Born Sara · Known as Sarita · Becoming Rasa

RASA
Devi

I walk with people through the passages
that change everything.

Rasa — Sara Castañeda Rasa · rasadevi.co
Rasa in practice Rasa's sacred study — books and herbs

Rasa means nectar.

Rasa is a Sanskrit word. Juice. Taste. The flavor and character of a life fully lived — erotic, comic, compassionate, furious, heroic, sorrowful, terrifying, wonderful, peaceful. All of it. (Lorin Roche)

The name came to me last year during Krishna's Janmashtami. To be called Rasa. Because I have tasted the juice of this life. Because I resonate deeply with the Rasa Leela — that sacred dance, that play of devotion, that encounter between the soul and the divine that leaves nothing untouched.

I was born Sara, named after my grandmother. My family and Spanish-speaking community have always called me Sarita. Now I am stepping into Rasa — as the elder I am becoming in this community, as someone who has spent sixteen years in Ayurveda, in shastra and Vedic philosophy, in the Devi and Shakti traditions, in birth work and death work, in ceremony and ritual. These are not separate paths. They are one life, deeply lived.

I am a ritualist. A ceremonialist. My maternal lineage runs through Nicaragua and Guatemala. My father's lineage is Cuban. And I carry a deep connection to the indigenous lands across all of Hispanic America — not only the diaspora, but the actual territories, the living peoples, the ancestral knowledge that has always been there. That belonging is not bounded by borders. I am savoring the juice of this life. That is what I offer.

Lineages I draw from

Ayurveda Classics Sri Vidya Kashmir Shaivism Dasha Mahavidyas Traditional Midwifery Western Herbalism Reiki Master Energy Work Nicaraguan Roots Guatemalan Roots Cuban Roots Indigenous Hispanic Lands Sanskrit

I have been in the birth room and the death room. I have built altars and held vigils and sat with what cannot be named. This is not what I do. It is who I am.

— Rasa

Four Paths In

Birth and death are the same gate from different sides. Devi presides over both. Everything I offer lives inside that understanding.

01

Sacred Pause Doula

Birth · Postpartum · Abortion · Loss · Ancestral Support

I show up. In hospitals, at home, in the in-between. Full-spectrum birth support for mothers and birthing people — Ayurvedic, ancestral, bilingual. I've been in the room when everything changes. I know how to hold what that asks for.

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02

After the Holding

Doula Mentorship · Energy Protection · Sacred Practice

Sixteen years of being in the room — hospitals, homes, the liminal spaces nobody trains you for. This mentorship is for the doulas and death workers who hold everyone else and have nowhere to put what they carry. Not a certification. A container.

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03

Sacred Passage

Death Doula · Vigil · Pet Transition Ceremonies

Death is as sacred as birth. It asks the same quality of presence. I learned this sitting with my grandparents as they died. I learned it again with Zen, my dog of fourteen and a half years, and the ceremony I built for his crossing. What I carried then, I now offer to others.

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04

Sacred Feminine

Women's Rites · Devi Lineage · Coming Soon

Every major passage in a woman's life was once held in ceremony. Menarche. Birth. Matrescence. The wisdom years. We were severed from those rites. I'm building the container to return them — rooted in the Dasha Mahavidyas, Ayurveda, and the ancestral lineages I come from.

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Sacred Initiation

The Rites We Were Never Given

My grandmother thumbed her rosary every morning. She wasn't reciting. She was communing. She held a thread I didn't find until I was deep in the roots. This work is for the women still looking for that thread.

I

Child to Maiden

The First Blood

Menarche is not a medical event. It is the body announcing herself. This passage was once held in ceremony across every culture. Now it arrives with silence or a box of tampons. The ceremony it deserves still exists. It lives in the lineage.

II

Maiden to Mother

Birth & Matrescence

Birth is initiation. And matrescence — the metamorphosis that begins the moment a child enters the world — is rarely named or held. She is not the same woman. She was never meant to be. Someone should say that out loud.

III

Mother to Matriarch

The Wisdom Years

Perimenopause and menopause are not decline. They are the arrival of the woman who knows. The elder. She who no longer bleeds outward holds her blood as wisdom within. This is not loss. This is the seat of power.

IV

The Ancestral Wound

What Was Severed

Colonization, migration, assimilation — these severed women from their rites. Many of us were the first born on unfamiliar soil, inheriting belonging and rootlessness at once. The bridge back exists. It is built from what survived and the willingness to remember.

V

Death & Grief

The Final Crossing

I've sat with the dying. My grandparents. My dog. The families who call me in the middle of the night. Death asks the same quality of presence as birth. I know how to hold the space, build the altar, stay through the end.

VI

The Body as Oracle

Womb Wisdom & Remembrance

Ayurveda teaches that the body carries memory — cellular, ancestral, karmic. The womb especially. Symptoms are signals. Cycles are teachers. The body is not broken. It never was. It has been waiting for someone to say so.

The container for women's initiatory work is in formation — circles, ceremonies, Devi teachings, and the Devi Deck. Be the first to know when it opens.

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From the Practice

I write from inside the work. Not about it. From Devi, from the altar, from the birth room and the death room and everything in between.

CCF Digestive Tea
Ayurveda · Herbal

Detox-Friendly Digestive Tea: CCF Tea

Cumin, coriander, and fennel — three seeds that together form one of Ayurveda's most powerful digestive tonics. A simple daily ritual from the Charaka tradition.

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Trikatu
Ayurveda · Herbs

Trikatu — The Three Pungents

Ginger, black pepper, and long pepper: Ayurveda's most warming formula. For digestion, circulation, and the cold that settles in the bones.

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Golden Glow Tofu Scramble
Nourishment · Recipe

Golden Glow Tofu Scramble

A fast, nourishing Ayurvedic breakfast — turmeric, warming spices, plant protein. Built to build ojas and start the day with fire and clarity.

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Essays on Devi, women's rites of passage, Ayurveda, and the sacred feminine — from someone who lives this work, not performs it.

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Reach Out

You don't need to have it figured out. You only need to reach. Whether you're a mother seeking support, a doula seeking mentorship, a woman walking her initiation, or a family holding a beloved through death — I'm in touch within 24–48 hours.

Service Area
Rhode Island · Massachusetts · Connecticut
Languages
English · Español
Instagram
@rasadevi
Doula Site
Sacred Pause Doula
Death Doula
Sacred Passage

You have been received. I'll be in touch within 24–48 hours.