Conversations with Rohini Walker

Today we’d like to introduce you to Rohini Walker.

Hi Rohini, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I guess I’ll start my story from when my husband and I moved to the California high desert from London, England 13 years ago – because land and place plays a huge part in what I do and who I am today. This desert started to work me and work on me, started to strip away what was false – cultural, generational and ancestral conditioning – layer by layer. It continues to, much like the snakes here move through cyclical seasons of shedding their skin.

From the moment I arrived, I started to indulge my love of writing like never before. In England, it had never been encouraged – in fact my creativity had been pretty stifled and suppressed there. Here, the surreal, otherworldly desert, all the many things the light does, and the critters of the land inspired me to start writing, like I was channelling this land, this place. And the grassroots creative community actively encouraged it and supported it something I had never experienced before. What started as a blog turned into a print publication called Luna Arcana, which I co-created with my creative partner, Martín Mancha, in collaboration with the many artists, writers, makers and creatives who were quietly living out here, before it became Insta-famous and all that that brought along with it. And of course, in collaboration with the land.

So that was one particular phase of becoming and creative expression here. Another one was that, as a result of these cycles of shedding, and the breakdowns-breakthroughs they moved me through, I deepened into my already existing spiritual and esoteric practice, and started to weave in animism, mythology, Somatic Experiencing and ecosomatics. Eventually, I started offering an integration of this work as a mentor and consultant to individuals and groups. The form it is currently in is myth-somatic mentorship – which weaves in all of the above, including Vedic psychology from my native India.

I have a podcast called Root + Rise in which I talk about all of this.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I think when you’re following your own authentic path and your own inner calling, the road is rarely smooth because no one before you has walked it in quite the way you’re walking it. It’s uncharted territory, there’s no real map to refer to except for your inner guidance. And to the human mind, that feels like a struggle – because there’s no certainty of anything. That lack of certainty definitely feels like a struggle! Orienting to your own definitions of success rather than external metrics feels like a struggle at times, because it’s so much easier to just do it like someone else tells you to. Someone who has met all those external metrics of success. But if it feels at odds with that inner GPS, then the cost is too great in the long term, because it means Self-abandonment.

So all of the struggles have had something of that flavor – of staying true to your inner creative calling and guidance and trusting that, even when the external world tells you you “should” be doing things differently.

But again, back to this land and this place and the people living here, it’s got such an outlier spirit. There are so many people here doing things their way, following their inner calling, so it doesn’t feel so isolating. I realize how rare that is, and most people don’t have access to that. So that’s the the spirit of the community I’ve created in my online membership group, also called Root + Rise, which is essentially a space for the heretic-visionaries as I call them, to walk their own paths and stay true to their own calling, and create and build according to their soul’s blueprint. It’s a space where the isolation of that process can be relieved.

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I would describe myself as multi-passionate, so it’s challenging to put myself into just one box in terms of what I do, what I specialize in and what I’m known for.

To keep things simple, I’ll say that my work with Luna Arcana, the print periodical that I am co-creator of, is what I am most known for. Alongside that, I spend a lot of my time writing – especially land based, body based prose and poetry, as well as environmental, conservation and arts writing for PBS SoCal. And alongside that is my consultancy and mentorship practice, primarily with creatives and artists. There isn’t a hierarchy in this ecosystem – they all co-exist and symbiotically feed each other!

Do you have any advice for those looking to network or find a mentor?
For me what has worked best is going with what feels right in my gut in terms of finding a mentor. Someone can come with all the certifications and accolades but if they don’t feel right to your system, don’t override that intelligence and information because chances are, they’re not right for you. And as far as networking, I prefer in-person things. It feels like there are actual connections being made.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.rohiniwalker.com/ https://lunaarcana.com/
• Instagram: @moonshinewalker
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rohini-walker-07215129/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@RohiniWalker https://www.youtube.com/@lunaarcana1948
• Other: https://theimmateria.substack.com/

Image Credits
Angela de la Agua and Martín Mancha