For the past eight years, I’ve been building a practice rooted in small, intentional acts of presence. It began simply—by handing imperfect, hand-painted tokens to grocery clerks, janitors, flight attendants, librarians. What stayed with me wasn’t the art. It was what happened when someone felt seen.
Over time, that noticing deepened. What began as a personal ritual slowly took shape in the world.
It became a practice that doesn’t just live in art anymore, but in writing, in conversation, and in the everyday ways we choose to show up.
The work grew organically—through thousands of handmade tokens shared with strangers, essays published in literary journals including a Pushcart Prize nomination, and gatherings where people set aside judgment and remembered how to play.
It took root in my Los Altos neighborhood as a small wooden Ripple Station™ where neighbors take up to three tokens, add their own words on the back, and pass them on to everyday workers who often go unnoticed.
It found its way into classrooms, community spaces, and long conversations that lingered after the making ended.
This work eventually came to be called the RIPPLE Practice™—not as a strategy, but as a name for something that was already happening. A way of moving from inner attention to outward connection. A practice grounded in making, noticing, and letting go.
I’m Mansi, creator of the RIPPLE Practice™.
This is a way of living, not a brand performance. It’s a deliberate choice to show up differently in a culture that rewards speed, scale, and constant visibility. I practice it through visual art, personal essays, and community gatherings—quietly, locally, and over time.
In November 2025, I stepped into a very different kind of space: a live painting art battle at State Street Market Los Altos. A large local crowd, a blank three-by-four-foot canvas, a ticking clock, no revisions. I wasn’t there to impress or compete—I was there to stay present, to trust my hands, and to see if the practice would hold under pressure.
It did.
I wrote more about that experience here → Inside, Outside: Celebrating Multitudes in a World that Flattens Us
I spent two decades working in marketing and communication, where trends rule, hype is mandatory, and “keeping it fresh” isn’t a mere suggestion. I know the playbook: optimization, urgency, scale, the pressure to perform and persuade.
I’m deliberately choosing not to work that way anymore. I left social media in 2024. I send one thoughtful email each month. I don’t manufacture urgency or rely on fear of missing out.
I trust resonance. I trust timing.
My word for 2026 is ease—choosing rest over burnout, depth over reach, trust over manipulation. This practice continues to evolve, but its center remains steady: paying attention, making meaning tangible, and allowing small acts to create lasting ripples.
I wasn’t always able to work this way.
For a long time, creativity was something I had to set aside in order to survive.
This is the story of how I found my way back
That return didn’t resolve me into a single identity. It didn’t turn me neatly into an artist, or a writer, or a facilitator. What it did was allow the different parts of me to coexist.
The making lives alongside the writing. The quiet noticing lives alongside conversation. The former marketer lives alongside the woman who chooses not to optimize. The mother, the facilitator, the ripple-making neighbor, the essayist—they are no longer in competition with one another.
Little tokens, essays, gatherings, and conversations are simply the forms this practice takes. They are not the point.
The point is the attention beneath them—the willingness to pause, to notice, to respond with care.
I’m no longer trying to prove or perform a single version of myself. I’m practicing integration—daily, imperfectly, and without urgency. Letting the work move where it needs to, and trusting that coherence comes from owning my multitudes.
While this practice begins within, it ripples outward. I occasionally partner with organizations to facilitate creative courage workshops, speak about what it means to reject hustle culture, or guide community connection circles.
I am currently taking on a very limited number of these engagements for 2026. If you have a specific collaboration in mind that aligns with this slower rhythm, please get in touch.
