I've always been drawn to the questions that don't have easy answers.
Because grief and I became acquainted early, long before I had words to understand what I was experiencing. Several losses in my younger years left me with me with questions -- questions I didn't know how to articulate until much later in life.
Why can't we stop the things we don't want to happen?
These questions would stay with me and begin to shape a life, shape a mission, shape a calling, and shape a purpose I would spend the years after learning how to serve.
An undergraduate education exploring spirituality, psychology, and the human search for meaning.
Five years studying acupuncture and Chinese medicine — an understanding of how emotion lives within us.
Yoga, meditation, Sikh ministry, and years of spiritual formation shaped a foundation of presence, discipline, and devotion.
Chaplaincy brought everything together — medicine, spirituality, emotion, meaning, life and death.
Years of listening, study, and experience became an integrative framework for understanding grief and creating relief.
Harvard Divinity School deepened my exploration of care, meaning, leadership, and the human experience.
Hospital Chaplaincy changed everything.
I entered chaplaincy thinking my years of spiritual study and clinical practice had prepared me to help so many others.
And then, early in Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE), I took a course on grief.
I expected it to make me a better chaplain.
Instead, it helped me understand myself.
For the first time, I truly understood how grief and loss had been shaping my own life. It was as if a light switch clicked on. I began to see grief differently -- not only in the losses we readily recognize, but also in the deeply quiet and hidden ways it was shaping so many of our lives.
That insight helped me locate myself, and it began to change how I accompanied others.
The bedside became one of my greatest teachers. I would sit with hundreds of people in some of life's most tender and uncertain moments — in waiting rooms, at the bedside, in the chapel, through serious illness and dying, and alongside families whose lives had suddenly changed.
Again and again, I encountered layers of grief — often through deep wailing, sometimes spoken, sometimes silent and numb; sometimes attached to death, and sometimes to the countless losses that are so often unnamed.
My work became less about having the right words and more about learning how to be present — to listen, to witness, to tend what was hurting, and to meet what arose with empathy and compassion.
For more than fifteen years, I've had the honor of accompanying thousands of individuals, families, caregivers, and communities — through loss, illness, transition, and the in-between spaces that are so often overlooked.
I've served as a hospital chaplain in high-acuity settings, supported people in some of life's most tender moments, and helped develop grief-informed programs for healthcare professionals and organizations.
Over time, I began to understand that what I was witnessing wasn't confined to hospital rooms or moments of death. Grief was everywhere. It's in our relationships, our bodies, our identities, our worksplaces, our communities, and in the lives we thought we would live.
And the questions that had followed me from childhood began to take on a larger purpose.
Through these different threads of personal experience, spiritual practice, clinical work, chaplaincy, and accompanying others through loss began to come together in a framework I call "Compassionate Grieving."
It's an integrative, embodied approach to grief that I now share through teaching, writing, speaking, and one-to-one support.
Along with being a Board Certified Chaplain, a practitioner of Chinese medicine, a teacher of meditation and yoga, and the founder of the Institute for Compassionate Grieving, I am also the author of The Tender Art of Grieving (Shambhala, September 2026).
The Tender Art of Grieving is the first book to emerge from this growing framework. It is a resource for those who have felt powerless in the face of grief, who were never given permission to grieve, or who learned that their only recourse was to avoid, deny, or suppress what they were feeling. It is the book I needed when I was a grieving child.
It offers language for experiences we often feel deeply but don't always have the words to make sense of. It brings the questions that began so personally for me into a larger conversation about how we meet loss, care for ourselves and one another, and learn to live alongside what we cannot change.
After all these years of studying grief, sitting beside it, teaching about it — and living it — I don't believe grief is a problem we're meant to solve.
I believe grief is part of what happens when human beings love, attach, hope, dream, belong, and change.
Our task isn't to become untouched by loss.
It is to become more fully human within it.
Building a more grief-literate, compassionate world.
My work today is centered around a simple conviction:
grieving is an essential life skill we all can learn.
Loss is not confined to bereavement. It enters our lives through illness, relationships, identity, caregiving, work, aging, uncertainty, shattered expectations, and the many transitions that ask us to become someone we have never been before.
Yet most of us are given very little language for understanding what grief asks of us — or how to accompany one another through it.
Through the Institute for Compassionate Grieving, my writing, teaching, speaking, and work with individuals and organizations, I am helping build a different relationship with loss: one rooted not in fixing, overcoming, or moving on from grief, but in developing our capacity to live, care, lead, and remain connected through change.
A few things that make me, me.
I start my day with meditation, prayer, and a big cup of tea.
Nature is one of my greatest teachers and reset buttons.
I love simple food, warm kitchens, and long conversations.
I'm a lifelong student — of life, people, cultures, and the soul.
Music feeds my spirit — from classical ragas to hip hop.
I'm grateful for my family, my teachers, my community, and my furry companion, Teddy.
For Media, Podcasts & Events
If you're featuring me for an event, podcast, interview, article, or program, you'll find my approved biographies, photographs, and additional media resources here.
60–75 words
125–150 words
High-resolution photography
Topics, introductions & event resources
I've always been drawn to the questions that don't have easy answers.
Because grief and I became acquainted early, long before I had words to understand what I was experiencing. Several losses in my younger years left me with me with questions -- questions I didn't know how to articulate until much later in life.
