Ep 96: Why South Asian and Middle Eastern Women Feel Spiritually Starved in the West with Ruchika Mehta

Have you ever felt like something sacred inside you began to fade after moving to the West?

In this powerful part-two conversation with psycho-spiritual teacher Ruchika Mehta, we unpack the spiritual starvation that many South Asian and Middle Eastern women experience living in Western cultures. We explore why our bodies feel dried up, our nervous systems disconnected, and our souls heavy with invisible grief, even when we’re doing all the “right things.”

You’ll hear us talk about:

• Why women feel more alive, luscious, and connected in the East
• How spiritual nourishment exists in the culture, energy, and body—not just in religion
• The hidden substances in your body that impact your joy, sensuality, and burnout
• What “drying up” really means (hint: it’s deeper than low libido)
• Why your yoga, meditation, or healing practice might still leave you anxious
• How trauma resurfaces as you begin to “awaken” and what to do about it
• The truth about cultural belonging, feminine power, and why going back to your roots could be the medicine

This episode is more than a conversation, it’s a homecoming. If you’ve ever felt numb, disconnected, or like your soul doesn’t quite belong in the modern Western world, this will awaken something ancient inside you.

Listen to Part 1 here - How Do I Take Back My Power Being A South Asian or Middle Eastern Woman?

Work With Ruchika Mehta Here!

Listen with your heart. Your fountain is waiting to flow again.

Claim your spot in my FREE Awakening Class, leave feeling seen, supported, and spiritually recharged.

✨ Take the free Healing Archetype Quiz
🧘‍♀️ Book a free 20-minute trauma healing consultation
🌐 Explore resources & programs at dimplebindra.com

🔗 Connect With Me on Socials:

📲 Instagram: @dimplebindra
🎥 YouTube: Subscribe for free meditations
🎤 TikTok: @dimplebindra
📘 Facebook: Dimple Bindra
💼 LinkedIn (for collabs): Dimple Bindra

🙏 If this podcast touched your soul, please leave a 5-star review it helps more women around the world find this sacred space.

Transcript

There is something no one talks about when we move to the west. We lose the fountain inside us, the warmth, the rootedness, the generosity of spirit that our South Asian and Middle Eastern ancestors carried. It begins to fade. And what replaces it? You don't wanna know, but I'm gonna tell you anyway. Loneliness, numbness, spiritual hunger masked as high achievement, busy schedules, or just silent suffering.

Welcome to the Dimple Bendra show, where we speak the truth about trauma, healing, and feminine power. If you find this episode meaningful, please leave me a review and share it with a sister who's on this journey too. Your voice helps bring this medicine to more women around the world.

And today I'm bringing back a powerful voice who truly gets this conversation. Ruchika Mehta is joining me for the 2nd time, ladies. She is a psycho-spiritual teacher who's been helping people integrate psychology and spirituality for almost 20 years. She's trained as a psychotherapist and has studied under Thiknat Han. Essen Goenka, and AMA. If you haven't listened to our first episode together, I highly, highly recommend that episode because I was almost in tears and you'll hear me cry and laugh at the same time. Episode 62. How do I take back my power being a South Asian or Middle Eastern woman?

Please go back to that episode and listen to that one too, because that's part one, and this is more like a part two episode today. It racked open a lot of truth for our listeners, and today we are going to go even deeper into the spiritual starvation so many of us face in the West and why the cultural disconnection is showing up in our bodies, in our relationships and our emotional exhaustion. This is not just an episode, it's homecoming, so let's dive in.

Welcome to the show, Ruchika. Thanks so much, Dimple. I'm so excited to be with you again. I am excited to ask a lot today, so bear with me. I'll probably talk super fast as normal. Like I'll always go super fast when I'm very excited, but. I heard, and you had mentioned this, that you just came back from India recently, which is so timely for this conversation. What did you notice or feel while you were there?

