About Heena Vasani

My Early Years: A Challenging Start

I grew up in a traditional Hindu family with strict rules, defined roles, and unyielding expectations that often silenced my voice and individuality. At the age of five, my mother left to pursue her spiritual path, and I went to live with my father who was emotionally distant and my stepmother, who battled with a profound depression. This separation from my birth mother, combined with my father’s detachment and my stepmother’s illness, had a profound and lasting impact on my physical, emotional, and mental health, as well as my sense of self.

A Life-Altering Turning Point

At twenty-one, while beginning a promising career in investment banking as a postgraduate, I became gravely ill and required a kidney transplant. The enormity of another person’s sacrifice for my survival awakened deep questions within me about life, death, and the nature of existence. This marked the first time I began to reflect on the traumas of my childhood. On the day of my transplant, I experienced a glimpse of my True Nature as I rested in a field of deep Presence. This Stillness, beyond intellectual understanding, initiated me into feeling the responsibility that came with receiving a donated organ and opened the door to a lifetime of self-discovery and healing.

A Spiritual Journey of Self-Inquiry

Over the next 27 years, I embarked on a transformative spiritual journey, studying consciousness through A Course in Miracles and delving into the non-dual paths of Advaita Vedanta, Jnana Yoga (Self-Inquiry), and Traditional Tantra. I deepened my understanding of self-inquiry by studying with three inquiry schools, each of which guided me to explore the core beliefs and conditioning that shaped my life. Through meditation, Yoga Nidra, body-mind practices, and in-depth psychological work, I integrated these teachings into my life, finding clarity and renewal.

Mothering as a Spiritual Practice

My remarkable grandmother, a devout Hindu who held Satsang in West London, played an instrumental role in shaping my spiritual path. After the birth of my son, Jamie, she encouraged me to view motherhood as a spiritual practice. This life-changing guidance helped me confront my conditioning and childhood wounds, ultimately fostering meaningful growth and a deeper connection with my True Self and the Oneness of life.

Motherhood became the foundation of my spiritual practice, particularly after the birth of my daughter, Sienna. Guided by the silent teachings of Karma Yoga (selfless service) and Bhakti Yoga (devotion), I embraced conscious parenting. Raising my children within the Waldorf Steiner education system, I found deep peace in the simplicity of daily life and immense satisfaction in honouring the essence and unique paths of my children. My greatest blessing was seeing beyond the Veils of Maya, allowing me to meet my children essence to essence, honouring their unique journeys in this lifetime. Recognising and celebrating who they are at their core has been one of the greatest honours and most transformative experiences of my life. Today, my children are vibrant young adults, living with the same spirit of individuality and presence I nurtured in them as they grew.

Breaking Generational Cycles

Looking back, my life has been an ongoing journey of Self-Inquiry. Through deep inquiry and genuine, heartfelt forgiveness, I have reached a place of peace with all three of my parents—my mother, father, and stepmother. This process of releasing old wounds has not only freed me emotionally, mentally, and physically but has also contributed to the health and longevity of my transplanted kidney. The realisation that, without healing, my children might inherit the same generational patterns of abandonment and loss that I had endured became a powerful driving force in my journey. I was determined to break the cycle for myself and for their future. This path has emphasised the importance of integrating the body into spiritual practice, creating harmony between the head, heart, and gut.

A Testament to Inner Healing

During a recent visit to the Royal Free Hospital in London, my new renal consultant expressed surprise at the excellent health of my kidney, 27 years post-transplant—a rare occurrence in his field. We discussed my meditation practice, inner journey, and my ability to tune into my body’s wisdom daily. Remarkably, my transplanted kidney has now outlived the natural lifespan of my native kidneys, a testament to the deep connection I’ve cultivated with my body over the years. Inspired by this, my doctor suggested I share my meditation techniques with others to help them benefit from these practices.

The 8 Layers to Inner Peace

The 8 Layers to Inner Peace: A Guided Path to Stillness is a transformative meditation practice I offer, designed to help mothers feel, explore, and release deeply held tension patterns within the body-mind. By dropping into the layers of the body—physical, emotional, and mental—they reconnect with their inner support: their True Self. This process gently helps them unwind old conditioning and release beliefs that no longer serve them, allowing them to parent with greater peace, presence, and embodied love.

