Pranada Comtois is a devoted pilgrim, teacher, and award-winning author of Wise-Love: Bhakti and the Search for the Soul of Consciousness. Her writing sheds light on bhakti’s wisdom school of heartfulness with a focus on how to culture wise-love in our lives and relationships so we can experience the inherent, unbounded joy of the self.

“Mindfulness and meditation alone can never satisfy the self. Joy comes from an awakened heart, not from a controlled or stilled mind.”

At sixteen she met her teacher A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami and began her lifelong study and practice of bhakti. The wisdom of her teaching grows from living for twenty years as a contemplative in bhakti ashrams, and another twenty years raising a family and running two multi-million dollar businesses.

Pranada is an activist in women’s spiritual empowerment. She has always been deeply affected when witnessing the de-humanizing of women. She was the first to speak up for gender harmony in the modern bhakti tradition and successfully organized global steps against gender injustice.

Her writing has appeared in Integral Yoga, Rebelle Society, Elephant Journal, Tattooed Buddha, and the books Journey of the Heart, Bhakti Blossoms, and GODDESS: When She Rules. She is a featured speaker in the film Women of Bhakti.

Her debut, award-winning book, Wise-Love: Bhakti and the Search for the Soul of Consciousness — a concise handbook of the essence of bhakti yoga — is available on Amazon.