Yeah, so I was out of the country for like 3 months and I spent 2 months in India and I spent a month in Europe, Europe. Sorry, my voice just went down. And I had gone to India even last year for a couple months, and what I was struck, I'm a, I'm kind of a field researcher. I've been studying spirituality and psychology in the body really, because that's so important. It's in the body, and I had the same experience last year as I did this year in a lot of ways. But I had more deeper knowledge.

So what happened this year, I went to India again, and I could feel the nectars. It just felt like there was nectars in the air. It was really relaxing for my body actually. I'm, I'm gonna say. I've been in the US since I was in early adolescence. I didn't know what I got hit with when I moved to the US. I didn't like I wasn't conscious of it. I experienced it, but I wasn't conscious of it. And when I go, when I went back to India. And this is similar in South Asian and Middle Eastern countries. I'm talking about India, but I know from like hearing about it and a lot of cultural kind of similarities that this is pretty similar in, in both South Asia and Middle East.

My body relaxed. I felt more feminine. I felt like there was more juices in my body. Oh yeah, I totally feel that every time I go back to Abu Dhabi, and the juices connect. It's not just juice in the body, it's like. It's, it changes the way that we experience life, really. And then I went to Europe and I still, it was really interesting to notice that there was something really nice even in Europe. It wasn't the same as the east. It wasn't maybe as rich in my body, honestly. And but it was still like there was still a good amount of juice flowing.

And I'm gonna tell you, I stepped out of the airplane on US land in the airport. And I was gonna ask you, yeah, next, like, OK, in India you felt the juices, so what shifted when you returned to the US? Like, did you feel any difference emotionally, spiritually, or even physically? Yeah. I, I tell you, I stepped out of the out of the plane into the airport. The airport was depressing. It was dry. I felt depressed. I was like, this is not mine. This wasn't my depression because I wasn't depressed for 3 months and oh my God, yeah, I, you know what, a lot of women will agree and now that I think back, thank you for pointing that out, every time I came back to the United States from any country, especially India or Middle East or any other country, I always felt that depression. Yeah, please go on.

Oh my gosh, it was so intense and I've been back for maybe a month and a half, and I, I honestly feel like it's been tough in my body. There is dryness. This isn't my natural body. This isn't my free body. It just feels like there's a lot of tightness, dryness, it's been. Emotionally difficult. I, you know, physically difficult. I, I last year I went to India and I felt like my spirit was flying and I felt like I could move my body a lot. I, I went for long walks. I practiced yoga. I like every day and It was easy over there. In the US it's like I am pushing my body on some level, even if it, even if it's easy, you know, yeah, I think, I think you're a yoga teacher, right? That's correct. And you know, once you get into the practice, it can flow, but there's still something, it's not the same. My body isn't the same. Yeah, I want to know from you, why do you feel this difference, Rochika, and then we'll talk about why do women, we'll talk about the women next, but why did you feel this?

Yeah, I think most of us feel it. But we don't always have it in a consciousness, what's happening in our bodies. We don't. I, this is my study, so I was really aware of, oh my gosh, where is the tightness coming in, what is this doing in my body? But really what it is is in the east. In the Middle East and South Asia, they have culture that has historically sustained, I sometimes call this the fountain. The fountain in the body. And, I'll give an example. In India, for example, they have rickshaws and every rickshaw has like pictures of gods and they're like chanting. I think you know, there's a lot of festivals, a lot of religious holidays. It's not just in India. In the Middle East, it's every morning, exactly, and you're right now that I think about it, every morning like 6 a.m. I mean in Abu Dhabi at least 6 a.m. prayers are going to go into my ears and even though it's from Islamic tradition, I am not Muslim, but any prayer that goes.

