
Gangamata managed Mountain Song, a successful women’s boutique and gift store in Nevada City that was owned and run by members of the Ananda community. When Mountain Song was sold, Gangamata worked in Ananda’s management office. She now serves with her husband Daiva in Ananda’s Portland ministry.
Q: How did you initially get involved in business?
Gangamata: I was working in the personnel department of a large advertising agency in San Francisco, where I conducted interviews and filled entry‑level and support positions. I left because I wanted to find a place where the management would be more supportive and where principles would be more important than the bottom line. I never found that kind of job until I came to Ananda, and I eventually realized that what I was looking for was a whole new way of life.
What attracted me about living in a small spiritual community is that I’m a heart person. Where other people are led by the intellect, I go by the heart. I felt comfortable at Ananda because it was a place where I didn’t have to be somebody who could spout something intellectual, and just being myself was enough.
Also, I could see that they honored the individual. They showed it by their willingness to put someone like me who had no retail experience, in charge at Mountain Song. They would never do that in the business world that I had left behind; they would grab the person with ten years of retail experience. I’ve appreciated that tremendously because it’s been an opportunity that has helped me grow in ways I’d never experienced.
All of us in the store feel that we’re involved and that one person isn’t running the show. I have to provide a vision, but Nieke does the displays and ordering, and she feels it’s her area. I’m amazed by how much these ladies care about the store. I don’t know that we could have the same feeling if we didn’t feel that we have a real say in what happens. Everyone has a chance to do a window display, and it might not be exactly what I would have done, but I’ll support them. It’s so sweet to support the positive and not pick on the negative. When you support the positive, you see people blossom more than if you were picking on the negative all the time.
In the first four or five months after we began starting the day with a meditation and healing prayers, we got nearly 500 prayer requests from our customers. Every day now we have 10 or 20 new prayer requests. It’s been amazing – it keeps us meditating with a purpose, and we feel we’ve started a real ministry of healing prayer.
Starting the day with meditation and taking responsibility for the healing prayers gives us a strong connection with our customers. Customers will come in and say, “I heard you have a healing prayer box.” There has been no negative feedback about it. It’s been completely positive, and it makes me feel like, yes, we’re doing Yogananda’s service here.
Q: What’s the relationship like between the store’s staff and the customers?
Gangamata: Mountain Song has been in business since 1979, and we now have lots of customers who’ll come all the way from Sacramento and Auburn, forty and seventy miles, and they’ll bring their relatives to see us. Mountain Song has an amazing reputation. It’s easy to forget, but it’s particularly wonderful at Christmas because we have so many people who’ll come through and say, “I have family visiting, and we just had to bring them here because this is the Christmas store.”
Q: Do you put effort into creating a special atmosphere in the story?

Gangamata: Yes, and we’re trying to do it even more. We’ve expanded our music section, and we created a listening area with two chairs and a table where people can sit and play music. We’re trying to create an environment like they have at East West, Ananda’s bookstore in Mountain View, where people feel they can come in and take their time to browse and just soak up the atmosphere. We’ll often see a customer standing in a corner, and we’ll walk up and ask, “Can I help you?” And she’ll say, “No, I’m not really here to buy anything, I’ve just come in to get peace with myself, just find my center.” And when she leaves she’ll say, “Thank you. I feel so much better.”
When you’re here all the time, you tend to forget about the special vibration, and that Yogananda’s here. In our morning meditations we ask him to be with us, that he bless everyone who comes in, and that he bless the merchandise.
We go to San Francisco and buy lots of beautiful merchandise, and as we’re pricing it we’re blessing it, and then we’re putting it on the shelf and we’re playing with it and blessing it again. We forget that the merchandise and the environment have a power, and that people pick up on it even though they might not know what it is.
Sometimes they’ll think it’s the music, but I think it’s something bigger, and it’s sweet to see how it touches the customers. We don’t have many conversations with our customers about spiritual things, but it’s a ministry of the eyes, where you know that something happens, and it’s special. There’s so much to do, even when business is slow, but we’re aware that we have to keep our center and make sure we’re connecting with the customers eye to eye.
