Sarita Chawla is a senior faculty member at NVW and was a student in the very first coaching class offered by founder James Flaherty. In 2023, after decades of masterfully guiding students’ development and profoundly influencing the work of Integral Coaching, she stepped back from leading the Professional Coaching Course. She remains on faculty teaching the popular Thwarting the Inner Critic and other courses, and she remains a treasured friend and mentor in our community.
Here’s more from Sarita ….
At almost 76, rather than a bio or resume, I am called to speak into who I am and who I am becoming. I recently wrote a blessing for myself: May the rest of my years in this lifetime be imbued with aliveness. May the creative force vivify each cell. May I remain a faithful apprentice to goodness, truth, and beauty, perceiving freshly, each dewdrop, each dandelion, each human dimple, and wrinkle. May my mind keep opening to a multiplicity of views, sensing into what stance I hold in this moment. May curiosity, kindness, and gratitude be my enduring attitudes, my guiding stars. May the coming days and years continue to teach me grace, love, acceptance, and compassion. May I delight in others, and myself each moment of each day. May I live my life in a way that I die consciously.
All my life, I have loved learning. As a child, always curious and asking questions: Why and How? A research field trip to Kulu, in the Himalayas for my graduate research on the religion of a small village there. Learning how to adjust as a young one transported from India to the UK at age four, immigrating to the US in an arranged marriage in 1969. The anthropologist in me is passionate about learning of different worlds whether by travel, reading, deep dialogue with others about questions that matter. Journeying into my own interiority and inner world through journaling and inquiry leads to unveiling mysteries untold. Learning the ways of the corporate world where I spent more than twenty years. Finding my vocation in becoming someone who could see the potential in people that they could not sense themselves. This manifested in roles of a leader, follower, coach, and spiritual teacher. Nothing gives me more joy than seeing the spark in another human when they feel seen and understood. The joy and gratitude of witnessing my son coming into his own professionally and personally, with his wife, my daughter-in-love. I am blessed.
My spiritual life is becoming more central to me. I have slowly but surely realized that I am enough. The life for so long that I spent in efforting to be seen can rest now. Art, poetry, literature and great fiction and non-fiction are my friends and companions. Theater, good movies, being touched by nature, enduring friendships and travel feed my soul. These days you will find me gently immersed in doing yoga, in one of my spiritual retreats, sitting by the fire pulling a Tarot card, reading, listening to music, writing poetry, dancing as I cook, talking to my 96-year-old mother in New Delhi. Or you might find me outside, taking long walks in my beautiful neighborhood, touching the spring flowers, watching the hawks and woodpeckers, feeling deep and abiding gratitude for all that is given. Being present for a few clients and students is fulfilling. All so precious, this life, knowing it is all transient.
My soulmate/husband left this realm several years ago, but his enduring presence and our love story continues. I live these days in a wondrous state of joyful contentment. Being of service to clients, students, the earth, and spirit. Still living in the question and bowing deeply to the mystery.