At BrilliantRead Media, it is our constant endeavour to bring meaningful and powerful stories from India and around the world to empower and motivate our growing community. As part of this, we invited Aishwarya Sinha for an exclusive interview with us. She is a Bestselling Author, Dynamic Personality Coach, Spiritual Mentor, Tedx Speaker and the Founder of Women’s Eloquent Society. Let’s learn more about her incredible journey, her background and her advice for our growing community!
Excerpts from our exclusive interview with Aishwarya:
First of all, I wish to ask you about your name change. Why despite publishing so many books by the name of Arunimaa Sinhaa, have you renamed yourself to Aishwarya Sinha?
“What is in a name?” haha. These are the words of Mr William Shakespeare. I don’t think our names define us. It is just like a roll number. I am a believer of Numerology. When you make your astrological chart, you need your date of birth, time and place of birth.
The astrologer will tell you what is in store for your life and you can do little to change it through wearing some gems or doing some actions. Basically, you can’t change your destiny as per astrology. But when you make a numerological chart or numeroscope, you only require your date of birth and your name.
Yes, your name. You can’t change your date of birth but you can change your name to vibrate at a different energetic level. Every letter has a certain frequency and our names if not in alignment can block our success and achievements. Likewise, a suitable name in alignment with your destiny can enhance your powers too.
I know people care a lot for their names and they think that changing names is fickle-mindedness but I would rather see humans as a characters on the stage in every lifetime, with a different role.
Akshay Kumar and Dilip Kumar are good examples and I am sure you must have known about the name correction of many actors and actresses such as Rajkumar Rao, Hrithik Roshan, Javed Jaffrey, Ayushmann Khurrana, Raj Kapoor, and Mithun Chakraborty.
Many writers have a pen name. I have written 4 books as Arunimaa Sinhaa, one of them has been among the top ten bestselling read on 203 online platforms in 2023 but I have already published one as Aishwarya Sinha, as well. Let’s see.
Could you please talk us through your background and your journey?
I was born to my parents in Patna, my father who is a Criminal Lawyer and my mother, a Professor in English. Literature and Public Speaking is an inherited skill and interest I carry through my parents. I always had a wealth of literature at home and I was brought up on the stories of Shakespearean plots by my mother, who entailed the same childish version.
As I grew up and took up English Honours, I felt more sure about my capabilities and was driven to Student leadership in the college, to be an iconic and famous leader in Patna University. My name, picture and interviews were published on local news channels and newspapers, at a time back in history when PR did not exist. (chuckling)
After being the topper in College and University, I was lucky enough to crack Delhi University entrance for M.A. English and the 35 minutes long St. Stephen’s College interview. After the shift from an English Speaking Convent School to Universities, a point of interest and curiosity for me was to understand why is expression such a problem amongst so many people in India.
I took up Bachelor’s in Education at the Central Institute of Education and also taught at Delhi University for two years, strengthening my foundation in Language learning and teaching after an immense and deep study of Literature. Thereafter, I understood that school teaching would greatly arm me with the comprehension of the prevalent communication issues.
I found out that adults cannot express themselves well for numerous reasons including teachers with bad expressions, but most of all a family background that poses psychological issues. At this point in time, I was already into deep healing, meditation, yoga, chakra balancing, Vipassana and the like to understand that the throat chakra gets blocked, because of inexpressibility and conditioning.
I also realized that communication and expression are divine feminine qualities. I could clearly see that children who were most respectful, fulfilled and doing well on stage and mostly in academics too, were children, whose mothers were NOT under suppressed situations at home. There mothers were women with strong voices, consequently, they were great and non-hesitant with communication.
This understanding corresponded with my own life changes towards independence as a single mother and I dedicated my life towards healing women and transferring whatever knowledge and expertise I had of Public Speaking and Book Writing Skills. Subsequently, I took up many national and international training courses to substantiate the same. Here is where you find me today.
Why did you leave school teaching? How was the shift? Are you content?
