About Soulvyom
Long before we had methods, we had questions.
How we got here
Both of us were Army officers for most of our adult lives. That was the world we knew. Where duty and responsibility came before everything else. We dealt with whatever was needed to be. So many lives dependent on us, and things that could not be postponed because you were tired, angry, ignorant or in bad mood.
With more than four decades of life in uniform between us, that way of life suited us; it served us well. But it did take a toll, by making us very good at carrying on. And carrying on can hide a lot - including from yourself.
On the other hand, we were both interested in spirituality and self-work from much earlier. In fact, that is what brought us both together. Around 2018 onwards, that exploration became serious and we started to learn various practices, attended courses, experimented, discarded few and kept others. All this while applying what we were learning, to ourselves.
And yes, the methods were very interesting. One system after another, all seemingly offering a different door. Then gradually, we started to see something - a pattern that seemed to make the doors less interesting.
A person knowingly staying in a relationship even after knowing what was wrong. Someone admitting to being a people pleaser and unable to do anything about the endless Yeses. Someone reaching the point where a major decision could change their life and repeatedly finding a reason not to make it. Another person still behaving the same frightened way in front of her parent... even after years of self-work. And someone developing pain in a particular body part and responding well to Bach Flower remedies, something that research says, doesn’t have any chemical molecule.
'I know.. But still...'
Why does something continue even after we have understood it?
That question eventually led to the two of us taking different directions. Smitaa kept getting drawn into what repeats through life - choices, relationships, the roles we keep taking and the emotional positions we continue to occupy. Abhinav dove deeper into emotions, how they play in life for years and start to show up in the body.
Lt Col Smitaa Kotwal (Retd)
Founder, Mokshara · 20 Years · Indian Army
"Why does life keep bringing me back to the same place?"
Tarot · Akashic Records · Mokshpattam · Modern Tantra · Guided Inner Work
The path that started with a quest of finding answers to the question - “Why am I Here?”, passed through learning and absorbing various practices, finally led to the work that became Mokshara.
Smitaa spent twenty years in the Indian Army while concurrently trying to find answers. There was no palm reader or astrologer whom she did not approach, just to have fun. Then she started to learn, and the more she learnt and applied, the more the hunger to know grew. Along with it grew an increasing awareness that a pattern seems to run in almost everyone’s life, it is easier to see later but remains invisible while they are inside it.
It could be a different life situation, or stage or the person may be different, but somehow the feeling remains similar.
You leave one relationship promising yourself that you will never tolerate something again, then find yourself compromising in almost the same way with somebody completely different.
You keep delaying similar kind of decisions or reach a point where an opportunity asks you to step into something larger and you pull back at the last moment.
You become indispensable wherever you go and then wonder why everything rests on you.
You are the person everybody turns to, but asking for something for yourself feels so hard and uncomfortable.
You know you should let go, but internally the thing remains alive long after it has ended.
You want somebody to come close, and when they do, some part of you begins pulling away.
You want change, but when change becomes real, the familiar suddenly feels safer.
Or nothing dramatic is happening at all. You simply have the persistent feeling that you have been here before. Different time, different place but same emotional place.
How Smitaa works
People rarely come to Smitaa saying, “I think I have a recurring pattern.”
But because they seem to be bothered by something – maybe a decision they have been postponing, or work, or maybe a relationship they cannot understand or just a sense that life has stopped moving.
So she begins by listening.
Not just to the question, but also to what made the person come to the conclusion? Like what happened, what do they keep circling back to and where is the uncertainty coming from?
Usually, the question itself changes its form. An indecision about an opportunity may turn into hesitation of making a wrong one. Or a question about a relationship working may turn into waiting for the other person to make up their mind.
Tarot or Mokshpattam may then be used to look at the situation from another angle. Sometimes they give clarity around the immediate question. At other times they bring attention to something underneath it: a familiar role, a repeated choice, an attachment, a fear, or a position the person seems to keep returning to in different parts of life.
When the question goes deeper into why the person feels stuck, or why a particular pattern seems to keep following them despite conscious effort, the enquiry may move into Akashic Records or Soul Records. This is less about predicting what happens next and more about looking at what may be operating beneath the situation the person originally came with.
For many women, the work may then move into embodiment. Understanding something intellectually is one thing. Being able to remain present in the body when the old reaction, fear, shame, desire or hesitation appears is quite another. Smitaa works with this more directly through 1:1 sessions and, increasingly, through small women's circles, usually offline.
