Sharon Li, Contributing Photographer

Shruti Parthasarathy ’24 has been participating in the ancient Indian dance and art form of Bharatnatyam since she was five years old. Over the last three years, she has combined her love for dance with mindfulness through her organization, Mindful Kala.  

Mindful Kala offers workshops and longer intensive workshops through the Good Life Center at Yale. Parthasarathy is also in the process of developing an interactive app to allow students of all ages to work through activities and informational slides to learn about Bharatanatyam and mindfulness.  

“I established Mindful Kala as a way to put a spotlight on a historical, underrepresented art form through the lens of mindfulness and social well-being,” Parthasarathy said. “Mindful Kala aims to empower teens through easily accessible and interactive educational and support-based activities — specifically through Indian dance — as a means to elevate and heighten well-being and foster intercultural sensitivity.”  

Parthasarathy first started Mindful Kala at her high school in Middleton, WI, where she led workshops that exposed students to Bharatnatyam and used the art form to better understand cultural history and principles of mindfulness. 

According to Parthasarathy, this initial study worked well with students, leading her to turn the project into a larger study on increasing cultural anti-bias. She created an experiment with 46 freshmen at her high school and had them go through an 8-week intensive program of learning about Bharatnatyam and its connections with mindfulness. 

The findings of her study were later published in the Advances in Global Health and Medicine Journal.

“We saw a stark increase in measures of anti-bias within the students who were in the experiment, and when our study was published it got picked up by a journal,” Parthasarathy said. “I was quite honored to later present our findings at the Academic Consortium of Medicine which was then picked up by state and national news.” 

Once Parthasarathy came to Yale, she continued to grow the organization and became involved with the Good Life Center. Through collaboration with various cultural organizations and other clubs at Yale, Mindful Kala has held virtual and in-person workshops with more than 600 students over the past two years.  

With the help of professor of psychology Laurie Santos, Mindful Kala has also recently finished a randomized control trial of 50 undergraduate and graduate students at Yale who participated in a four-week Mindful Kala intensive course meant to increase well-being and mindfulness. 

Parthasarathy explained that this study, which is now in its analysis phase, is looking to see if there is a statistically significant increase in anti-bias among the students who participated in the four-week intensive Mindful Kala program. 

Parthasarathy’s colleague Suba Ramesh ’24 explained that Mindful Kala is also working to create a course app that could further expand the program’s reach. 

“Mindful Kala has been so effective through Shruti’s studies and bringing mindfulness to campuses,” Ramesh said. “So we think it’s awesome to bring the app to a bunch of people throughout the country and the world.” 

According to Parthasarathy, the Mindful Kala web app will be offered as a “campus initiative program from the Yale Student Mental Health Association,” and Mindful Kala is working to have the app completely functional by early 2022. 

Zeenat Vastrad, one of the professional advisors for Mindful Kala, explained that the app has been an “incredible learning experience” for the group. 

“We have worked hard to ensure that this app will be incredibly user friendly for kids of all ages,” Vastrad said. “Shruti and the rest of the team have been working really hard to create an app that will help expose people of all backgrounds to an amazing ancient Indian art form as well as important principles of mindfulness which we all need.” 

While the development of the app is currently Mindful Kala’s main project, Parthasarathy also laid out a future goal of creating a Mindful Kala children’s book which younger students can use to learn more about Bharatanatyam and mindfulness. 

Yale community members can register for weekly Mindful Kala meetings at the Good Life Center through Yale Connect.

Correction, Oct. 31: This article originally said that a four-week study conducted at Yale found a correlation between anti-bias and the Mindful Kala program. In reality, the study is still in its analysis phase and has yet to reach a conclusion. The article has since been updated.

YASH ROY
Yash Roy covered City Hall and State Politics for the News. He also served as a Production & Design editor, and Diversity, Equity & Inclusion chair for the News. Originally from Princeton, New Jersey, he is a '25 in Timothy Dwight College majoring in Global Affairs.