Honestly, I really loved my life as a schoolteacher. Like that character, Jeetu Bhaiya, in ‘Kota Factory’, I was always there for my students. I had joined the school with an intention of researching the reason of inexpression in humans but I got very involved.
Girls would come to discuss their love lives and seek unbiased wisdom and boys would share the competition pressure from their parents and in all situations, I would take out time to nurture the kids as much as possible.
But three things prominently happened to break this hypnosis:
1) When I used to leave schools, to join another with better prospects, I would see children crying and some of them took a long time to settle down with new teachers. In reality, I was emotionally drained myself. Some students, especially very intelligent boys, who had no interest in my subject started getting highest marks in English but were devastated after I left. Girls continued chatting with me on calls and Messenger. I couldn’t bear this attachment any further and I started detaching myself. But when I would try to do this, I was not the person, I knew I was. At the same time, another prominent thing happened.
2) I became a mother and took a break. I nurtured my sons from the depths of my heart. My children started growing with the knowledge that I loved the students a lot. One day when I was talking to someone about my students referring to them as “mere bachche”, my elder one retorted, “Mumma your students are your students and we are your bachche (children).” I was shocked and understood what they must have felt all throughout. I could see the pain in my children’s eyes of having to share their mother with other kids. That did not move me into abandoning school teaching.
3) I ultimately left school teaching because I was disillusioned. As a young teacher, I wanted to change the world fourteen years ago, but understanding the system for these many years, I understood that one teacher can do nothing where money minting is the only aim. Being more educated than others, bringing about real change and development in students, even managing the magazine or English co-curricular activities or the social media of the school did not qualify for promotion. Promotions are given to teachers who don’t threaten the existence of the authority, my students loved me far beyond listening to other authorities. Promotions are given to teachers who don’t have an educational mindset, they can just follow what the authority says. So, as a very experienced and knowledgeable teacher too, Maths and Science teachers would tell me how to teach English. I am sure there are good schools and I have worked in the top schools of Delhi too but the politics is unimaginable. I think I was too naïve to handle it at that time, I was seeking a simple life then. Now I am preparing a full course on how to answer office politics.
On the last day, when I was leaving the school, I saw my younger one waiting for me near the school gate, when I was meeting the crowd and hugging every kid. Some had tears in their eyes, some of them just wanted my writing on their books and my published books, some wanted to get a picture clicked with me.
People don’t know what a celebrity a teacher can be. And yet my focus was not just the broken hearts of my students but the tears in the eyes of my younger one, who saw her own mother being owned and loved by others. Till date, even while writing this, my eyes are wet.
I made this decision because I want to empower mothers with the understanding that I have developed as a friendly-motherly teacher. Children need mature adults, powerful mothers and caring fathers. I see my real role in society as a catalyst for the change in women.
I did the groundwork, and my research was over. I will pursue a Ph.D from some good university, internationally perhaps to underline the need for communication. It was the communication that led to my loving relationship with my students and now after understanding them, I think I need to empower women to be the catalysts of change in the family structure, to make love, trust and understanding achievable across.
The shift towards healing and helping women has been gradual and very smooth. Some of my mentees, when I was only teaching them healing also call me “Guru Maa”. There is an altogether different level of love and sisterhood that I have experienced, mentoring women.
I have heard you have been deeply into healing as much. Which modalities have you learned and practised?
I have been into many spiritual practices, the most important ones being: Vipassana, Past Life Regression Therapy, Reiki Mastership, Advanced Angel Healer, Advanced Ho’oponopono Healer, Yoga training and Fitness, Certified Meditation Trainer, Angel Card Reader, Tarot Card Reader, Ashta Laxmi Reiki and Abundance Angels, Dhan Laxmi and Abundance Mindset, Akashik Records, Ancestral Healing, Chakra Balancing, Cord Cutting, Law of Attraction and Pendulum Dowsing. I have learnt Astrology and Numerology to some extent but I don’t offer counselling in that. Apart from these even Brain Development and Career Coaching, Authorship Coaching and Public Speaking for me are extensions of spirituality in the matrix world.