This work takes participants into the depths of the True Heart, where presence, attunement, and acceptance transform energetic constrictions into creativity, wisdom, empowerment, and self-realization. Each session creates a sacred space where mothers feel deeply heard, seen, and held as they unburden and balance their physical, mental, and emotional bodies.

By releasing what no longer serves them, participants find clarity, emotional freedom, and a deep sense of inner calm—empowering them to navigate motherhood with love and resilience.

A Heartfelt Guide for Mothers

Often described as a mini-Tao Te Ching for mothers, Fragrance of Freedom: Discovering Peace through Mothering is the heartfelt guide and memoir I wish I had received 25 years ago when I first became a mother. Beautifully illustrated with care by my children, Jamie and Sienna, this meditative and reflective work offers timeless insights into what it truly means to nurture with wisdom, grace, and unconditional love. Designed to help mothers pause, transform emotional pain into clarity, and deepen their connection with themselves and their children, it stands apart from traditional parenting books as a guide to inner peace and Presence.

An excerpt from Fragrance of Freedom reads:

"When gazing into the eyes of your children, go beyond all expectations, hopes, judgments, fears, and guilt, and greet them from the depths of your peaceful Being. Resting there, you will both feel cherished, honoured, and whole."

To learn more about the work I offer, please visit my website Heenavasani.com

About Susan Telford

I was born in a small, rural town in Southwest Scotland into a family where educational achievement was prized. I learned that in order to receive love, I had to match the expectations placed on me by my family. 

This led to a lifetime of people-pleasing , perfectionism and Type A driven behaviour. No matter what I achieved, it never seemed quite enough, I never seemed quite enough. 

I went to St Andrews University in 1980 to study French, German and Linguistics, the first of my family to attend university. I was unprepared for the cultural shock of coming from a council house background and, among other things, having the Queen’s Private Secretary's daughter in the room next door in Halls. It was too much of a culture gap and so I left after one term, returning home with my tail between my legs, to face furious parents.

I moved to Edinburgh in 1983 and it was there that I met my first husband, Iain (who died in 2012) and had our children Kristen, in 1989 and Tom in 1992.  

I did not return to university until 2005, when, at the age of 43, I embarked on a Maths degree at the University of Strathclyde, in Glasgow, graduating with First Class Honours and becoming a Maths teacher in 2009. 

I loved being a teacher and was soon promoted to Head of Year, with pastoral responsibility for 200 students. Inevitably, though, I applied the same people-pleasing, perfectionist, Type A tendencies to this work and in 2016 had a devastating burnout that put me in bed for 6 months, with a diagnosis of ME/CFS and ended my teaching career. 

To say I was devastated is an understatement but my burnout sparked a spiritual awakening that has led me to question every belief about who I am. 

Gradually, I began to listen to an inner voice that led me in a completely new direction, one I could never have predicted or planned. 

Today, my work is diverse and varied and the common thread that runs through it all is that I come with heart of a doula, rooted in compassionate presence, whether I am working as a coach or spiritual mentor, as a course facilitator, community leader, an end of life doula or an independent funeral celebrant.

It is my lived experience of burnout, loss and grief, and the spiritual awakening that followed, as much as my formal training, that informs my coaching, my speaking, my writing and my poetry and my ability to hold non-judgmental, compassionate space for others.

I love to facilitate intimate, transformational spaces for exploration and growth as we contemplate what it means to be truly alive in this “brief candle” of our lives.

I offer deep intuitive listening, which not only led me to a brand-new life and career but has helped hundreds of women question the core beliefs that are holding them back and keeping them small, stuck perfectionism, people-pleasing and feeling of not-enoughness, as I was.

I will hold space for you as you learn to tune into inner wisdom and evolve into the conscious, creative, compassionate woman you were always meant to be. 

Together, we will unapologetically shine our light into the world, by fulfilling our potential, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, creatively and professionally. 

"Susan draws from an unending Source of wisdom, experience and a huge loving heart as she takes you on a journey through a doorway to learning to live as your authentic self, the truth of You. You begin loving who you are, accepting, dropping long built up masks, healing wounds that block awareness of Love’s presence and trusting your own inner guidance/wisdom. I feel strengthened in balancing the outward demands of daily living with the inner discovery of the presence of Grace."

~ Jeannie Eger

Learn more about my work at www.susantelford.com and read my latest writing at susantelford.substack.com