Hema Vyas, The Omni-Preneurial Psychologist™ Speaker, Mentor, Author of The Silent Heartache of High-Achievers (2023), Founder of Haven & Non-Executive Director
Hema Vyas is a multi-award-winning corporate wellness mentor and trailblazer in heart intelligence. Her refined intuitive skills and innate ability to read heart energy have earned her the title of a modern-day seer.
As The Omnipreneurial Psychologist™ speaker, she teaches startups, corporations, and a wide range of global audiences how to harness the power and potential of the heart.
Hema has worked with high-profile clients and businesses such as Google, EY, Bamford and Soho House. Her philosophy is that it takes more than intelligence to succeed. It takes heart intelligence. And that to access the full potential and power of our hearts, we need to be able to go there with our heartache and disappointments.
She shares how connecting to the power of the heart - as individuals and as businesses - is essential to expanding creativity, well-being, innovation, inclusivity and sustainability to achieve long-term success.
“Everything is always unfolding for our highest good. Never judge your immediate experience, even if it is painful or difficult; instead, dig deep and discover the deeper reason, deeper significance, and deeper meaning.”
Hema Vyas
Hema has played an instrumental role in the growth of diverse companies as a mentor and consultant, sometimes as a discreet advisor and often addressing large audiences, public speaking or in workshops and conferences.
Recently she has been described by Positive Life magazine as “the acclaimed speaker, psychologist and heart consciousness activator.” Whatever the topic, her talks are known for bringing about pivotal and sustained shifts in thinking, feeling and action that can alter the course of a day or, more often, a lifetime.
More recently, Hema has spoken at more than 50 live and virtual events on topics such as How Truth Cuts Through Fear, Aligning Heart, Mind And Body Intelligence In Our Leadership Approach, and What’s Heart Got To Do With It? The Role Of The Heart Intelligence In Leadership And Life.
Her guided meditations are known for their powerful and positive influence and have been downloaded over thirty thousand times.
What do you like about your current role?
What I love about my role is witnessing the visceral shifts in perspective that can occur when people realise they have the ability to create something they had never even considered before. This can happen in a talk, workshop, mentoring session, or retreat setting.
With a collaborative and co-creative approach that speaks to the moment, each experience is unique. When we live in a state of constant possibility, we create a positive ripple effect that goes out throughout the world. Heart-centred leadership that considers the whole becomes second nature, as does add value to others and our environments through our decisions and the energetic frequency we emit.
What are your favourite books?
Conversations with God, Neale Donald Walsch volume 1 captures the non-judgemental, loving, not-afraid-to-challenge, intelligent voice of God, I imagine. There is a line that resonates with many of my beliefs “Unless we go within, we go without”. With clients as diverse as CEOs to creatives, I share and see how inner work and practices like meditation are powerful catalysts for growth and evolution.
Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts made me laugh out loud and captured the essence of India well. I run leadership programs and retreats there and am endlessly charmed by the people and nurturing environment, as well as being at times challenged and perplexed. India has a spirit of her own. As anyone who has travelled there knows, it’s not always plain sailing!
Candace Pert’s The Molecules of Emotion I found to be informative and helpful in my practice - as well as validating. As a university student in the late 1980s, I could not see why the importance of the heart was not discussed in relation to human psychology. I intuitively felt that so much was being overlooked by focusing just on the mind's capabilities. I was even marked down because the dominant paradigm at the time was that the "mind rules." Candace was a pioneer who began to illustrate the connection between mind and body when it came to emotions and, with her research, challenged institutions to value more than cerebral intelligence.
Deepak Chopra’s The Path to Love again echoes my philosophy that finding love is not an external job but rather an inner journey. It’s written so poetically. One of the most beautifully written books on the topic.
The list could be endless!
Who do you most admire and why?
Vandana Shiva, for her clarity, the quality of her research and ability to stand her ground amidst dominant thoughts and beliefs. She speaks with such authority when bringing up quite controversial ideas.
The Indian spiritual leader Amma embodies the power of leading with ‘heart and mind’. She and her team have established the prolific NGO, Embracing The World, which since 2004 has given over $75m in fund relief to about forty countries. She inspires loyalty through love.
I also admire the work of Dr Joe Dispenza. We share a passion for and belief in the transformative power of meditation and share how for too long, we have been limited in understanding our true capacity and potential to heal ourselves and achieve extraordinary things.
What is the best advice you have ever received?
My mother’s motto was that whatever happens is for the best.
Everything is always unfolding for our highest good. Never judge your immediate experience, even if it is painful or difficult; instead, dig deep and discover the deeper reason, deeper significance, and deeper meaning.
What motivates or inspires you?
I’m passionate about evolution and transformation, bringing about change in the world in order to create a better future, one that may require constant adjustment and refinement; however, we can only act on what we have today.
What inspires me is knowing that even one person can make a difference. Even if I only change one person's mind today and, in that moment, open up a new sense of possibility, I'm doing some good in the world, and that has a ripple effect because each person, unbeknownst to them, impacts 100 other people, who in turn impact 100 other people, and so on.
The archetypal energies of the gods and goddesses, for instance, the Hindu Gods and Goddesses, who represent the pinnacle of masculine and feminine, also inspire me. We are all composed of masculine and feminine energies, regardless of gender.
Everyone has the capacity to access their own and other people's creative and co-creative power, penetrate or destroy density or darkness, and attune to truth, beauty, and consciousness.
I'd like to see more heart-centred workplaces, communities, and, ultimately, the world, as well as a better legacy for today's and tomorrow's children. For me, this is true north.
What would you like to highlight and share with our audience?
It's my belief that what electricity was to the last, heart energy will be to this century. We each have access to the finely-tuned instrument that is the heart. When we do the necessary work to tune it and really have the courage to go there with our silent heartaches as well as aspirations, it becomes an instrument of creative power and limitless possibility.
Both ancient wisdom and modern science show us that the heart is more than just a vital organ: it is an intelligent field of energy in constant communication with our minds, bodies, other people and our environments. The heart’s energy field is even linked to information not bound by time and space, providing a foundation for deeper knowingness. The heart is simply orchestrating the whole of our existence.
I love inviting people to discover how to harness their emotions for connection and heart energy expansion rather than letting them control us. As an example, if we are angry, we are more likely to be reactive and have less discernment. When we view emotions as a call to explore a deeper truth at the core, a pattern of thoughts, beliefs, or even unconscious ancestral memories that may be holding us back in some way but that can be released with awareness, a more expansive state is created. In this way, emotions can guide us beyond where we've been, personally or culturally and instead become the roadmap for where we have the potential to go.