Sudevi Kramer - life expressing herself
“Even if I changed hats, my work stayed the same”
Sometimes we are meant to meet certain people and the universe orchestrates this date in pretty wonderful ways. Sudevi and I were meant to meet. Yet because there is an ocean between us and a forced lockdown, the only way was online through a Self Love course. You wouldn’t think a healer would ever need such a thing, however the way we bonded and exchanged guidance on each other’s paths is somewhat magical and was, dare I say, needed.
Sudevi is. Then we can add adjectives such as healer, writer, poet, yogini, astrologer etc. because as she told me in the end of our interview “Even if I changed hats, my work stayed the same”. Her Gift exudes through just about anything she chooses to say yes to.
TG: Who is Sudevi? Who is she today?
SK: Today…(she breaks into a beautiful laugh) You know in days gone by I would’ve given you a yogic answer “I’m spirit, soul, I’m so and so’s partner, I’m so and so’s cat-mommy, whatever”. And now I feel like I’m a live energetic force of feminine energy connected very much to my heart, rooted and here to create and to help birth. I think I’m a force, almost. I am very much in my heart and very much connected to the Earth but I’m kind of suspended up into the sky. That’s not very succinct is it? (she laughs again) That’s kind of how I feel: I’m this ball of energy with heart and soul connected to both realms.
How would you describe yourself in three adjectives?
(Laughter) That’s really hard! I would say …. gosh I want to go into the elements. You know I would say I’m Fire, Air and Heart. Elementally Heart is very Akash, it’s space so I said that already with Air. But I think I do everything from my heart. I read somewhere that the heart actually had more intelligence and more control over our body than our actual brain. And I thought WOW! I guess I sort of always come from there. Not sort of! I do come from there. It’s like “oh how does this feel in my heart?” and I just don’t seem to be able to live any other way. However it is not one of those airy or spacey kind of things, I think I see clearly and have a clear vision of what needs to be done. I’m able to be objective and stand outside of things almost like I’m watching a play or something. So even though I’m completely in my heart I’m not at the play of my emotions. Although I have emotions. If that makes sense… I think we are used to someone being in their heart being at the sway of their emotions. I would say BALANCED is one of the words I would use to describe myself these days. I think I really found the balance, maybe I have gone at different points in time to explore different extremes to find that middle ground. I would say I’m very GROUNDED, very CENTRED, very VISIONARY. And also very much in my heart. Self-Mastery really. A lot of work! (and laughs)
Do you think you were born this way or you became Her? I think part of me believes we enter this world with the heart open, or more in tune with it.
I think when we’re babies we are pure. We’re more blank. We haven’t been imprinted. We all come into the world a certain way. And then of course you could always get into the school of thought that maybe it was even before then, because even when we were in our mother’s wombs we’re making decisions about the world, we’re getting impressions. So not to be complex, it probably depends on the age of the soul before the soul takes its actual birth. So I think the life experience cannot be the same because all of us are bringing different experiences in but yet we’re all one. It’s a lot to wrap your head around.
And do you think you have always acted from your heart?
I think I did. I think I came in… this is a borrowed term but it is true for me, I came in with my light switched on and my heart open. I think that is one of my Gifts that I came here to share. I’ve always been very clairvoyant, very open, almost without a skin from the very beginning. So I had to sort of adapt to the world because the world around me wasn’t like that. At that age you don’t really have any real teachers, it’s your inner teacher you’re trying to figure it out. You have this idea and the world maybe has another idea. I think I always came from the heart but obviously I didn’t have the skillset. I had an open wonder and I didn’t understand that other people weren’t necessarily in the same place. Part of my growing up journey was the realisation that we’re all in different places and that no not everyone is like you. But yet spiritually we learn that we’re all the same, it’s just that we encounter different beings that are at different places and our challenge is to find that oneness which of course is our heart. You know we take a human birth, that soul and that heart is what separates us. And I think that it either gets nurtured or it doesn’t get nurtured and then we see the ending results in people’s lives and we learn to nurture it ourselves if things happen along the way as they sometimes often do. That’s part of our journey.
