This webinar is for people interested in myths and stories—both universal and their own—and looking at how these are intertwined. Myths speak to our personal, individual experiences across time. Through guided exercises, we will weave our unique life stories, memories, and family histories with the power of myth, infusing our individual stories with universal themes and looking at the power that mythmaking has for healing and change. We will see myths and our own stories in different light as a result of this experience.

 

The webinar facilitators are Aruna Gopakumar and Samhita Arni.

 

Aruna is a Teaching and Supervising Transactional Analyst and a psychodrama practitioner. Her TedX talk “Psychotherapy, the New Normal” focuses on the importance of normalizing therapy. Her book And How Do You Feel About That, coauthored with Yashodhara Lal (Penguin) consists of 50 stories from the therapy room. Aruna is the current president of the South Asian Association of Transactional Analysis (SAATA) and is the founder of the 25-year-old, Bangalore-based leadership development organization Navgati.

 

Samhita has been passionate about retelling mythology in current cultural contexts ever since she was a child. As an adult, she has been engaged in exploring the critical ways in which women participate and are excluded from both mythological and historical narratives. Samhita has written four books, starting at the age of 11 with The Mahabharata—A Child’s View, which has been published in more than seven languages and has sold over 60,000 copies. Sita’s Ramayana, her second book (in collaboration with artist Moyna Chitrakar), was a New York Times bestseller and is in its sixth reprinting. The Missing Queen is a mythological thriller based on the Ramayana, and her latest book—The Prince—is a work of historical fiction set in the time of the Sangam era. It won the 2020 Neev Book Award.