Maa Uma-Parvathi Natha. 

Has spent decades in sadhana (meditation and spiritual practice) learning and teaching the ancient philosophical and yoga systems of India. She is a direct and close disciple of Shri Amritanandanath one of the eminent Shri Vidya Master of modern times. She has also been tutored by some of the reclusive and revered masters of Shri Vidya and the Vedantic tradition. Born in India into a Vedic and Brahmin family Parvathi has dedicated her lifetime to the practice and preservation of Shri Vidya and Vedantic teachings. She has trained in three authentic and traditional streams within Shri Vidya and Vedanta and is a lineage holder and authorized teacher of Shri Vidya.

This lifetime of sadhana and study provides the foundation for all of Uma-Parvathi’s teachings which are calibrated for the western culture language and mindset. Having lived a householder’s life with family and children in the everyday world she understands and knows these specific challenges and how to approach them in the context of the auspicious wisdom of Shri Vidya. Now living in semi-retreat she is refining the more elusive and subtle sciences of Shri Vidya.

In small groups dedicated to practice, Maa Uma-Parvathi can oversee each practitioner personally, giving personalised guidance and energetic support. She is dedicated to the progress of the practitioner and her energy is not diluted through social media and publicity. Combined with the dedication of the practitioner to the program a dynamic (kosha) is created that sustains and integrates the evolution of the practitioner and the path. This is the ancient path in India of working closely with commitment. It’s also similar to the older system of mentoring and apprenticeship in Europe. The focus is on practice, integration and realisation, not transaction and hyperbole.

Maa Uma-Parvathi’s Shri Vidya teachings include delving into Vedas, Tantra and the Yogas. The focus is on sadhana and integrating it into our lives through the different aspects of ourself and community. It is relevant to our lives but it’s not about displaying a new identity or a marketable spirituality. She uses original authenticated Sanskrit sources for the practice texts. The information, style and method of the sadhana is Maa Uma-Parvathi’s.This is not to claim exclusivity or superiority but to be clear about the style and information.

If you're looking to learn in a different way, i.e. not one year long dedicated courses or intense immersions, please look to the teachers page. If you're looking for intiation only, your first resource is Devipuram. Amma is the chosen worthy successor by Guruji.

This is a traditional lineage stream, grounded in the wisdom of thousands of years of teachers kept alive by practitioners who realized their true self and passed it on teacher to student directly and is now fluid with an innovative and traditional approach. Innovation requires a solid foundation of tradition to stand upon in order to give the depth of adaptability, the steadiness of knowing, and the intelligence to expand to new frontiers without being reckless or diluting. Maa Uma-Parvathi’s approach is a blend of tradition and innovation imbued with a distinct feminine voice.

Shri Vidya is the voice of the feminine, not female. It is for women and men of all ages living in the world. While a strong inner renunciation is naturally cultivated, it is a system for "the householder”, the ones living in the everyday world in the midst of family, business and ordinary life.

Since ancient times forests were places of refuge and peace. Aranya, one of the Sanskrit words for forest, means a place of no battle. Here all conflicts, inner and outer, find rest in the absorption of the One. Forests are  a symbol of our heart, which is a meeting place of the form and the formless. An intersection that becomes the altar for sacrificing the limited and impermanent into the eternal and self luminous. The heart is not only the seat of pleasant  sentiments and personal love but the meeting place with our chosen Beloved (Ishtadevata). It is where the  light of the Transcendent and immanent are One. The heart is the source of love itself (antaryamin). Love is the source of wisdom and wisdom compels activity. It has the essential transforming power to break the gravitational force of the conditioned self, and its light is  presence that is naturally…present.

Forests also imply wildness, not erratic and chaotic activity, but uncultivated. Wild and natural. In the human experience this wildness is the uncontrived and natural quality to not only our consciousness and heart but how it expresses through speech and action. This lack of contrivance arises from an untouched purity. The wild has not been contaminated by the artifices of civilization or the conditioned self.

The light of the heart which is the pure light of consciousness radiates unobscured and natural. The paradox of the forest is that from the periphery it seems mysterious, impermeable and dangerous to the conditioned self. An entangled darkness that hides the light. But enter and tread a forest path and you will reveal in the verdant growth; the inconceivable light of awareness.

A forest path then is the way back to our wild and uncontrived self.  It is a path that disentangles the paradox of the play between the One and the many.  A paradox that can only be reconciled on the altar of the heart  where the fragments of the many are sacrificed to unified knowing. The forest path doesn’t lead outwardly into the projection of the world but follows an ingoing light of consciousness back to its source in the Hrydayam (heart)- “here it is” the source of the I am that I am.

The rasa of the Heart is present everywhere, touches everything and  therefore knows all things; so dare to tread on a forest path. Any of your choosing…..all paths lead to the eternal forest of the Heart.