How did you learn to nurture yourself? Especially at a young age…
I had a lot of time alone as a child and so I think nature did that for me. I felt that when I climbed trees the wind was caressing me. I used to go in the woods as a small child and I used to build little tree houses and have this entire make-belief world where the animals were my friends, they were my family. I think I just thought that way. Probably one of the bigger gifts or advantages that I had is that even though I had all the things that other kids have from others like bullying etc. My mother loved me so completely that I always knew - even when she died when I was in college - I was loved. Love always carried me through in situations when perhaps it wasn’t there. That was a gift I had from her and I can’t say I cultivated that, although I did, but I came in with that. I always knew.
Of course like everyone I had hard things but I always had that love and I always knew I had that loving heart from the beginning. I think it helped me because in my early years I was that kid who took everybody under my wing and made sure they weren’t made fun of and that the other kids accepted them, until we had to move. Then I went from being the most popular to being thrown snowballs. Going from being so loved to the total opposite was such a gift , in retrospect. Later on during high school, I was dating the popular guy so I was again being externally validated… however, what I had learned is that you have to look inside. The world makes decisions based on externals. I observed I came from being loved to being terrified to walk back home from school to being loved again and I had not changed, I was still the same person. Looking back, I think it helped because I could’ve lived a very shallow and easy life. The external changes made me deeper and more reflective. It made me introspective, I read a lot and I looked inside people. I made my choices, my life work, from that. Maybe I wouldn’t have done that hadn’t I had that experience, that might well be the foundation of that seeking. I knew that love was there because I had experienced it very early on and I knew that my job no matter what else I did was to express that love and share that love with other beings.
So interesting. I wonder how you perceived those things really, did it ever feel like you were both experiencing the situation and observing yourself experiencing it?
Yes. I think I came in like that and I wonder… my mother when she was carrying me she had a yoga teacher from India. She didn’t do yoga after but there is a picture of the woman with the red bindi and the sari holding me, I remember finding this picture and asking my mother about that woman - apparently it was a neighbour but I don’t remember of her, I do however wonder if I absorbed all that ability to be calm and to stand outside of myself. I did later on get deep into yoga and even had a yoga centre. Now I have a strong meditation practice and mantra practice. I think I came in with it but did I acquire it in the womb? Perhaps. I’m sure yogis would say yes because they feel that your most important guru - whether it was a good experience or a bad experience - is your mother.
I can agree (we both laugh).
My mother was an artist and she was raised by nuns. She’s intellectual and introspective, she was quite a teacher for me because we used to have conversations other kids weren’t having. Then my grandmother used to live with us and she loved to travel and spoke fluent Spanish and Portuguese, as well as English. She took me to all her events so I’m like 5 years old at a tea party. They were highly protective of me, and even though my experiences with other children were not exactly pleasant at the time I was with a lot of adults. So I guess I’m one of those children who had to learn how to play as an adult. I’m very good at being an adult. Learning to play has been one of my adult things. When people sometimes invite me to go do such and such and in that moment I’m working I say “well I am playing” (she bursts into a laugh).
I can relate. Have you heard The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron, I started it multiple times and I always gave up because I don’t know what to do as a fun-playful activity on those artist’s dates that are supposed to feed your artist-self. Another thing I have in common with you is climbing trees and building imaginary worlds in nature. I recently found a blurry old photo of a cave near a stream where I used to go play by myself when I was little… The photo had “my home” written next to it. So funny! But yes, more often than not I felt more at home surrounded by trees.
What did you study in college?
English literature and then my master’s in creative writing. I actually taught writing as a graduate teaching assistant, I taught comparative cultures. It was interesting because this professor would get these magazines from Thailand and I used to look at them - unaware that later I would spend about a decade there - saying “who would go to Thailand and do all that stuff?” I used to tutor English second language students and being so young students often wondered whether I am a teacher or a student myself, but what I learned is I didn’t like grading other people’s work especially not until 2 or 3 in the morning. I wrote a lot of stories and got some published in a small literary press. I loved yoga so I stopped teaching and opened a yoga centre. Now I am more drawn to writing and I write more about astrology these days. At this point in my life I feel all the seeds were there and I’m coming full circle. One of my wonderful writing teachers Dr. Jim McKinley used to say “writers write” and you know put your but on the chair and stay there at the same time every day. So I’ve always known that ultimately I would end up writing but the things I was taught from a young age is you write what you know, and what do you know at - well I don’t want to discount being 20 - but 30 years later I know a lot more to write about.