Your ears it has positive vibes and everywhere you go there is literature, like Islamic literature everywhere and and I feel that's positive vibes again. So please go on. So you know, it's like the aspect of God or goddess, and I, I have felt that, yes, yeah, they're cultivating it. They're really cultivating it. Even if the egos may not be on board with all of it, but there's a cultivation. Yes, energetically. We feel what's around us. So if the people around us are have the fountain. Inside of their bodies, our bodies, you know, they say communication, 95% isn't verbal, right? It's embodied. So if I, if I am in a room full of people who are in a rich place inside their bodies, these are actually Nectars, it can be light, it can be openness, or spaciousness. They're actually substances in our bodies. It could be liquids and, these are, these are things that they've talked about in different traditions, but, we usually experience them but we're not conscious of it.

It's like it's there, but we get the effect of it. So I might have the substance of lusciousness, not, you know, it might feel like heat and softness, warmth, and it can feel like sensuality and passion and in Sufi tradition they'll call this is or it might feel like sorry like love. Yeah, passionate love, ecstatic, passionate love. There's a lot of different types of love out there. They're different, they're different experiences in our bodies. There might be something, our body is warm, it's softening, it's melting. This is a different type of love. This is this comes with generosity, it comes with Preciousness, precious love. So we often have these experiences in our bodies in the east, more so. We have these experiences in our bodies, but we're not really conscious, we're more conscious of the effect of them. Mhm. Oh, I feel, you know, loving. I feel, you know, passionate, luscious, I feel, generous. So we think it's In the culture of on an ego level, but it's actually in the body. Got it.

OK, that's beautifully put.

Why do you think so many South Asian and Middle Eastern women feel spiritually starved in the West, even when they are doing all the right things?

Yeah. So we come to the west, right? We are in a room full of people whose bodies are mostly dried up. The West is more advanced in drying up. Wow, please give us an example. Why do you say that? It's, and I'm talking about what if this woman who's listening, she's like, I don't agree. What does this even mean? What does drawing up mean? So for example, for women who don't agree to this, or for women who don't understand drying up, what does that mean? Does it really mean low libido? Does it mean? Less passion for life. So what does drying up mean when it comes to the west in your research?

It's everything. It's not. It is, it is. I agree 100%. It's a difference in, in libido for sure. Sexuality is much more natural than the east, and women have orgasms over shopping, you know, it's not like. And our food, it's a very orgasmic experience to just eat the food that I love eating from the Middle East. Yeah, and it's embodied. It's an actual experience of softening, melting in the entire body, in the, in the pelvis, but also the entire body.

And let's talk a little bit about like I was in the, I was, I was not in the US. I felt like, oh, I can connect with people easily. It was so easy to feel like I can touch people, people I just met. I can put my arm around them and and feel like I'm just having a lovely conversation with a dear friend. In the, in the west, there is also the opposite. So the there's essences, these the embodied experiences, let's call it an essence. It's actually something that's in our bodies, it's, it's a real substance, real something in our bodies, and then there's the negative essence. Yes, I would love to know.

So tell us about some signs. That may be that we may be spiritually disconnected and how does it show up in our body or even relationships in the west, yeah, in the west. So these substances we're not aware of them because they're deep in our bodies. Most of the time we're not aware of them, we're aware of the effect. So in the east, I could connect with people easily or even in Europe, in the west. I, I'm like suddenly I'm like, I don't even know how to reach. I can do it from this place. Like, hi, how are you? You know, I can do it from this place. It's coming from here. But my, the rest of my body is not resonating with that.

And there's the negative substances can be something like lead. It creates a sense of being unconscious, tiredness, exhaustion, it can be iron. Iron is something deep inside our bodies that we have to. It took me a long time to feel it, honestly, that makes us feel disconnected. We can't come out of ourselves in our whole being to connect with other people. I, Do you, do you mean low iron? Can be a cause of it. Yeah, that's a good question. It's, it's a negative substance that makes us feel like we're encased inside of it, and it may not be. It may be related with the iron in our body.

But also when we go sometimes when we look in with our consciousness. And we really have developed enough sensitivity to look at, you can, you can see it. It's like an iron ball sometimes. I, you know, it's a, I think it's a really good question because I've heard like, for example, Tibetan monks, they actually cultivated gold and it's been said that they have gold inside their bones after they pass, actual gold. And I think I know what you're referring to.

