Shadi Pouyazadeh is a meditation teacher, speaker, and founder of the Mindful Women’s Circle, one of the most exclusive networks for mindful female entrepreneurs and leaders in the German-speaking world. Her career began in the international media industry, where she worked for many years as a journalist and TV presenter, reporting from the Paris Fashion Week to the New York Fashion Week. After a transformative encounter in South America, she turned deeply toward meditation, consciousness work, and spiritual practice. Numerous trainings and retreats followed. Back in Vienna, she developed a novel concept: meditation in bars and exclusive locations, spaces traditionally associated with networking, lifestyle, and luxury. She merges mindfulness with high-end environments, creating extraordinary settings for inner transformation.
In 2024, she founded the Mindful Women’s Circle. Today, it includes a members club, international retreats, and monthly sold-out events. Her work stands for feminine leadership, clarity, and conscious success.
KOORSOO means “a faint glimmer of hope.” What gave you personally a feeling of hope in the past few months?
Hope was given to me when I saw that people in Iran are once again believing in someone, in a person who stands for leadership and direction. To witness that, after 47 years, real change in Iran once again seems possible deeply moved me. For many, Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi has become a symbol of this hope. And I was equally given hope by seeing how many people have risen up not only Iranians inside the country, but also the diaspora around the world. This shared voice, this courage across borders, showed me how powerful a collective desire for freedom can be.
For many people here in Austria, the revolution in Iran feels emotionally distant, even though it’s in the headlines every day. What do you wish people outside Iran would see differently or learn to sit with differently?
I wish that people would look, even when it does not personally affect them. I believe that this is what makes us human. That we feel for one another and begin to stand up for one another. To look instead of looking away. Distance often makes suffering abstract. Yet behind every headline are real people, families, courage, fear, and hope. Facing this reality instead of suppressing it is already an act of responsibility.
You spent many years working in media and today focus strongly on mindfulness and community by founding the Mindful Women’s Circle in 2024. How has that changed the way you personally deal with crisis and negative news?
It has changed me a lot. In my view, we are currently living in a kind of spiritual conflict, a struggle between awareness and fear, between truth and manipulation. We are flooded with information and algorithms until we forget how to form our own opinions. We forget to look inward. Sometimes we even forget who we are. In this chaos, many of us lose touch with ourselves. That is why it is so important in times like these to remain grounded. Meditation has taught me exactly that: no matter how much the external world lies beyond my control, within myself I can preserve stability by staying connected to who I am.
Community is often associated with closeness and warmth, but it can also be demanding. What does community truly offer in times like these, and where does it reach its limits?
Community is something deeply natural for us as human beings. We need connection, we need networks, we need spaces where we are allowed to feel safe. In difficult times, community can provide support, inspire courage, and remind us that we are not alone. It can gather strength and make hope visible. At the same time, community also has its limits: it cannot change someone from the inside, that step must be taken by each individual. True community supports, but it does not replace personal responsibility.
If KOORSOO were not a feeling, but an action: What can each individual do to help move things in a better direction?
If hope were an action, it would begin in everyday life. By staying informed without allowing fear to paralyze us. By showing compassion, having conversations, taking a stand even in small moments. Every person can make a difference by living consciously, taking responsibility, and refusing to become numb. Change does not arise only through grand gestures, but through many small decisions made from clarity and humanity.