put more money in my pocket. But in that shift, we start realizing,

oh, we're not resources, we're source. So a beautiful practice to just really bring this home is a practice called Niti, Niti. And it's spelled, it's a Sanskrit word, of course, but you can think of it as N-E-T-I-N-I-N-T-I-N-T-E. And it literally means not this, not this. And it's a very beautiful meditative practice that's a bit longer, so I won't walk you through all of it now, but it's a practice in which we remove layer by layer, that which is not self.

So we begin by saying, for example, I am not the clothes that I wear, which is obvious we change clothes, but who we are stays the same. Two, I am not the skin beneath my clothes. I'm not the blood flowing through my body. I'm not my bones. I'm not my organs. And when we do this in meditation, of course, we go much more slowly. But with each step, we realize, well, of course I'm not those things. I get a blood transfusion or I donate blood. Who I am doesn't change. My skin cells slough off and regenerate every day, but who I am doesn't change. And we get down to the very deepest level of saying, I am not electricity. I am not chemistry. Well, if I'm not electricity and I'm not chemistry.

It means I'm not my thoughts. I'm not my emotions. I'm not my memories. I'm not my personality. Because every single aspect of our emotional state, our thoughts, our preferences, is all simply a pattern of electrical and chemical behavior in different parts of our brain. So when we realize I am not dopamine or norapinephrine or serotonin or oxytocin or any of these chemicals, I am not an electrical impulse running down an axon in a neuron in my brain.

Well, then it means I'm not my thoughts. I'm not my memories. I'm not my feelings. I'm not angry. I'm not depressed. I'm not frustrated. I am the one who is aware. I'm the one watching. I am, I am the ground you can think about it like, or I am the field in which experience arises. But I am not the experience itself. We use words like consciousness, awareness. And what the people are the practice teaches us to do first in a seated meditative practice, but then throughout the day, all day long, is just remember what I am not. So somebody says to you, you are worthless,

you're lazy, you're irresponsible, immediately most of us, you know, our breath stops, we contract, we feel like we've been hit in the solar plexes. Maybe we want to react, we yell, maybe we take it internally. But instead, we simply remember, nithy, nathy. I am not someone else's projections. I am not someone else's thoughts or ideas. And I am not the emotional reaction that is happening in me right now. I'm not the rising blood pressure or rising heart rate and the anger of how dare they.

I am just that pure awareness of it all. And it enables us constantly to just come back to who we are. You know, you catch a glimpse of yourself in a window of a store or a mirror somewhere. And immediately the mind goes, oh, my God, you're fat, you're a slouch. Look at you. Those clothes look awful. Or maybe the opposite. Maybe the mind says, hey, looking sexy today. But either way, it's an objectification of self. And immediately with practice, we remember, needy, needy. I'm not the body, neither the slouching overweight body nor the sexy body. I am that which doesn't change. I am not that which is bound by my physical body. body, I am spirit, I am soul, I am source, I am consciousness, I am awareness. So it's a very deep and powerful practice and it keeps bringing us back to a truth of who we are as whole, as full, as inseparable friend. Every blade of grass, every drop of water, every other

species on this planet, inseparable from the creator, inseparable from the creation, inseparable from the energy of creation itself, what we call Shakti. I am one with it all. There is no place I am lacking. All of that is just a pattern of mind. But we've established I'm not that pattern. And so it's something that we do, again, first in a meditative experience in our rooms in the morning, ideally, or the evening, eyes closed. We anchor in that awareness.

But then we carry it with us throughout the day. And it's a way of just coming back to ourselves over and over again, coming back and not being triggered by all of that which is happening. around us. Powerful words. I think having awareness is so powerful because especially with thoughts and emotions because so many times we can believe our thoughts or get carried away and especially when we get some negative thoughts and when you take that step back and observe them, you realize, oh, it's just a thought.

It's not me. So I think that must be such a powerful practice. even on other things as well as you're saying, recognising, oh, that's not me, that's not me. I think having that awareness is a great skill to have Sadri. Now, we are running out of time. I've really enjoyed our conversation today. Sadvi, I know you serve the world in so many ways. Who should connect with you and how can people connect with you?

What is that person you want to talk to today and say, I'd love you to connect with me and share your website? as well, please. Oh, Mark, I want to connect with everyone because we are collectively suffering today, no matter how much we have, no matter how successful we are outside. Almost all of us have some aspect within us that feels not quite enough, not quite set, not quite there, somehow out of alignment. And what I have been given is a really powerful experience of how to come back into alignment, of how to remember the fullness. And I'm so excited and eager to share these tools and techniques with people that do not require people to be religious at all. They do not require people to

subscribe to any particular tradition or culture or lineage or spiritual path, it doesn't matter. It's really for everyone. And it's a way to re-remember the fullness, the wholeness, the completeness of who we are, which then enables us to interact in the world, in business, in our careers, in our relationships, consciously. Because spirituality is not anti-business. It's not anti-prosperity. There's nothing in spirituality that says, thou shalt not be a fantastic success. Absolutely be a success. But let's look at the definition of success so that once you attain it, you actually feel successful inside, not still empty. So I want to talk with everyone. And I want to talk with everyone. And

I would invite everyone to, by all means, you can get my books. Hollywood to the Himalayas is my memoir of healing and transformation, of the ways in which I suffered in the first 25 years of my life, despite having all of the prosperity and opportunity and privilege and all of that. but all of the suffering and then the way in which when I came to India, I found healing and transformation that applies to all of us. And then my new book is called Come Home to Yourself, which is questions and answers, on everything ranging from the nature of the soul to how to get along with your boss or your employees or your spouse or your in-laws, to how to how to, to quiet the negativity in our minds, how to work with thought patterns, beliefs. So I would

really invite everyone to get both of those books. We also have a very special free download from my website for 30 days of taking you through, come home to yourself, daily activities, a guidebook to really walk you through those lessons and invitations. My website is sodviji.org. It's s-a-d-d-H-V-I-J-I dot org. And Saadviji is also my handle on YouTube and Instagram, where we have lots and lots and Lots of free videos, obviously longer on YouTube, shorter on Instagram, meditations, teachings.

And I really encourage everyone to go there, make use of them. But even more than that, let me know your questions. Let me know what's holding you back so that we can take up those questions. Send them in on my website. send there's a form, send them in by DM on social media or in the comments, whatever works for you. That's so beautiful. I want to be in conversation and connection with everyone because that's what we need today. That's sadvi.g.org. Sadvi, I've really, really enjoyed our conversation today.

You're welcome back on the show another time as well. Do reach out when that time feels right for you. Thank you so much for being my guest today. Thank you so much, Mark. It's been such a joy and so much love to you and the whole beautiful community. The pleasure has been all ours. Thank you, everyone, for joining us for Brilliant Business Team. Thanks for listening to Business Innovators Radio. To hear all episodes featuring leading industry influencers and trendsetters,

visit us online at businessinnovators radio.com. today.