Today we’d like to introduce you to Mokshajyoti Chumki.
Hi Mokshajyoti, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I am Mokshajyoti, and my story began in a small town in northeastern India. I come from a Bengali family, and my mother tongue is Bengali, though I also grew up speaking the Sylheti dialect. My childhood was simple. We lived in modest apartments, often around 700–850 square feet, and I grew up without many of the conveniences that are considered normal today. There were years without refrigerators, microwaves, or even fans, and frequent power outages. Some of my childhood was spent in remote mountain regions where winters were warmed only by fire, while summers brought intense heat while monsoons saw big flooding and landslides where we use to lose connection & connectivity with the outside world. I didn’t own a cellphone until college or a laptop until graduate school.
But still there was always a sense of celebration in life. In India, we celebrate every single occasion in life, there are so many festivals, and incredible food. When looking back, I feel incredibly grateful for that upbringing. My life wasn’t filled with material things, but it was filled with simple joys of life, festivals, community, amazing food, creativity, curiosity, friendships, and a deep sense of contentment. I spent my Sundays drawing, writing poetry, singing, dancing outdoors, and playing with neighborhood children. At the age of six, I began training in Hindustani classical music, a practice that continues to shape everything I create today. Also, I feel incredibly grateful that as part of my cultural upbringing I was early introduced to yoga, meditation and various wisdom teachings and practices which keep shaping me to who I am today.
I was equally fascinated by science. Physics became one of my favorite subjects, and throughout school I excelled both academically and musically. During my late teens, I seriously considered pursuing music professionally. However, coming from a developing country where financial stability was a significant concern, I was encouraged to continue on the academic path where I was already thriving. While it wasn’t an easy decision, I chose to pursue science without ever letting go of music.
I earned my bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Physics from India before moving to the United States to pursue my PhD. Those years transformed me. It was a wild ride, there were so many ups and downs, & challenges on the way. Alongside research, I taught undergraduate students, collaborated with outstanding researchers, got chance to do roadtrips, and discovered a deep appreciation for the diversity, openness, natural beauty of the United States and fell in love with the land & the people.
After my PhD, I worked as a research and development engineer in the tech industry and eventually achieved what many people dream of—a six-figure salary and financial independence. From the outside, everything looked successful.
Internally, though, I was struggling.
The constant pressure to perform, long working hours, chronic stress, anxiety, and panic attacks slowly caught up with me. I found myself asking questions that I couldn’t ignore anymore: What is all of this for? If I have financial success but no health, time, or peace, what am I really building? Is life simply about surviving?
Those questions became the beginning of another journey.
Over the next several years, I immersed myself in meditation, yoga, Vedic philosophy, healing practices, somatic practices, nervous system regulation, deepening my connection with voice and healing work. I worked with mentors, coaches, and teachers while slowly uncovering parts of myself that had been buried beneath years of striving. One of my biggest realizations was that somewhere along the way, I had disconnected from my own voice, and my emotions—not just my singing voice, but my authentic expression and creativity.
Eventually, I made what felt like the biggest leap of my life. I left my engineering career and founded Moss & Moksha.
Today, I bring together the worlds that once felt separate—science, spirituality, music, creativity, and nervous system healing. I work as a mentor, cultural artist, and creator of transformational experiences that help people reconnect with themselves through voice, sound, music, mantra, somatic practices, nature, and mindful rest.
My work includes immersive retreats, sound baths, community singing, cultural performances, workshops, and one-on-one mentorship. In my last two years, I feel incredibly grateful that my work and contributions have been received so well by the community. I was selected amongst Willamette Weekly’s best sound bath experiences last year. I have gotten chance to contribute through my work to the yoga and healing communities, organizations, assisted living homes, small businesses and festivals and have shared my work across communities in Europe, US & India. As I have been walking this path, I have developed such a deep appreciation for humanity, that it humbles me and everyday I feel called to support this world with the gifts that I was born with and the journey keeps evolving. Alongwith everyone, At this stage of my life, I am now more and more feeling called in supporting women and leaders, entrepreneurs, corporates and high-achieving individuals who have spent much of their lives doing, achieving, and performing.
