(October 14, 2022) Yale scholar Shruti Parthasarathy, who has been learning Bharatanatyam since the age of five, has introduced the ancient Indian dance form to the people of Middleton, Wisconsin where she grew up and now to students at Yale where she is currently an undergrad student. With cultural workshops and a new app launch she combines her love for dance with the growing need for mindfulness, helping people discover the spiritual potency of Bharatanatyam, which originated in India thousands of years ago.
Shruti, who has performed at many concerts in the US and also a few in India, founded Mindful Kala to bring Bharatanatyam into the spotlight and make the ancient dance form’s cultural history visible through the lens of social well-being, the need of the hour in modern society.
She has been collaborating with Yale University to expand the reach of this novel approach, using Bharatanatyam to reduce stress and mood disorders and mitigate the effects of increasingly sedentary lifestyles.The youngster has bagged several awards in dance competitions and volunteer work, including the President’s Volunteer Service Gold Medal in US. She has also written a book to help children build an interest in the dance form.
Bharatanatyam at Yale
Through Mindful Kala, Shruti offers small as well as longer intensive workshops at the Good Life Center at Yale, where she is enrolled as an undergraduate scholar. Her interactive app allows people of all ages to learn about the benefits of the integration through activities and informational slides.
“I aim to empower people through interactive and easily accessible educational tools to elevate well-being and foster inter cultural sensitivity through Indian dance forms,” says the youngster, who was introduced to Bharatanatyam by her mother, Hemalatha when they moved from India to Madison 15 years ago.
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Pupil in US, guru in India
While staying in Middleton, Shruti was trained in Bharatanatyam by her guru, Medha Hari, who lives in Chennai. The two communicated online using Skype video conferencing on their computers. Although they were sceptical about Skype as medium of learning, they learned to make it well.
Both student and teacher were extremely dedicated and together, managed to overcome the challenges of learning and teaching through a computer screen, as well as navigating the significant time difference. In the process the guru and her pupil developed a lifelong bond, from a distance of 8,400 miles away from each other.
The discovery…
As a middle-schooler, Shruti was frequently stressed. She would retreat to her basement and dance, finding that it brought her great relief. As she grew up, she noticed how many people around her are stressed and wondered if dance could help them too. She began teaching Bharatanatyam to both children and adults in her vicinity. “The dance form demands that every part of the body remain active at all times, from the facial muscles right down to the toes. It’s a good workout option as well,” Shruti says. Physical benefits aside, Shruti is a firm believer in the dance form’s capacity to offer mental calm, too.
Her initiative of integrating Bharatanatyam with mindfulness had taken off, even before she joined Yale. The university supported her efforts, helping her greatly increase her scale of reach. And to Shruti, giving back in some way feels like a personal responsibility. “It’s my identity and passion and I wouldn’t want to lose it for anything,” she tells. Shruti loves everything about the dance form, from the stories to the make-up and costumes.
Bharatanatyam findings published in health journal
When Shruti began her initiative in school, it worked well with students. This led her to turn her project ‘Calm with Kalaa’ into a larger study on decreasing cultural bias. She started an experiment with 46 freshmen at her high school and put them through an eight-week intensive program of learning what Bharatanatyam is and its connections with well-being.
The pilot study provided evidence of improvements in emotional and physical health of adolescents. A statistical decrease was found in anxiety, fatigue, depressive symptoms, and pain intensity. There was a significant statistical increase in body appreciation, embodiment, peer relationships and mindfulness.
The findings of her study were published in the Advances in Global Health and Medicine Journal. She later presented her findings at the Academic Consortium of Medicine in 2021, receiving state and national media attention. She was also thrilled to find a decrease in bias in the students who were part of her study.
More experiments at Yale
Once Parthasarathy joined Yale, she continued to grow her organisation Mindful Kala and its initiative collaborating with the Good Life Centre, there. She got in touch with various cultural organizations and other clubs at Yale to scale up her initiative. Shruti has held virtual and in-person workshops with hundreds of students since then.
With help from her professors and psychology researchers, Dr Laurie Santos and Dr Elizabeth Goldfarb, Mindful Kala is conducting a randomized control trial of 53 students and educators at Yale. They are participants of a four-week Mindful Kala intensive course to study the levels of increase in well-being, mindfulness and anti-bias notions in them.
Integrating technology with art
Shruti and her team of experimenters at Yale have created an app to help people of all backgrounds get an insight into the ancient Indian dance form as well as into the principles of mindfulness. They are hoping to make an impact not just in the US but around the world. At the moment, the app is being offered as a campus initiative programme from the Yale Student Mental Health Association.
Transforming research into innovation
The ace dancer plans to take up cognitive science and sociology as a double major. She has deep interest in researching the psychosocial underpinnings of the relationship between mental wellbeing and interdisciplinary movements. She aims to translate her research into innovation so that accessibility to mental health resources increases and there is greater sense of intercultural sensitivity to a diverse array of communities.
Some of Shruti’s Bharatanatyam performances have been at:
- Tamil Sangam (WITS), Madison
- Dance Festival, Sri Venkateshwara Temple, Chicago
- Hindu Temple, Fitchburg
- Lawrence University, Appleton
- Bhartiya Vidya Bhavan, Chennai
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