So, and it's so crazy because when I practice meditation, especially on the days that I have chronic chronic like chronic fatigue, let's call it chronic fatigue because there was a period in my life when I had that. When I would meditate, I would feel as if I am in jail. And obviously the jail is is made out of iron, right, or a metal, and I was like I felt stuck, stuck inside, right? So what you're referring to makes sense because you're you're saying it in the way it's iron, but in a way it's more like the stuckness, but it has a feel to it and that feeling is like dark, murky substance that we feel it in our body. Is that what you're referring to?

Yes, it can cause acidity, it can, you know, different substances can cause different in our body. Chronic fatigue and depression actually. To bring it to bring it in, it actually is, often related with not having something called red essence. This is like, I've been, studying these teachings 17 years now. It's, the Diamond logos teachings and it's actually what gives me the map to integrate psychology and spirituality in the body.

So this, it's actually red essence. The red essence is a life force energy. It is the correlated with, say, anger, sexuality, fear, you know, when we don't have red essence, we are also afraid of separating from our mothers, from our family. Mhm. We internally we carry them around a lot of times, and red is one of the energies that gives us the courage. The life force energy, the clarity to separate. And we can be separated but still very much in a love relationship with our families, but attached, you mean really attached. We can, yeah, we can be really attached, we can be really loving, but we can set red gives us the capacity to separate from them at the same time. It's true individuation exactly.

OK, so we'll go back to the drying up part first. OK, so women who are dried up, you did mention that they kind of feel this murky, irony feeling in their body, which simply means depression, fatigue, and I felt stuck, for example, that could feel, we could feel that in the west. And it's not just iron, it could be a number of things. It's not iron. It can be lead, it can be rubber, it can be a lot of, it can be a heat in our, in our bodies. It's a lot of different. It there's a lot of positive essences and there's a lot of negative essences. We'll talk about the negative, yes, because, you know, we need to, we will talk about like the signs that women feel in the West. So, OK, go on. Any other negative, this is crazy, crazy. Any other negative signs?

Yeah, I mean feeling numb, feeling like we, we can't come, we can't really truly feel connected with the whole body, heart, mind, with other people. We can feel acidity, we can feel a lot of acidity in us. System hate, we can feel like we're caught up in a lot of fear, stuck. So it's a lot of stuff. Oh my goodness.

OK, so now, what are some signs we may be what are some signs we may be spiritually disconnected? And how does that show up in our body or relationships? Yeah. So we talked about physically, but let's talk about spiritually. And I think I know one of the answers, but I would want you to talk about it. Yeah. Tell me, women in the west, all we think about is money, right? OK, so that's one, that's coming from me is what I feel, but you tell me, please. Yeah. Yeah, we're really like afraid in the west. We're worried about a survival. It's very materially based. The West has made a lot of advances in terms of material. Right? And the cost to that was that we lost ourselves. We lost our spirit, we lost the fountain in our bodies, in our hearts, in our minds. We became dried up. So it's, I would say, honestly, I would say that if we're in the west, we're most likely. There's, there might be some exceptions. But we are suffering, and whether or not we know it, we can be feeling whether or not we're conscious of it.

--

Right? Sometimes you become, yes. Mhm. We may not be, we may not be conscious of it, but we may not be feeling fullness or resiliency in our bodies, in our hearts and our minds. We may not be experiencing this, and so our ego feels more rigid. Is this, I don't, this is too abstract. We don't feel like we can be full of ourselves in a really good way because that's a natural way of being is to feel full of ourselves, and the delight, the joy, the passion, the aliveness, all of that.

So I need to know from your perspective and your research, because this just came to my mind. Do you think our mothers or grandmothers felt this too, or is this something new that's emerging more for our generation?