Growing up as a woman of color from a densely populated, developing country, I witnessed firsthand how deeply many of us are conditioned to equate our worth with productivity. We are taught to work harder, achieve more, and keep going—but very rarely are we taught how to rest, how to listen to ourselves, or how to process our emotions in healthy ways.
That has become the heart of my work.
In a world that constantly demands our attention through screens, endless stimulation, and relentless productivity, I want to create spaces where people can simply pause. Where they can remember their voice, reconnect with their bodies, rediscover joy, and experience that rest is not a luxury—it is an essential part of being fully alive.
As a creative and a curator of transformational experiences, I am extremely excited about something that I am curating this September 25-27, Bhakti Rising-A Yoga, Meditation, Kirtan & Music festival at Scholls Valley Lodge, Hillsboro, where I am bringing together some incredible yoga practitioners and musicians to co-create an intentional weekend of rest, joy, community connection and celebration of culture. I am hoping to get to see some of our readers there!
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Definitely not. Looking back, every meaningful chapter of my life has come with its own challenges.
Growing up in India, one of my earliest struggles was choosing between my love for music and a more conventional career path. I wanted to study music professionally, but like many families in developing countries, financial security was an important consideration. Since I was excelling in science and mathematics, I chose the academic route while quietly carrying my passion for music alongside it.
Moving to the United States for my PhD was another transformative challenge. Being an international student meant adapting to a new culture while navigating the pressures of research, teaching, funding, health insurance, and the uncertainty that many immigrants experience. It taught me resilience, humility, and how to build a life far away from my family. Like many graduate students, there were moments of self-doubt, setbacks in research, visa uncertainties, and learning how to create a sense of home in a completely new country.
Ironically, one of my biggest struggles came after I had achieved what I thought success looked like. I had earned my doctorate, landed a six-figure engineering career, and was financially independent. From the outside, everything looked successful. Yet internally I was overwhelmed. The constant pressure to perform, chronic stress, anxiety, and burnout eventually forced me to ask whether I was living a life that truly felt meaningful.
Leaving a stable career to pursue work that was deeply aligned with my heart was both terrifying and liberating. I walked away from financial security without the safety net of family support, knowing I was starting over from scratch. As a first-generation immigrant and a woman of color in my early thirties, it felt like I was moving against many of the expectations I had grown up with. At a stage in life when many people around me were settling into established careers or beginning families, I was choosing uncertainty, entrepreneurship, and a path that doesn’t always promise financial stability. I knew I would likely earn far less than I had as an engineer, but I also knew that if I had to live true to myself in alignment with my gifts and my values, I had to be willing to redefine what success meant. There were many moments when I questioned whether I was making the right decision.
Starting a single-owner small business has brought an entirely different set of challenges. As a first-generation immigrant entrepreneur, artist, and facilitator, I had to learn marketing, sales, event production, branding, accounting, fundraising, community building, and every other aspect of running a business—skills that were completely outside my engineering background and I am still learning it. As a small business single person owner who is wearing all the hats, its all new and I fail all so many times at keeping up with it all!
There have been events with disappointing attendance, financial uncertainty, moments of self-doubt, and the ongoing challenge of balancing creativity with building a sustainable livelihood. Building trust and community takes time, and I’ve had to learn patience in ways I never expected.
Perhaps the biggest lesson has been realizing that growth is rarely linear. I’m still uncovering so many layers of myself—each one both exciting and, at times, terrifying. There are seasons of momentum and seasons of uncertainty. I’ve learned to measure success less by external achievements and more by whether I’m living in alignment with my values, creating work that genuinely serves people, and waking up feeling connected to what I do.
Today, I don’t see those struggles as detours anymore—they were the path. They shaped the compassion I bring to my work. Because I’ve experienced burnout, anxiety, perfectionism, and the relentless pressure to constantly achieve, I have seen firsthand what it feels like to become disconnected from your own voice, creativity, and sense of self. That experience allows me to deeply understand what many of my clients are going through. My greatest challenges have ultimately become the foundation of the work I now feel called to do: helping people slow down, reconnect with themselves, rediscover their voice, and remember that rest, presence, creativity, and genuine human connection are not luxuries—they are essential parts of a meaningful life.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I often describe myself as an artist, mentor, and creator of intentional spaces. My work lives at the intersection of sacred sound, music, voice, somatic practices, nature, culture, and community. Whether I’m performing, facilitating a retreat, mentoring someone one-on-one, guiding a meditation, offering a sound bath, or bringing people together in collective singing, my intention is always the same: to help people reconnect—to themselves, to one another, and to the wisdom of presence and rest.