Why is your training exclusively for women and why not men too? If both can be guided then there will be more growth and healing, isn’t it?
Of course, I agree both should heal, I don’t deny that. But I have been a student of Commerce in +2. (laughs) You know what, I have firm faith in the SPECIALISATION/ DIVISION of LABOUR. I believe I understand women’s psychology much better. I think if the women are better equipped, if women become powerful enough to speak up, the remaining wounded masculinity will be healed.
That is to say in simpler terms that if there are no weak women, then toxic men will not have an option of subjugating anyone. The mothers-in-law, who misguide their sons will be snubbed by their own sons, because there will be no option available to the sons, after divorcing this strong woman. The sons will have to comply and eventually change in favour of equity and equality for both men and women.
That’s not all. I have been a Past Life Regression Therapist and provided more than 50 free sessions to find out why women suffer thus. With my own data, I know that in human society there is a heavy bias against women. Even before I became a therapist or took any regression sessions, because of deep healing, mediations, Vipassana, I have visited my own past lives in flashes and out-of-body experiences. I have seen my soul in a male body, behaving irresponsibly but suffering the results of this karma in a female body.
My logic says, strengthen the women, the men will automatically change. Men bring money for the survival of the house, not to forget now women do too, but the family exists because of women mainly. The women who have agreed to get married and leave their parents’ house, the women who have agreed to nurture new lives inside their womb and nearly die, to give birth to another body.
How about the research today about young women, denying and rejecting marriage? Women are like the roots that lay the foundation and men the shoots that show the outcomes. When the woman manages the home well, prepares food on time, keeps the house clean, and nurtures the kids and husband, then the man freely goes to the office. No woman goes freely to the office if she has a household and kids. A woman with a strong voice will bear and nurture strong children, who will voice their feelings and opinions confidently.
Men literally have asked me, “Why just women?” But then weren’t women asking 100 years ago, why there were schools and colleges only for men. Einstein could meet his wife, Mileva Maric, a Siberian in Switzerland back in the 19th century because there were no universities in Siberia that allowed women. Today, many courses and training are exclusively for women because I believe many of us are born with the divine purpose of raising the divine feminine energy on the planet.
Men and women need each other but somehow, they say “It’s a man’s world.” I need women to realise their own importance and show the same to men and other women too.
Can you explain a little about what you mean by masculine and feminine energies?
Sure. You can understand this by the example of Ardhnareshwar, the manifestation of Lord Shiva with Maa Parvati in the same body. Yin and yang are the feminine and masculine qualities that all individuals need to have in balance whether they are men or women.
Our bodies make us gendered into a man or a woman but these energies have nothing to do with genders. They are qualities. Divine Feminine qualities include: creativity, nurturing, healing, motherhood, expression, beauty, forgiving, collaboration, intuition, emotional and empathetic.
Divine Masculine qualities include leadership, resilience, logical thinking, protectiveness, accountability, focus, confidence, responsibility and humility. Do you think we can do with only one type of qualities? No, we need both to be balanced and powerful individuals.
Despite the challenges, what keeps you going when things get tough?
I dance out my problems and sing out my pain! Haha
Frankly, challenges have loomed large on me, every now and then. Self-doubt and confusion are the biggest demons that will try to enter your life, before every new breakthrough. I take rest, I take an off, spend time with myself, nurture myself, love myself, treat myself and get back on my toes, once better. But what truly gets me going is the inspiration I receive from my parents, my children and my students/ mentees.
My children are the cause of me being alive. When spiritual awakening hits hard, there is a great amount of disillusionment. I could have easily given up on the world. But unlike, Gautam Buddha, who had a wife, he could depend upon and leave his son with her, I have no one I can trust with my kids. My kids, to say the least, are like my mother in essence.