Yesterday I talked to a wonderful man from Auburn about his vacation plans and we had a nice connection. But I think the subtle side is always going on at another level, and that people pick up on your essence and remember it.
Q: It seems people are getting more and more frantic, with folks in Silicon Valley working seventy‑hour weeks.
Gangamata: It reflects a consciousness that people have fallen into, where “projects are more important than people.” We try to practice that people are more important than things, and people are more important than the displays we’re creating. It’s easy to get caught up in cleaning and re‑arranging, and that part never ends. I’m amazed by how much work needs to be done. But our customers aren’t going to notice all the little things we’re seeing, and we need to remember that, because they so appreciate the other things we can give them.
Every time I have an agenda and want to change a display and really focus and get it done, it’s amusing how an employee will come up and tell me she’s having a really hard morning and needs to talk about it. I’ll feel Yogananda saying, “Okay, let go of your project.” I can get real project‑oriented, and these things happen over and over to remind me, “You need to connect, and if the project doesn’t get done for a few hours, that’s okay.”
That’s why this job has been so great for me. It’s always reminding me that people are more important than things. That opening the heart, and letting go of the mind, is where I need to do battle. The mind says, “This display should be different.” But the heart is saying, “No, no, support this person. Support the project she’s doing. It’s not hurting anyone. It’s okay if it stays like that.” I’m learning that it’s much more fulfilling.
In my former job I used to want to be more like that, but I couldn’t because the opposite was reinforced – “We gotta get it done! Gotta get it done right! Gotta get to work! Just do the project!” And what if the employee is having a hard morning? Just push through and get the project done. And it never felt right. Following this principle is something I grew up with in my soul, and in my heart it feels right.
Q: Do your spiritual practices help?
Gangamata: It’s easier if I have a good meditation in the morning. The mornings that I don’t have suh a good meditation I’ll struggle when an employee comes up and needs my time. The more I’m here, the more I realize that I need that balance in my life.
Q: Are there spiritual practices you can do at work?
Gangamata: I find that doing real simple basic breathing exercises can help me slow me down a lot. Just slow, deep breathing. Swami Kriyananda teaches lots of breathing exercises in his course, 14 Steps to Higher Awareness. At Christmas, whenever it got stressful and intense, I found I could do some breathing exercises without leaving the floor. Even when a customer was standing right in front of me, I could pause for a moment and breathe deeply.
I’ll go downstairs and meditate for fifteen minutes, and it helps slow things down a little. So I think those are keys – doing some yoga postures, meditating, and just breathing if I can’t leave the floor. I’ll try to step back and think, “What’s best for this customer? For the store? For this employee?” And the right answer always comes if I can just pause for a moment and not get excited. It’s like a pendulum is always swinging and you’re trying to stay in the middle, and not react to the right or left.
Q: I’m here to ask the dumb questions. Is God playing a role in this?
Gangamata: Oh, yes. I was raised Catholic. My dad would say, “It doesn’t matter what you do in your life, if you’re a garbage man or a postman or a professor, as long as you love God. God’s everywhere!” Isn’t that amazing? My dad didn’t go to church much, but my mom and dad were from Italy and Yugoslavia, and they had some great basic principles that I grew up with.
While I was growing up, my mom would do things for people without any expectation of receiving back, and my dad would get mad at her. He would say, “Why are you doing this for this person? What have they done for you?” But she always had a nice saying, “Don’t worry about what they’re going to do for me.” She said, “One hand washes the other. I do something for this person, and someone else will do something nice for me that I wasn’t expecting.”
I’ve always believed in God. I think God is everywhere, and I think He’s blessing the store. I feel Paramhansa Yogananda’s always here, and I think partly the feeling comes because we pray each morning. They are here in subtle ways, in all the little things that happen. Like the subtle eye contact, where someone will look at you and you realize, “Wow, something happened.” Or the healing prayer box – a request from a little girl, “Please pray that my daddy gets a new job.” They’re so touching, sometimes we just cry. I believe God’s everywhere, and I feel it deeply.