Yeah, it's I love this question. So, you know, I moved to the US when I was in an adolescent, early adolescence. My mom in India, I think she, there was a support of having nectars in her body. She wasn't necessarily conscious that I'm feeling love and it's coming from this experience in my body, but she was experiencing love. She was experiencing generosity. She was experiencing sweetness, as we talked about in the last podcast.

When we moved to the US, I don't think she realized what hit her, honestly, because it happens in the body that we're not aware of. OK. Got it. I see the shift. I have felt it. You have felt it. I'm sure my mom felt it. My sister feels it till this day, and all of my friends who, yeah, OK, got it. But at the same time, my mom was from a generation where they had more access to this. So even though she had her wounds, her own personal wounds in her life that she experienced, including moving to the US, she didn't have the capacity to shut down the flow in her body completely. She, from her woundedness, she made mistakes in life, I think, her own woundedness, which wasn't addressed. I don't think she did things perfectly, like she didn't know how to be there for me in some ways because of her own woundedness, because of her own experiences with moving to a land that was very alien. It wasn't human, even decades ago.

So, they had more access to it. In the east, it's still there, the embodiment is still present, but there's a lot of danger. Because people are not conscious, and society globally somehow is going in the direction of following the West. So what is happening, I'm noticing even in the east, that people are drying up, starting to. And when that happens in the east or when we move to the west or if we are in the west, right, we see in the western world there tends to be more prevalence of more severe mental health issues.

I was gonna ask you that, yeah, exactly, exactly. So we do have more severe mental health issues. Why do you think we have that? Just like depression, right? As I mentioned, it's a, it's an energy, it's a substance in the body that heats up a body, it energizes our body, it's, if we don't have it. Because you've been hurt, because we are surrounded by people who don't have it. It's adrenalized in the US. It's not this energized substance that people have in their bodies. We get depressed or have chronic fatigue syndrome. Does that make sense? Yeah, 100%.

So now that we know, OK, here is the issue. We have been dried up in the West. What's something from our South Asian or Middle Eastern roots that you feel could actually help us today even while living in the United States? Yeah, or the West.

Yeah. And I think this is in the east as well, to be honest, I feel like this, there needs to be a movement of consciousness. Unfortunately, we cannot sustain without seeing a big rise in a lot of mental health, physical health issues, if we don't, if we don't start to bring consciousness, if we don't start to make the connections, start to notice what we're experiencing in our bodies, nurture that. We really need to nurture it.

The other thing is the, this is the way that I know. We nurture it, we meditate, there's so many ways of getting connected with the body, right? Whirling, dancing, yoga, all of these things—we start to nurture. We start to notice what we're feeling that we're not conscious of. Mhm. It is gonna bring up our wounds. It is gonna bring up our traumas. There's no way around it, OK?

We don't have the amount of substance that they had in the generations before that was their resilience that kept them from experiencing as many issues in their bodies, in their minds, you know, mental health, physical health. So we don't have it. So we are going to—yeah, question? No, no, please, please, no, no, no, tell me. So the way that I know is really to cultivate this, we have to cultivate it, otherwise we will crash at some point and if I hadn't been in the richness of where I was, I probably wouldn't have crashed as much in the US. Because you know the difference now. You know the difference between crashing and being in the richness. Yeah, I experienced it. Yes, I experienced it like that because I'm more porous as well. I've done a lot of inner work. I'm more porous, but we experienced it unconsciously, and when people experience this, you know, I'm telling you, a month and a half since I came back and it has been so intense.

I mean, I'm OK. I know how to navigate this. I know this is part of the process, but let me tell you, wow, it gives me a real sense of what people are experiencing. When we get scared, when this happens, a lot of times we're not conscious that it's happening. We just get more rigid in our egos. We feel like we can't access. We again. I think this might hit home. We can't access—if somebody asks us to do something for them, we don't feel like we have the capacity to do it. Of course, we're like, nope, sorry, busy or nope, I'm not available or no. I am doing something else because we—yeah, so it's more transactional.

I personally feel in the west, yeah, because we're not—it’s like the roots of the tree are not getting the nourishment that they need, so the leaves are drying up.

