What if there weren’t a price on wellness? 

That’s the big question behind daana, a platform that connects wellness practitioners and professionals — yoga teachers, meditation guides, dance instructors, and more — with clients. It also allows people to offer spaces for practitioners to host classes and sessions. 

And there’s no price tag on any of it. Users of the platform are able to sign up and access classes and only afterward give an optional, anonymous gift, 100 percent of which goes to the teacher, as daana is a non-profit organization.

daana’s goal is to make wellness accessible, but it goes deeper than that, too. It’s also about decolonizing wellness, embedding generosity into it, and subverting aspects of Western culture that make us unwell. 

Future of Good Publisher and CEO Vinod Rajasekaran sat down with daana Founder Bhaskar Goswami to learn more about his founding story, and why wellness is still a taboo topic among social purpose organizations.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. 

Vinod: Social impact organizations are often talking about the wellness of others in society, whether it’s in the context of gender equality or mental health or tackling hunger, but rarely about the wellness of changemakers themselves. I believe the pandemic was a bit of a wakeup call. 

Bhaskar: Imagine if every board meeting or classroom began with three deep breaths. It’s an instant state change. You are a completely different person, much more awake, much more aware, much more alive, much more calm. Something so simple, it baffles me how it’s not standard in all organizations, companies and schools. So, yes I do resonate with this notion that wellness is highly underrated in so many of these organizations. I recall back in 2017, I was asked to speak at the U.N. climate conference — it was COP22 — and the talk I gave was called ‘Inner Climate, Outer Climate.’ Your inner climate affects the outer climate. The state you’re arriving in to address a problem might actually affect how you address this problem. We want to approach these things with cooler heads and open hearts. This is where creativity happens. This is where collaboration comes from. 

Vinod: What was your intention for launching daana?

Bhaskar: daana is an idea I have been enamored by for a very long time. I come from India, and it’s an ancient Sanskrit word, yet it’s common in all traditions and all cultures. Every church, synagogue, temple, monastery, gurdwara, they’re all built through generosity of people and patrons. Nothing new in that idea, it’s just somewhere along the way for whatever reason, we seem to have lost sight of this, and a lot of society seems to be built around fear, greed, scarcity, doubt, and so on. These are human conditions, but it so happens that generosity, kindness, compassion, community, all these things are also human conditions. And we seem to thrive in the latter. I remember the very first time I went to a proper yoga class, it was with an Indian yoga master and it was in somebody’s house. It was some South Indian family I’d never met. And after the beautiful practice, I saw there was a box there and people put a white envelope into that box. Nobody knew who gave what. It was all based on this spontaneous generous act of appreciating this amazing teacher. It occurred to me that that’s how the purity and the heartfulness of the practice was maintained for centuries. 

So, when I came to the Western world, I had a difficult time commercializing yoga. It’s priceless, and at the same time it’s not for me to decide how much it’s worth. For some people, maybe their back is a bit better, for others maybe it’s life changing. And I don’t know what other people’s situation is. Some people are socially well off, others might be going through a hard time. But basic healthcare and wellness are to me a birthright for human beings. So, we have two options: you either make it free, which is not sustainable, the teacher cannot sustain themselves, or you put a price tag, which by definition is elitist. But here’s an idea: anonymous contribution based on generosity. I ran two yoga centres at the time using the daana concept, and after that, this full non-profit idea was born. 

Vinod: We’ve institutionalized generosity in many ways. Now, with institutional philanthropy, there are foundations with people’s names on them, there are tax credits for donations, and things like that. The institutionalization and professionalization of generosity is a really interesting trend that we’re following closely at Future of Good. Do you think it will continue going that way?

Bhaskar: The anonymity is the secret ingredient, that’s the secret sauce. I’ve been to these galas and so on, and there’s a dichotomy — I am helping you. There’s something about anonymity that levels the playing field. I don’t see myself as better than you. I just appreciate what you are and I want to serve that. It comes from a much more humble place. It’s shifting from helping to serving. It’s a very subtle thing, but I find it makes a big difference. I wish for organizations to pick up on the nuance there, because it’s very, very important. 

Vinod: I want to talk a bit about the crisis that we’re in. Globally, our wellness has improved in many ways, compared to our parents’ generation. People are living longer now. But at the same time, it feels like our wellness has taken a backseat. How do you make sense of this? What’s going on here?

Bhaskar: Let’s break it down very, very simply. What is success? When am I successful? The way I’ve broken it down for myself is when I’m feeling good, I’m successful. When I’m feeling bad, I’m not successful. It’s irrelevant of external circumstance, it’s really an internal thing. And here’s the thing about generosity: it feels really good. We’ve all experienced it. Whether you’re receiving or giving or even just hearing about it, it feels really good. This is the real life hack. It’s an inner game. 

To watch the full conversation — including more on social impact sector’s wellness culture (or lack thereof), how daana works as a platform, and more — become a Future of Good member today.

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