Sivani Mata is a student of bhakti yoga – the path of union with creation through the heart – particularly through the practice of Kirtan – collective creation of music as a medicine using the repetition of simple powerful mantra at its core. She has been sharing this practice regularly with groups since 2009 when she began a monthly offering of Kirtan in London, which still runs (now at The Life Centre, Islington). Her relationship with bhakti yoga is deeply rooted in the tradition of Haidakhan Babaji whose teachings centre around the message of Truth, Simplicity and Love.

Sivani Mata also spends a lot of time in women’s circles, exploring responsive yoga practices that support and nourish women in all phases of their life. Since 2012 she has been working alongside Uma Dinsmore-Tuli, diving deep into this cyclical nature of what it is to be woman, and the healing that comes when we are able to honour and accept our natural rhythms. Sivani Mata co-teaches on Uma’s Well Woman Yoga Therapy Teacher Training as well as sharing Women’s Yoga Circles which include the deeply restorative practice of Yoga Nidra – the lying down meditative practice of “yogic sleep”. Her work with women is passionately rooted in the awareness that to change the relationship with one’s bodies, including but not limited to a freedom from menstrual shame, is to change the relationship we have to the Earth. She strongly supports the Stop Ecocide campaign and is signed up as an Earth Protector. Sivani Mata’s personal healing has also been deeply supported by her work with Brazilian XamAM Alba Maria and her connection to the shamanism of the Mother Goddess.

Sivani is grateful for this journey she finds herself on and the practices that support her path.