Laxmi Rai Tamang

Nepal

Laxmi Rai Tamang

Nepal

Laxmi Rai most commonly known as Shruti Rai is a professional healer and social worker who was born in 1989 to a humble family of mixed ethnicity in rural Nepal. After her father and her eldest brother passed away in 2021, Shruti took responsibility for several members her family (mother, two younger brothers, and one younger sister) as an independent and exemplary woman-in-charge. But her potential is not only as someone who cares for the family whenthe time calls but also as a woman who embraces leadership, responsibility, and compassion to heal the sorrows of fellow beings.

Even though she is currently pursuing a bachelor\'s in social work, it is not her academic studies or certification of any kind that is inspiring, but her integration of traditional knowledge and skills and how she puts it into work for benefitting others. She has a natural gift in healing, which she was able to refine from her grandmother, who taught her indigenous healing skills of the Kirat community through direct transmission, oral transmission, and miraculous healing displays.

When she was in her mid-20s, her family and society pressured her to pursue regular jobs, but she valued her family and cultural heritage so immensely that against all odds, she started professionally giving healing to others, gradually expanding her work to reach more and more people, including hundreds of foreigners.

Through her healing center, called "Charumaitri Healing Center," she was able to establish her career as a professional healer. From the very beginning, she has not only provided healing to others in exchange for money, but she has also provided free healing to poor and sick people in need even during financially difficult times when it would have made more sense to focus on compensation-based work. The motivation to help others was ignited in her by her involvementin spiritual practices, particularly Buddhist meditations, from a very early age.

After formally learning meditation in 2014 from a locally-famous meditation teacher, Prem Rawat, she engaged in everyday contemplation and meditation practices. In 2018, she learned Vipassana from the Goenka Vipassana Center. Next, she undertook a Sattipathana Retreat, later she started studying Abhidharma (the primary Buddhist psychology). Additionally, she joined Carumati monastery, a thousand-year-old Newari Buddhist monastery and community, in 2021, where she has studied Dhamma, provided free healing, arranged for financial donations, and distributed medicines. She is committed to providing completely, free service for life for nuns in the Carumati monastery and several other monasteries. With encouragement from her spiritual mentors, she has arranged regular donations of food, clothes, and money to people who need them across age groups.

For example, by working in tandem with Conflict Victim and Disabled Society in2022, she arranged free healing sessions, food, clothing, and money for literallyhundreds of children. She has continuously engaged in these kinds of projects

and even aims to increase her reach progressively. For a woman of a lower middle-class family in Nepal who is supposed to take care of her family, these kinds of social welfare activities are incredibly rare and inspiring.

She was exposed to native animistic Kirat culture from her father's side and Buddhist Tamang culture on her mother's side. Interestingly, her mother also embraced elements of the dominant Hindu culture of Nepal, and perhaps because of this openness and multicultural context that she grew up in, Shruti was able to integrate positive elements from three related but different religions and worldviews. In particular, following the death of her paternal grandmother -- arenowned shaman and healer in the Kirati Rai community, Shruti was called to follow the ways of healing.

She doesn't identify as one religion because she believes that fixating one's identity to one group automatically creates an us-vs-them mentality; instead, she appreciates the positive qualities in all religions and ethnic groups. Because of this, she is invited to important events and festivals by practitioners of all kinds of religions, and they appreciate her as a force of peace. Shruti is disturbed by the growth of extremism in religion and ethnicity-based politics and consciously wants to impact Nepali society by consciously participating in events across ethnicity and religion and has consequently influenced her social circle to do the same too.

All in all, just as the great Florence Nightingale or Mother Teresa were concerned about helping and healing others regardless of the creed they belonged to, the young and dynamic Shruti has the same motivation of a healer at heart. She has great potential that might as well sprout into aTeresa figure if nourished and supported by concerned communities.