It was always there. I just couldn’t see the full picture, I mean I started studying astrology at 19 and I always loved the poetry of John Donne, Yates and all of the esoteric writers that were talking about metaphysics and God, they were my people. How I got into literature is a love for spiritual life. I have to honestly say I had no idea where I was going, I just liked the story. I’ve always just followed my heart and done what I loved whether it made sense or not. Obviously teaching can be a logical step to be a writer but I was too full of life to be contained in a classroom.
I heard someone once tell me that you either live or write. And it shocked me, I wanted to live and experience life… so I almost began to believe I am not a writer because I do not sit my ass on the chair every day.
I think it’s both. We go out, we live, then we go back in. It’s a Western concept of “either or”. The answer is really “and”. If a person is a reflective one as you and I both are, then we go out and live then we go back in to internalise and reflect, and after we come out again. It’s a process of out and in, out and in.
Let’s get into this circular timeline from when you were teaching to how you got to Thailand, to now living on a farm.
I have a lot of gratitude for Covid because in a way it brought me back to myself, I was too much in the world, teaching.
In college I took modern dance and I danced at the Conservatory of Music, something that came natural to me. I knew a woman and she contacted me saying she will be teaching some yoga classes in LA and asked if I would take over her class and teach meditation. I’m just looking at her mesmerised thinking she’s crazy, because at this point I still didn’t know that yoga is in me. And I haven’t even had a class, this is before I did any yoga teacher training. I don’t know how she talked me into it, to this day she doesn’t talk to me because I did not show up. I got so terrified, I did not believe I had the credentials to teach anybody yoga. I was a modern dancer but she saw yoga in me and told me “you are yoga”.
After graduate school, I moved to Florida and had a car accident so I started rehabbing myself with the floor-work of modern dance and people wanted to do it with me. Next thing I know is I am teaching at a little fitness studio, it was a pretty big class and I called it “body alignment”. One day someone walked in and asked why don’t I call it yoga since that’s what it is… I said it is not, it’s just basic floor-work based on Martha Graham’s work. He went on telling me of a Jivamukti teacher in town from New York, Nancy LaNasa. So I went to her class and I was transfixed! They chanted, they meditated, I was in awe of her and was always in the first row. Here we are, two weeks into the class she goes “I’m going to New York for a month and I want you to take over my classes and teach for me while I’m gone”. I was scared but I remembered the previous experience and this time I loved yoga and truly had love for this teacher. I could not let her down let alone imagine she would never talk to me again. During my first class we had this mantra I was supposed to sing but I didn’t know the sanskrit so the students were so kind to me and taught me the chants. I made it through eventually becoming her sub, and later I went on to take several credentials. What I got out of this was huge personal growth and getting out of my own way and getting out of my own fear. I used to be very shy, and I remember my teacher Sharon Gannon said “well that’s just your ego, you have to put your ego out of the way thinking about being small or worry what other people might think of you, and give what you came here to give.” So I did!
Yoga and teaching put me out there, it sort of picked me. It’s like whenever I would play small in life and experience like that would happen. That is where yoga started and I was asked to teach almost from the beginning… I wasn’t even trained yet and I was teaching yoga! I would say that nothing that I have studied has been wasted, it’s all been repurposed or it’s all been part of what it’s supposed to do. I will say this, it may have appeared accidental to me but everything that happened to me from my astrology teacher - who was very renowned and I just stumbled upon her - all of it was laid out… this is the thing: I had to trust and I didn’t see the pattern. I didn’t know where it was going. For some reason I didn’t think whether it was logical or not, I just followed it. But I didn’t know where it was going. I had all these structured people around me - my dad was an accountant - and I looked at them in absolute awe wishing I could follow the formula, do what you’re supposed to do whatever that was. I just never was able to.
What about those Thailand years and Thai BodyWork?