--

Drying up, roots are dry, leaves are dry, everything is dry in the West. It's gonna die. Exactly, right? It's gonna die. OK, that's a great point. Listeners, listen up. It's gonna die. So now, how do we water the fountain that has been dried up already? You talked about somatic practices, so just for our listeners to understand, some of the practices that can help you to just bring your awareness back into your body is movement, dancing, breathing, meditation, yoga, and I can personally echo, yes, when you start doing these things, you may just start crying. And that happened to me. I was dancing one day in a Zumba class and I'm like, why am I crying? Oh, something just had to come out of me. And of course through yoga, you know, you will just start crying because things are leaving your body. But what else can we do, Ruchika?

So, you know, one thing is to do these practices, journaling, anything that kind of gets you connected to your roots, be in communities that, you know, help to—kind of being around other bodies that kind of know what you know, you know, if you're coming from the East and there's a richness that’s being around the bodies. But really I think the biggest thing is—let’s just say we have to swim a little bit upstream. We have—or maybe a lot of bits upstream—cultivating these spiritual practices, but also I think the part that often is missing is knowing that the wounds are gonna come up, the traumas are gonna come up as we're going back.

So a lot of times we engage in spiritual practices to get high. We release, as far as like, yeah, we cultivate openness in our bodies. And the ego is freaking out because traumas are coming up and we don't know what to do with them and we just think if I practice a little bit more, I'm gonna get back to that high feeling, the soft feeling or the luscious feeling or the warm feeling or the connected feeling.

So—I didn’t mean to plug in for myself, but this is what I do—is there is the support that we need to get back to ourselves. We have to cultivate, we have to embody, but we also need support because what do we do when our issues and our traumas and the wounds come up? So when you mean support, you mean community support? You mean like-minded women around you in circles?

Yes, that, and the only way that I know, Dimple, is to take the consciousness journey. Is to do the work really. Whether it's in a group where there's understanding, where you can feel like you can drop into your softness, your warmth, but then see, oh my gosh, I'm feeling so vulnerable in this place. I can't show up. And a lot of times we're not aware of it. Mhm. This—what is coming up for us—can be a wound from when we were in the womb.

Yeah, makes sense. So basically feel the pain, so you can heal the pain. Through being on a conscious path. Obviously, either individually work with somebody or be in a community, or maybe a circle, so that you can water the fountain is what I'm hearing from you. Doing somatic practices, and any other tips?

No, somatic practices integrating psychologically are the two things. This piece of knowledge that I know of, I don't know if a lot of people know this, though I work individually with people, not with groups. But this piece of knowledge about how to integrate our spirituality and our psychology in the body—it's… I don't see a lot of bridges out there, unfortunately.

So give us an example of a client that maybe you worked with and she was suffering from some problem. Let’s pick a problem. She was dried up. How did you help her spiritually and psychologically to help? Like give us an example.

I'll speak of a client who actually has done a lot of spiritual work and has had a lot of openings and, I would say, there’s a lot been cultivated. The capacity to be generous, the capacity to be kind, the capacity to be loving. It’s really in the spiritual communities that I've been in—it’s really beautiful actually. I'm so amazed at the transformation that people experience.

At the same time, the same person is in deep anxiety. Deep anxiety about everything. Got it, everything. That affects them on so many levels in her life, really, really beating herself up, feeling like she can't do it right, feeling like she's broken, you know, and then that goes in relationships. I don't know how to show up. I'm co-dependent. It's really difficult.

Now, what is happening is that this person has actually opened up to the fountain of substances in the fountain in their bodies—of a lot of stuff. But her ego is freaking out because all of these wounds that she's experienced, she didn’t know what to do with them. Mhm. Yeah, that's most of the women in the West.

Yeah, so what's happened is that—and she works in the body with people, which is incredible. She has incredible body knowledge, works in the body with people, helps other people, and yet… You know, doesn't know how to integrate. I have this trauma from my background. I've experienced abuse. I've experienced instability. I've experienced all of these things, these traumas. So, repress them in the body—dries up again.