There is no fixed sequence that everybody has to pass through. Someone may only need a Tarot session. Another person may begin with a question and eventually want to explore the pattern more deeply. Someone else may already know what the issue is and need a more embodied way of working with it.
The methods change depending on where the enquiry goes. The starting point remains the person's actual question and what begins to reveal itself once they stop looking only for the immediate answer.
Explore Mokshara →Lt Col Abhinav Sharma, SM (Retd)
Founder, Somashadow · 23 Years · Sena Medal · Indian Army
"Why does the body become involved?"
Psychosomatics · Shadow Work · Bach Flower Remedies
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Abhinav served in the Indian Army for 23 years and was awarded the Sena Medal. Though his foray into energies started way before, when he started meditating from the age of 13. His stepping into the work with emotions was not through his emotional quotient, rather absence of it.
For most of his life, he stayed contained. Anger kept in, hurt too, and if something happened to affect him deeply, he was more likely to withdraw. For years he described himself as cool to the point of cold - and at the time, considered it as his strength.
Little did he know that it was simply a way to survive and remain in control.
But the body knew what his tight jaw, bloated stomach and knee issues meant. What his emotional eating (particularly sweets), early hair loss from the crown and prostate issues that came later meant. All these were connected but he didn’t know.
How he got into this work is also interesting. It began with Bach Flower Remedies – something which is known to be meant for emotions. But then he started to observe them affect physical symptoms inadvertently. That was curious, as to why should a remedy given for emotions like resentment, fear, over-responsibility or suppressed anger also affect something that was in the physical body?
Being prone to research, he started going deeper into psychosomatics and shadow work. Slowly, he started seeing a pattern between symptoms and emotional life of a person. That two people can have the same diagnosis but completely different emotional patterns and vice versa.
That distinction became central to Somashadow.
The diagnosis was a starting point but did not say much about the person’s emotional life. So the work started becoming increasingly specific.
What do you repeatedly tolerate? What do you do when somebody is angry with you? When did you learn that being useful was important? What happens when you need help? What can you say easily and what remains stuck in the throat? Where does discipline become control? Where does responsibility become something you no longer know how to put down? And what has the body been doing while all of this has been happening?
Somashadow grew from those questions. It now brings together psychosomatic enquiry, shadow work and Bach Flower Remedies for people who are already managing their health responsibly and want to understand another layer of what their body may be carrying.
Abhinav's work may be relevant when
- You have done what you were supposed to do medically and still do not feel like yourself.
- Your reports have improved more than your lived experience has.
- You have become very knowledgeable about your condition, but understanding the disease has not explained why your body still responds the way it does.
- You recognise yourself as someone who carries responsibility, keeps going, stays controlled, avoids burdening others or finds it difficult to express what is actually happening inside.
- You already understand that emotions affect the body. What you have not yet understood is the particular pattern your body may be living inside.
What has changed in our thinking
What we have stopped believing.
01
There was a time when learning a new technique or advanced version of some felt like progress. But now we think that a person may not need more methods, rather for someone to help them notice what they keep doing across every method and why.
02
We are now quite uncomfortable with a practitioner having an authority over another person’s inner life or keeping them tied to themselves. Seeing a pattern does not make our interpretation absolute. Rather it should be recognised and felt as true by the person. Otherwise, we have simply replaced the characters of the story. The purpose is for them to begin seeing the pattern for themselves, including when it appears outside the session.
03
We have stopped assuming that there is only one fixed meaning to a condition, behaviour or a symbol. The same diagnosis, the same relationship pattern and same behaviour can be arising from very different emotional lives. The interpretation has to fit the person, not the label.
What our army background gives us
More than four decades of military life between the two of us. While it helped us responsible, take difficult decisions and functioning under pressure, it also gave us our own questions:
- When does discipline become rigidity?
- When does strength become an inability to ask for help?
- What gets pushed aside when the job must always come first?
- And what happens when functioning becomes so normal that you stop noticing its cost?
Maybe that is why we are fairly comfortable with emotions? Anger, resentment, jealousy, guilt, shame or family conflicts should not need to be made acceptable before being examined.
We are comfortable with difficult conversations and also not particularly interested in telling someone what they want to hear just because it makes the session easier.
Where is it showing up for you?
In choices, reactions, relationships or recurring situations in life.
Explore Mokshara →In the body, through a chronic condition or symptoms that keep returning.
Explore Somashadow →