That came from being a yoga teacher. One of the styles that I taught - very interesting! I was a Jivamukti teacher and we were known for our hands-on adjustments. During teacher training we were taught to “touch people” as part of our training was to do a full vinyasa where you don’t take your hands off the person. As a yoga studio owner, I hosted a lot of artists and then I hosted a lot of Thai BodyWork teachers and because I owned the studio I took all the classes, it was fun. My first Thai BodyWork class I was terrible at it, that’s my learning process… I’m very awkward when I’m learning something but when I finally get it I master it. If someone would’ve told me that I would end up teaching I would’ve not believed them, but it was just so natural after the hands-on adjustment to be able to offer more. I was always a healer. I became fascinated with it and had the opportunity to go to Thailand meeting the Masters and the Wise people. I was just fascinated with Asia and I just felt so at home there. They have spirit houses at every corner, they talk about their feelings with their families at dinner - they always knew when the Americans were in town, without hearing them speak they knew because they were the ones who cried in the BodyWork sessions. On every corner there was either a temple or a massage studio so to me it was kind of mind-body. I started out very intellectual and the yoga grounded me in my body so then I got to Asia where the spirituality and the physical were really interwoven.
In fact you did a full circle, now you’re coming again to your intellectual side.
It is a full circle, the Thai yoga part of my studies - and I studied medical Thai as well - it’s very interesting… I didn’t choose it, it chose me. Next thing I know is I’m teaching, next thing I know is I’m taking students to Thailand, I didn’t seek it. It just happened and I said YES!
It’s like you got invited! You got invited a second time after you said no the first, then it was an invitation after the other.
Yes, that is so interesting how you put it and I think we do have these invitations. Maybe because I’m being open and coming in that way I could see the invitation. Perhaps a lot of us get invited and we don’t hear the invitation. One thing I noticed when I do the astrological chart for people, I may point out things they don’t see such as invitations. I believe invitations are all around us and it’s about having the courage, getting out of our own way and saying yes. We can all listen and open those doors, it is not reserved to the few of us.
Being such a sensitive person, as in someone who is able to feel beyond the surface. How do you not get swayed by what is happening in the world and by the world?
I have a strong strong strong yoga practice. I mean I did not just take a weekend teacher training. Swami Satchidananda was embodied in 2000 when I did that teacher training and it was very serious at that Ashram. Also Sharon Gannon and David Life - the creators of Jivamukti yoga - were major teachers for me, . They were so self-masterful and I think that yoga develops your Prana, your chi. So your aura in your chakra system becomes very developed so that you can create your own energetic shield. And I think it kept me from being gobbled up. I remember being always very sensitive. My time with Shannon and David was very important for my personal development as a spiritual person, it was again just meant to be. That training gave me the strength to not be affected and still keep my heart open.
I would say one common thread is I can take complicated information and translate it. Which is what a teacher does. Anything that has to do with energy and frequency, even words are energy, have been my thing.
That’s why you read the stars!! (we laugh)
Which is so interesting because I started with that when I was 19 and it never went away, for different clients. People who studied with me at the studio - and of course I studied Reiki, Prana Healing and of course taught those things - somehow they found out I do charts and asked me to do it for them. So I’ve done it from the beginning. Then in 2019 my guides in meditation told me it was time to get back to that and so when you teach enough in spiritual things people don’t really care what you’re offering they just want to spend time with you.. in a local centre in Florida where I was at the time, they asked me “would you like to teach something for us?” . I said I could offer a little astrology gathering, and lo and behold a lot of people came. I was not expecting that! Suddenly my astrology tripled and this was right before the pandemic happened.
Certainly my outlook and my intellect has been shaped from all my studies of yoga. And I think the meditation gives you that one pointed focus and when you’ve meditated for decades it increases your clairvoyance so we’re able to see. And it’s available to all of us. I know that probably the biggest gift that I have to offer is being in my heart and helping other people do that, maybe the different mediums used really have been doing the same thing: whether it was in a yoga class helping someone with back bands opening their heart, or during BodyWork session helping people with the heart… even in the astrology I get a lot of “well my heart is not in this work or I’m looking for the one”. Maybe it’s just been a path of self development and helping people realise themselves as well. I feel aligned with my soul, and what more can you ask really?
After this conversation I became suddenly very aware of the NOs I have said in my life. Moreover, I became conscious of the subtle invitations of Life and began to say shyly YES more often without asking too many questions. Soon the shy YES will transform into a fully-shouted YES as myself gets more comfortable with recognising the flame that’s guiding her.