Just like my mother nurtures me till date, my sons ensure my sanity and high energy. Not a day has passed in my life, when I did not talk to my mother. It is generally a 45 minutes call that ends with a sad note that we couldn’t talk enough. (laughs) I gossip with my children too and we watch Marvel and other Science Fiction movies together.
We develop common topics for conversation by reading books together and watching standup comedies together. Yes, I follow a disciplined schedule but I try my best to return their care with unconditional love and understanding and don’t become the reprimanding parent.
My father was mostly a disciplinarian in our childhood but he became a friend, philosopher and guide, since I took active leadership in College. My students in school as well as my mentees in healing, public speaking and the ones who have written books with me, show such faith in me, that I feel responsible enough to return to the empowered state.
But most of all that matters everyday is the regular schedule of Yoga, Vipassana and the endless hunger for reading and gaining new knowledge from books.
‘Women’sELOQUENT SOCIETY’ is such a unique name; talk us through more about it, please. Our audience would also love to know what kind of problem you are solving?
Women’s ELOQUENT Society is a stage and place for empowering women’s voices. It is a space for making their voices eloquent, as the very name suggests. We are solving the problem of voicelessness in women. We are making women realise their worth in the personal and professional scenarios.
It is a stage for the women who wish to walk out of their shadows into bright light of dawn. There are public speaking and book writing courses that I run exclusively for women, handholding them on this journey and thereafter providing them the stage to express their feelings, opinions and learning out loud, amid a loving and non-judgemental audience.
What are the three most important lessons you have learned in your life?
I think I am one of those really lucky souls that have been bestowed with too many lessons in a small span of time.
The biggest lessons however would be:
KNOW AND BE YOURSELF: When I say this to people, some people behave as if I am giving a very obvious point which is hardly a lesson. As a senior faculty in schools and facilitator at Delhi University, I have seen children plan their career with the assumption that the path they have chosen is meant for them. In my time after Masters, I remember people at home expected that I would soon give them the good news of cracking UPSC. If I was a topper plus a leader too, that too coming from Bihari origin, as an intellectual that was my birthright and duty to be an IAS Officer. Nonsense! I did prepare for a whole year for the same but the prelims date coincided with the B.Ed entrance date. To much of my family’s disappointment and surprise/ shock, I appeared for B.Ed. I wanted to impart skills and education. I don’t understand why can people see power only in administration and money. Why can’t we see the power of being what God has made us. We are not Maggie packets! We are not produced alike in factories. We are all different. I have seen so many sad engineers and restless doctors, who are not happy in their profession. I would have been a pathetic Official but I have been an excellent and beloved teacher, managing to finish my research in communication. I had once started tuitions and I would rather not tell you how much were parents ready to give me per hour for their child to be tutored by me. Being myself, I am happy, fulfilled and doing justice to all aspects of me. The same I would say in relationships, just be your original self: no need to be the coy mistress (laughing) or the knight in shining armour on the first day, for Heaven’s sake. Don’t try to be your best behaved self, you can’t be that for the rest of your life. Be direct, be you. But self-knowledge is not all that easy and there comes the role of healing and meditation, that I highly recommend.
FIGHT YOUR DEMONS: I believe and have also experienced that I have been my biggest enemy as well as my best friend. Let’s say there is a woman who marries as per her parents’ will, suffers a highly abusive marriage and after a lot of devastation, walks out of marriage towards independence. A lot of her closest relatives will tell her that her husband and in-laws were demons and she is a victim. She may believe that herself. But the reality is that all of these things happened to her because she chose silence or continuing the “good girl” code. Staying in your comfort zone of not speaking up, wanting to stay acceptable at the cost of being suffocated deep inside, not overthrowing the previous poor conditioning that doesn’t serve her are the outcomes of the shackled mind. She needs to trust her emotions and know that what she doesn’t like, needs to be changed. She needs to make herself her priority. All the aspects of her that stop her from keeping her downtrodden are her inner demons, her worst enemies. The voice from deep within her that empowers her to walk out towards independence and say “no” to any further subjugation is her own power, her best friend! We need to nurture the friends within us and kill the demons.
