Faculty – Community Education Division (Hindu Studies)
Swamini Brahmaprajnananda Saraswati, Ph.D., is a traditional and contemporary teacher of Advaita Vedanta and a Hindu monk. She completed an intensive 3.5-year course in Vedanta and Sanskrit in 2013 at Arsha Vidya Gurukulam in Coimbatore and Rishikesh under the guidance of Pujya Swami Dayananda Saraswati. Prior to that, for more than 12 years, she studied Vedanta with Swami Brahmavidananda in Mumbai while balancing work commitments. Swamini Ji earned her M.A in Clinical Psychology in 1996 and M.Phil in Psychology (2001), both from SNDT University Mumbai, and her Ph.D. in Philosophy in 2023 at Mumbai University.
Dedicated to the Advaita Vedanta tradition, Swamini Brahmaprajnananda Saraswati conducts immersive Vedanta courses on the Bhagavad Gita, Upanishads, and Prakarana Granthas, both in Mumbai and abroad. With qualifications in psychology, her teaching style seamlessly blends Vedanta with self-mastery, meaning, and connection, leading to self-discovery. She hosts a weekly podcast, ‘Vedanta – The River of Wisdom,’ serving as a bridge to Vedanta.
Swamini Ji has been at the forefront of making Vedanta teachings accessible through various platforms. She was the first Hindu monk to run an online course on ‘How to have harmonious relationships’ on Udemy, a global online learning platform. Her public videos cover a wide range of topics, including Vedanta teachings, meanings of stotrams, dialogues with other teachers, and animation-based videos. In 2018, she co-founded the first Vedic Wisdom festival in Mumbai with Swami Brahmavidananda. Swamini Ji conceptualized and mentors a program for children called SHINE (Spiritual Heritage of India for Next Generation Empowerment) to impart the values of Sanatana Dharma and has conducted leadership programs for the youth.
Swamini Brahmaprajnananda Saraswati has presented many papers at conferences on Indian psychology and Vedanta. Before embarking on her monastic journey, she had a successful fifteen-year career, leading various projects and culminating in her role as Country Director of India for Railway Children, UK—an international organization focused on the rehabilitation of street children. Her work positively impacted the lives of 15,000 street children annually. In recognition of her work, the Maharashtra state government invited her to be on the jury of the Juvenile Justice Board for the rehabilitation of child offenders. Additionally, Swamini taught the paper of ‘Counselling and therapy’ to the Masters students as a visiting faculty with SNDT University, Mumbai from 2003 until 2019.