Alongside creating musical and community experiences, I mentor individuals one-on-one. Many of the people I work with are leaders, entrepreneurs, and high-achieving professionals who have forgotten how to slow down, regulate their nervous systems, and simply be. Others come to reconnect with their voice, creativity, confidence, or cultural roots. Rather than following a single modality, I weave together nervous system regulation, somatic practices, sacred sound, voice, mindfulness, and nature-based practices to meet each person where they are. I don’t see these as separate disciplines but as different pathways that help people come home to themselves.
My roots are in India and in the traditions of Hindustani classical music and Vedic spiritual practices. Those traditions continue to shape my work, but so do my background in engineering, my study of trauma-informed approaches, and my lifelong love for the natural world. I believe music is more than entertainment, and healing is more than a service. Both are invitations to remember who we are beneath the noise, speed, and constant stimulation of modern life.
What I’m most proud of isn’t a single achievement—it’s having the courage to leave a successful engineering career to follow work that felt deeply meaningful, even when there was no roadmap. Since then, I’ve built a growing community, mentored individuals, facilitated retreats, hosted hundreds of people through concerts, sound journeys, and community gatherings, begun releasing my own original music, and am now bringing one of my longtime dreams to life through Bhakti Rising—an intentionally curated gathering that brings together yoga, meditation, sacred music, culture, and community. I am also expanding my work into leadership and organizational settings, supporting teams, and professionals in cultivating greater presence, resilience, and emotional well-being.
What sets my work apart is that I don’t simply offer classes, concerts, or retreats. I create intentional spaces where ancient wisdom meets modern understanding, where artistry meets nervous system regulation, and where stillness and celebration can exist side by side. Also, everything I offer isn’t just a set of techniques or a practices, it all comes from a space of my experiential learning. Whether someone joins me for a concert, mentoring, healing session, retreat, or a community gathering, my hope is that they leave not only feeling rested or inspired, but more deeply connected—to themselves, and to one another.
Any advice for finding a mentor or networking in general?
One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned is that mentorship can’t really be forced. Mentors appear when you are seeking genuinely, they are people who inspire you in the areas that you seek growth. One has to remain open to receiving and learning. Sometimes, these may not be people who declare themselves as mentors but if you feel inspired by them, reach out to them and most of the times, they are open and willing to mentor you, if you approach with genuine humility.
I’ve always had mentors in my life, and I continue to have multiple mentors today. I don’t believe one person can guide every aspect of your journey. Different mentors have supported me in different areas—music, spirituality, business, leadership, personal growth, and the art of being human. I continue to invest in learning because I believe there is always another perspective to discover and another layer of growth to uncover.
I’ve also realized that networking, at its best, is simply an exchange of friendship and shared interests. I don’t generally go to networking events because reciprocity, authenticity, and meaningful connection matter far more to me than simply sharing my business card. I really value connection and friendship. I envision a world and society where people genuinely care for each other. To me, Financial exchange and growth is needed for keeping our lives afloat and for sustaining but that shouldn’t be the end goal of networking but mutual support in times of need. The world can only be better with collaboration, not competition. Growth through this approach may be slower, but I’d rather invite aligned people into my life than collect business cards.
Most of the meaningful opportunities in my life have come through sharing my own gifts while remaining open to receiving the gifts, wisdom, and generosity of others. Whether through music, volunteering, collaboration, or simply showing up wholeheartedly, I’ve found that genuine relationships naturally lead to mentorship, friendship, creative partnerships, and opportunities I could never have planned for. Humility, seeing the beauty in each human and believing in abundance and collaborative mindset brings the best opportunities.
If I could offer one piece of advice, it would be this: stay curious, stay humble, and remain a lifelong student. Focus less on what someone can do for you and more on how you can contribute, learn, and build a relationship rooted in trust and mutual respect. Remember to rest, play and have fun! The right mentors and opportunities may not appear overnight, but when your intention is sincere, they have a remarkable way of finding you.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.mossandmoksha.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mossandmoksha/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mokshajyoti-chumki/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@mossandmoksha
