Soul Force for the 21st Century
Hello, I’m Anu. 👋🏽
I’m a speaker, author, scholar, and entrepreneur working at the intersection of technology, neuroscience, leadership development, contemplative practice, and social entrepreneurship. My book, Breaking Bias, with a foreword by the Dalai Lama, is published by Hay House.
Trained as a lawyer and social scientist at NYU and Cambridge, I am also a certified yoga and meditation teacher—and a lifelong student of consciousness and Spirit, rooted in Buddhist and Hindu-Christian Self Realization Fellowship traditions. 🧘🏽♂️
Since 2014, through my social enterprise Be More with Anu, I’ve trained over 100,000 professionals—doctors, lawyers, teachers, therapists, faith leaders, and more—in mindfulness-based skills to break bias and bridge divides. My work has been featured widely including on the TED stage, the Oprah Conversation, Harvard Business Review, and Spirituality & Health.
With the growing backlash against DEI, I took 2025 to step back and reflect. I discovered that my deepest motivation was always to help deliver DEI’s originating intention in the 1970s: apply innovation and entrepreneurial mechanisms to help professionals and organizations transition from eras of legalized exclusion toward genuine collaboration, trust, inclusion, and belonging for all.
That commitment remains. At the same time, I’m less interested in defending a label and more curious about a deeper question: What do these times require of us now?
While I don’t pretend to have all the answers, I know I have much to share—for disoriented DEI practitioners and supporters, burned-out leaders and social entrepreneurs, futurists seeking innovations, bridge-builders, peacemakers, and spiritually inclined activists—about how to move through this moment with greater ease, wisdom, and compassion.
If that’s you, I’d love for you to join me. This Substack is where I explore belonging beyond DEI, by going deeper into what birthed the label: Soul Force. ✨
Why Soul Force?
Coined by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., soul force refers to the spiritual power to transform physical, and in our century, algorithmic, violence without mirroring it. Adapted from Mahatma Gandhi’s satyagraha, soul force draws on inner strength, integrity, and compassion to transform hearts and systems alike in the direction of beloved communities. 🕊️
Today, heightened political polarization, militarism, widening mental-health crises, climate breakdown, and unregulated AI can feel overwhelming and disconnected. I see them as deeply interconnected expressions of a single underlying condition: a mindset of separation—from ourselves, one another, and the living world.
Here, I weave modern science and contemporary scholarship with ancient wisdom teachings from the Buddha, Jesus, Krishna, and many others—offering reflections and practices to cultivate the soul force needed to meet the challenges of the 21st century.
You’ll find essays and somatically informed practices that invite us to respond rather than react, to choose wisdom over ignorance, compassion over hatred, and hope over despair.
Subscriptions & Community 🤍
This work is sustained by my beloved community (you).
Recent political shifts have led to significant loss of institutional work, and your support here allows me to continue offering these teachings in a more independent, relational, and accessible way.
Free subscribers receive regular essays, reflections, and meditations
Paid subscribers additionally receive access to a private chat space with me, a growing content library with meditations and interviews with practitioners, invitations to special events, discounts on courses and offerings, and deeper long-form teachings
Your Invitation 🌱
Soul Force for the 21st Century is your invitation to reclaim your humanity – so that together we can imagine and build futures where all beings belong in the fullness of their diversity.
I’m grateful you’re here. I hope you’ll stay and walk this path with me.
Much ease and love your way,
Anu
