Guest Profile

Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati Ph.D.

Today, Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati (Sadhviji) is one of the preeminent female spiritual leaders of our time and a renowned writer, speaker, and social activist. But few know how Sadhviji reached her spiritual awakening and found inner peace. 

Born to an upper middle-class Jewish family and raised among the glitterati of Hollywood, the veneer of Sadhviji’s glamorous upbringing hid dark secrets about sexual abuse, depression, anxiety and bulimia. As expected of her, she excelled in her undergraduate studies at Stanford University and had worked most of her way through a Ph.D. program in psychology when, in the summer of 1996, her life unexpectedly changed forever. 

SADHVI BHAGAWATI SARASWATI serves as on the United Nations Advisory Council on Religion and on the steering committees of the International Partnership for Religion and Sustainable Development (PaRD) and the Moral Imperative to End Extreme Poverty, a campaign by the United Nations and World Bank. She is also the Secretary-General of the Global Interfaith WASH Alliance, an international interfaith organization dedicated to clean water, sanitation, and hygiene; president of Divine Shakti Foundation, a foundation that runs free schools, vocational training programs, and empowerment programs; and director of the world-famous International Yoga Festival at Parmarth Niketan Ashram, Rishikesh—which has been covered in Time, CNN, the New York Times and other prestigious publications and has been noted by both the Prime Minister and Vice President of India. Sadhvi has lived for the past 25 years at the Parmarth Niketan ashram in Rishikesh, India, where she oversees a variety of humanitarian projects, teaches meditation, lectures, writes, counsels individuals and families and serves as a unique female voice of spiritual leadership throughout India and the world.