LOVE UNCONDITIONALLY: I am my own lover! Haha. Love is a topic that has interested me since childhood. My beginning points are classics such as Plato and William Shakespeare. I believe in the Sufi concept of “Ishq”. What we generally think of as “love” is actually attachment or “moh” according to Bhagwad Geeta. Attachment causes weakness and sadness. It has several strings attached, in the absence of which there will be deep melancholy. It is like terms and conditions apply, such as: the person whom I love should be with me, should love me back and is a cause of great distraction, especially lust in case of romantic love. While “love” does not have any conditions. Whether the person loves me back or not, whether s/he returns that love to me or not, whether s/he is my partner or not, I will still love him/ her without expectations. This is love or unconditional love. In Sufism this is the final stage of romantic love after Dilkashi (attraction), uns (infatuation), mohabbat (love), aqidat (trust), ibadat (worship), junoon (madness). This stage is called “maut” or death, which means the death of the ego/ false identity. You can find my poetry underlining different aspects of love.
We must first begin with loving ourselves thus, without judgement. We must accept ourselves as we are without shame and unearth our original versions through deep healing, reading and so on. Detachment is the key to real love. Even while loving yourself, don’t let your mind exaggerate and harp on pain forever, instead of finding out solutions and moving on.
That is the way I love my children too, whether they love me back or not. They are not my “budhape ki lathi” or retirement policies. That is the way I love my parents. If I say “I love you” to my sons everyday, this is what I mean!
In your opinion what are the keys to success?
Well, I think we must first define what “success” means to us as an individual. For me, it means the capability to bring about change and empowerment in the society. For you, it may mean to provide inspiration to people through bringing real leaders who are doing the groundwork, for someone it may be earning Rs 10 lakh a month, anyhow. So, we must first define what makes us feel successful.
Once we have found out, then we must set our goals clearly, break them down in small doable tasks and do whatever it takes to following them in a disciplined manner every day. Of course, it sounds very simple, but on the path of bringing this level of clarity, one would undergo many filtering processes, doubts and confusions and at this point the key to success would be consistency of doing things as planned.
In extreme situations, when you want to give up, you must rest and not give up. You must remember WHY you are doing it and that is why I said, we must define what “success” means to us.
What advice would you give students and young professionals who want to have a successful career?
I wish every individual not just the youth but each one of us, understand our core selves and choose the professions likewise. Not everyone is born to be an engineer or doctor. Not everyone is required to be a social media influencer.
It is very important to understand that we live in a society, which is not perfect. Our profession should be close to our life purpose, that is there should be a sense of serving the society for its betterment.
No, I am not the old-school parent that says you cannot become a singer or dancer. Why not? We need entertainment: good and quality entertainment. One of the major outcomes of art is CATHARSIS! It is the quality of purging repressed emotions through an art form, such as crying in a sad scene of a certain movie, while you were acting strong in a major sad situation of your life.
I would say, identify yourself, choose a career that goes in alignment to your mind as well as heart and serve humanity. Instil the quality of responsibility and discipline deeply inside yourself.
Last but not least, what about your journey makes it satisfying/exciting?
I am deeply content about my journey because there have been phases of huge learning in all aspects of my life. I see a purpose behind everything that has happened to me and most of the things that I have consciously done.
I have been a fervent reader of Shakespeare and remember these lines so well from ‘Macbeth’, wherein he says that “Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing.”
It means that life has no meaning and people do the hard work to gain nothing, to just die and not be heard anymore.
Reading this play early on, I have tried to make meaning in my life. I have tried my best, especially in the last few years to not be a passive receptor of incidents and accidents in my life, but an active doer, who makes choices and decisions for the betterment of my life.
I am most grateful to God for being there on my side always through my friends and family and making me capable of finding my own power deep within me. I am my own powerhouse because I am a part of God. This realization makes my life exciting.
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