Tenaz Sunawala Puts “Self” Back in Self-Empowerment

HOUSTON: Tenaz Sunavala’s debut book “The Path to Self-Empowerment- My Meditations with Grandma” was launched on October 31 at the Sugar Creek Country Club in Sugar Land, TX  The event featured brief speeches by the author and her close collaborators, delicious finger foods, followed by short demonstration of meditation and book-signing sessions.  Approximately 100 guests attended.

The book describes her life-journey of self-discovery from childhood to the present, and transition from mental anguish to a state of peace and contentment.  It is a slim volume at 130 pages of text, but packed with brutal honesty about her personal struggles. She classifies the four key steps to achieve Self-Empowerment through meditation as:

  • Acceptance

  • Gratitude

  • Forgiveness

  • Self-Love

Although the book is targeted mainly for women, the insights described are relevant to anyone – male, female, or otherwise – who has experienced emotional trauma in their past and continues to suffer from its ill-effects. Some important takeaways that I personally got from attending this event and reading the book are:

  1. The secret to your happiness lies within you, in your cultural Mind-set, not in external material possessions or perception of your “success” by others.

  2. Meditation is an effective technique to connect your mind with your soul, and reveals answers for your life going forward.  Unfortunately, it has been and continues to be largely neglected in modern Western culture.  One chapter describes the concept of 7 “chakras”, centered at different physical locations in one’s body, which can be a useful aid.

  3. Forgiveness is a critical step in achieving inner peace.  Merely mouthing the words “Sorry” means nothing unless the perpetrator is motivated by recognition of the wrongs done, acceptance of responsibility and genuine remorse for his/her actions, and a personal commitment to change.

  4. Every person needs to have a purpose in life that extends beyond immediate selfish pleasure and ego-gratification – it could be community welfare, socio-economic justice, rescuing abused animals, preventing environmental pollution/degradation, creating a lasting legacy by sharing useful knowledge in the form of books, etc.  In Tenaz’s case, her purpose now is promoting “Healing through Story-Telling”.

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Tenaz grew up in Silver Spring, MD, with her parents, brother, and grandparents. She comes from a privileged socio-economic background by the commonly accepted standards of a social system that values individual materialistic “success” above community well-being.  She started out pursuing the American dream – good K-12 schools, college education, marriage, two children of her own, beautiful house, nice cars, foreign travel, career success in the corporate world, a large friends circle, parties, and so on, but soon realized that these things were not leading to happiness.  Instead, she felt a lot of stress and emotional turmoil, which led her to seek a different path towards emotional well-being through Self-Empowerment.  This is her story.

In her new avatar, Tenaz has become an entrepreneur, leading meditation groups with over 300 members spread out over 3 continents – North America, Europe, and Asia.  She calls her group ‘Breath of Life’. Her passions are to guide, empower, heal and restore spirituality to her clients for a fuller, richer, contented, and more purposeful life.

She is an active member of the United Nations Association of the USA (UNA-USA), and was a presenter at the United Nations NGO CSW65 conference in 2017 on Sustainable Development Goals for good health, well-being, and gender equality. She has also been a featured speaker at local events sponsored by Houston Women Entrepreneurs, DAYA- Houston, and various corporate entities on the subject of the Path to Self Empowerment.

To join her one of a kind Meditation groups, invite her as a speaker to your events. She conducts frequent free virtual workshops. Her book is available on Kindle and paperback through Amazon  or her website.

Get in touch:

W: https://tenazsunavala.com/

I: @tenazsunavala

F: https://www.facebook.com/TenazS