Why can't we stop the things we don't want to happen?
These questions would stay with me and begin to shape a life, shape a mission, shape a calling, and shape a purpose I would spend the years after learning how to serve.
An undergraduate education exploring spirituality, psychology, and the human search for meaning.
Five years studying acupuncture and Chinese medicine — an understanding of how emotion lives within us.
Yoga, meditation, Sikh ministry, and years of spiritual formation shaped a foundation of presence, discipline, and devotion.
Chaplaincy brought everything together — medicine, spirituality, emotion, meaning, life and death.
Years of listening, study, and experience became an integrative framework for understanding grief and creating relief.
Harvard Divinity School deepened my exploration of care, meaning, leadership, and the human experience.
Hospital Chaplaincy changed everything.
I entered chaplaincy thinking my years of spiritual study and clinical practice had prepared me to help so many others.
And then, early in Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE), I took a course on grief.
I expected it to make me a better chaplain.
Instead, it helped me understand myself.
For the first time, I truly understood how grief and loss had been shaping my own life. It was as if a light switch clicked on. I began to see grief differently -- not only in the losses we readily recognize, but also in the deeply quiet and hidden ways it was shaping so many of our lives.
That insight helped me locate myself, and it began to change how I accompanied others.
The bedside became one of my greatest teachers. I would sit with hundreds of people in some of life's most tender and uncertain moments — in waiting rooms, at the bedside, in the chapel, through serious illness and dying, and alongside families whose lives had suddenly changed.
Again and again, I encountered layers of grief — often through deep wailing, sometimes spoken, sometimes silent and numb; sometimes attached to death, and sometimes to the countless losses that are so often unnamed.
My work became less about having the right words and more about learning how to be present — to listen, to witness, to tend what was hurting, and to meet what arose with empathy and compassion.
For more than fifteen years, I've had the honor of accompanying thousands of individuals, families, caregivers, and communities — through loss, illness, transition, and the in-between spaces that are so often overlooked.
I've served as a hospital chaplain in high-acuity settings, supported people in some of life's most tender moments, and helped develop grief-informed programs for healthcare professionals and organizations.
Over time, I began to understand that what I was witnessing wasn't confined to hospital rooms or moments of death. Grief was everywhere. It's in our relationships, our bodies, our identities, our worksplaces, our communities, and in the lives we thought we would live.
And the questions that had followed me from childhood began to take on a larger purpose.
Through these different threads of personal experience, spiritual practice, clinical work, chaplaincy, and accompanying others through loss began to come together in a framework I call "Compassionate Grieving."
It's an integrative, embodied approach to grief that I now share through teaching, writing, speaking, and one-to-one support.
Along with being a Board Certified Chaplain, a practitioner of Chinese medicine, a teacher of meditation and yoga, and the founder of the Institute for Compassionate Grieving, I am also the author of The Tender Art of Grieving (Shambhala, September 2026).
The Tender Art of Grieving is the first book to emerge from this growing framework. It is a resource for those who have felt powerless in the face of grief, who were never given permission to grieve, or who learned that their only recourse was to avoid, deny, or suppress what they were feeling. It is the book I needed when I was a grieving child.
It offers language for experiences we often feel deeply but don't always have the words to make sense of. It brings the questions that began so personally for me into a larger conversation about how we meet loss, care for ourselves and one another, and learn to live alongside what we cannot change.
After all these years of studying grief, sitting beside it, teaching about it — and living it — I don't believe grief is a problem we're meant to solve.
I believe grief is part of what happens when human beings love, attach, hope, dream, belong, and change.
Our task isn't to become untouched by loss.
It is to become more fully human within it.
Building a more grief-literate, compassionate world.
My work today is centered around a simple conviction:
grief literacy is a human skill.
Loss is not confined to bereavement. It enters our lives through illness, relationships, identity, caregiving, work, aging, uncertainty, shattered expectations, and the many transitions that ask us to become someone we have never been before.
Yet most of us are given very little language for understanding what grief asks of us — or how to accompany one another through it.
Through the Institute for Compassionate Grieving, my writing, teaching, speaking, and work with individuals and organizations, I am helping build a different relationship with loss: one rooted not in fixing, overcoming, or moving on from grief, but in developing our capacity to live, care, lead, and remain connected through change.
A few things that make me, me.
I start my day with meditation, prayer, and a big cup of tea.
Nature is one of my greatest teachers and reset buttons.
I love simple food, warm kitchens, and long conversations.
I'm a lifelong student — of life, people, cultures, and the soul.
Music feeds my spirit — from classical ragas to hip hop.
I'm grateful for my family, my teachers, my community, and my furry companion, Teddy.
For Podcasts, Interviews & Media
AmarAtma is a warm, unhurried guest on grief, caregiving, and what it means to stay human through loss. Interview requests are welcome and simple to arrange.
Everything you need to introduce him is here — approved biographies, photographs, and speaker resources.
60–75 words
125–150 words
High-resolution photography
Topics, introductions & event resources
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The Tender Art of Grieving is a compassionate guide for navigating loss and life’s great changes. Through embodied practices, reflection, and grief-informed wisdom, AmarAtma offers a gentler way to meet what hurts, release what no longer needs to be carried, and find peace alongside what cannot be changed.
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