Right, we open up to all of these nectars, juices, and then what happens is that when we don't know how to address the wounds that are coming up—which a lot of us don't know—right, then we repress it deeper in the body. Sometimes people go to therapists for this. But I'll see a quick issue. What happens is that when we're engaged spiritually, we're thinning out the ego. We're transforming the ego. We go to a therapist, they are telling you ego tools to work with it.

Psychological—exactly, they're giving you only psychological tools and they're not giving you any tools that can actually help you as a human being on this spiritual journey. So we have—there's a lot of resources we end up having to cultivate ourselves that we've already cultivated but has gone underground because of our wounds and our issues.

I don't know if this is too abstract. This makes a lot of sense because this is what's happening to 99.9% of the women in the United States. Even though—so it's like, I just want to say this—even though you may not—you Ruchika—but the audience, if you're listening right now and you may be taking up this yoga class or you're probably volunteering somewhere because you feel so good about it, OK, great. But then deep down you still—and if you're still figuring your life out because you have a lot of fears and anxieties coming up for you, you haven't solved that problem for yourself. You haven't healed, you haven't looked up your wounds, and that's why you're probably drying up is what Ruchika is saying, correct?

Ruchika? Yeah, and because they're scary. We don't know how to go—a lot of times we don't know how to go there ourselves, you know, and we can work with women and men and—and what I noticed is part of the barrier is that—is this OK? Am I safe to feel this? Is there something wrong with me? Am I crazy? We get terrified. You know, and so then we, we shut down. We shut down or we awaken unconsciously by doing a lot of practices, spiritual practices, and then—because it hasn’t been conscious—we’re also not conscious of whatever is coming up for us.

We have like… if—you know, a lot of us just want it to be like this: I just get, you know, feel better and better and better. Oh no, it’s a pendulum. You’re gonna get—you’re gonna get your lusciousness, your sensuality. Your pendulum is gonna swing in the other direction and tell you where you lost it, 'cause you lost it, most likely somewhere in the past. And then you’ve got to work on that and then you’ll feel good again, but then something else will come. Yes, you have to keep working on the second piece and then the third piece will come and that is like your—it’s your pendulum swing going yo-yoing, so that’s life.

I wish the times were different because I feel like… I don’t feel like the world has always been this way. You know, I just feel like in these times—and I’m talking about, I don’t know how long it’s been—but it’s been, the intensity has been increasing of this, where our pendulum has more bigger swings because most of us have been really not… not nurtured in the East. Or if you're from the East, you have it in your body a lot closer. It’s in the body. It’s in the DNA. I went to India. I relaxed because it wasn’t foreign to me.

Correct. You know, natural—you naturally connect to it. Yeah. I wanted to ask, because we’re almost coming up on time: If someone listening feels deeply disconnected right now, what’s one thing she could do today to begin coming back to herself and watering that fountain?

Yeah. It could be dance. I really love the body-based practices. It’s anything that helps you to come back. There’s so much that moving the body—whether it’s gently, it doesn’t even have to be—like if you’re not somebody who can move your body a lot, right? You can do very gentle movements and really… do the whole body. The head, the neck, the shoulders, the chest, the belly, the pelvis, you know, the spine—even if it’s gentle movements. Don’t focus on one area. It’s the whole body. It’s the—it’s—and the body integrates body, heart, and mind. There’s an integration of all three.

Yeah. And that’s really important. I think that’s basically what I’ve been talking about is that all of these integrate. It’s not like we can be awake in our bodies and then not deal with what’s coming up on the other levels.

Makes total sense. And my last question to you, Ruchika—this has been great so far. So basically, what’s the one truth about healing or power or cultural belonging that you wish every South Asian or Middle Eastern woman knew in the West?

Come to your roots. The answer is not in the West. Come to your roots. Move back. Move back. The way I am doing it. Yes, I’m saying this on the podcast, but that’ll be another podcast.

OK, this is great. So basically go back to your roots. Go back to your roots. There is wounding in our roots. There is wounding. We have our own stuff there, but don’t throw it out. It’s like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. The roots—roots. Oh, there is richness that the West needs from the East, not the other way around.

I mean, I think the propaganda says it the other way around. So, can you—can you speak to the propaganda, please?

I mean, it’s just been so much about how the West is better. It’s throughout the world. Everybody’s following the West—even when we think we’re not following the West, you know, it’s—it’s sad. It’s really sad. I watched a woman talk to her child in English in Delhi, and I was like, is this your main language of communication? Do you know?

You know, I mean language is one that we talked about the last time that we met, but do you know what is happening? It is… there’s so much that I could say about this, but there’s so much about inferiority that we hold in the East—but actually it’s the opposite.

Correct. I totally 100% agree to what you’re saying, and I have been there. I have been that way too, that even though I was born in Abu Dhabi and I spoke Arabic, and every time I go back, I don’t want to talk in English. I want to try to talk in my language. Even though I don’t speak fluently, but now that you’re saying go back to your roots, I need to go learn—relearn the Arabic that I lost. But I did not speak Hindi perfectly when I was in Abu Dhabi, so my goal when I came to the United States was, hey, I need to speak Hindi. This is my—you know, it’s our language or Punjabi. So I learned Hindi. I learned Punjabi. And now—and then I learned English, because English was my second language. Now my goal is to learn Arabic.

So going back to roots, because language hits us, you know, it connects us back to our roots. And I know I said last question, but I’m curious. I have one more question for you. When you say roots to somebody, go back to your roots, especially a woman—what are you really saying? What does roots really mean for them if they don’t understand what that means?

I mean, really, the most powerful way is really to come back to the body with consciousness. I think to reclaim the riches in our bodies and to integrate it on all the levels. I think that’s really important. That is the real roots. We can let go of our identities—you know, I’m South Asian, I’m Middle Eastern—we can let go of our identities, but we need to nurture. This is in my body, it’s in my DNA. This is what is most precious on this planet that I have to offer to myself and to anybody else.

And if anybody needs help with it, please reach out to me.

Absolutely. And I was gonna say, Ruchika, where can we reach out to you? And I’m sure a lot of women who are drying up and dried up already—please reach out to Ruchika. We are gonna add her information on our show notes. Ruchika, should they reach out to you on your website?

So my website is myfirstandlastname.com, RuchikaMehta.com. And they can reach out to me. I so far have been working individually with people, but I would like—I’m in the Bay Area and I would love to do groups globally or in the Bay Area. I just haven’t put myself out there in that way, but yeah, please reach out. There’s this—it’s possible, it’s really possible because we—we don’t… Part of this is that we turn away because we don’t think it’s possible for us to have us.

Thank you so much, Ruchika. This was a part two of our podcast and please go listen to part one once again. I will include her information on the show notes. Do book your call with Ruchika. She is absolutely amazing. She can help you transform your life, your body for sure, and definitely help you heal your wounds.

Ruchika, thank you so much for being on our show. Thank you. We loved having you and for all of our listeners, always remember—metamorphosis, not medication, and Namaste.

If this episode spoke to you, then please give us a review on iTunes. I will really appreciate it. And if you felt something shifting in your chest or your gut, that’s not just a podcast moment. That’s your soul saying, hey, we are ready.

So head over to dimplebindra.com and take my Healing Archetype Quiz. I’m also gonna add the link to my show notes. It’s gonna help you understand the pattern that’s been running your life. The one you didn’t even know was there.

And once you take the quiz, you’ll see a button to join the waitlist for You Are Awakening. That’s my Women’s Circle, and it’s where we do this work together with other amazing sisters. You don’t have to heal in silence anymore.

I’m so glad you’re here, and I’ll see you in the next episode. Bye.