
The Story of Sacred Elephant
Sacred Elephant is the work of two people whose lives were shaped by sacred traditions long before there was a business. Prema-rasa, born in the Cotswolds, spent 18 years as a Gaudiya Vaishnava monk living in temples and yoga ashrams around the world, deeply studying the relationship between scent, consciousness, and the inner life. Yama grew up in Iquitos, at the heart of the Peruvian Amazon, in a temple where Amazonian and Indian sacred traditions meet. She understands from the ground up how natural and harmonic fragrance supports personal practice, community, and culture.
They now live in Bath, where they teach the Bhakti Yoga tradition and create incense the way they believe it should be made — drawing on Prema’s eighteen years of ashrama life and Yama’s upbringing in the Peruvian Amazon.
The incense itself is crafted by a family of artisans in India whose knowledge of this craft spans two centuries and six or seven generations. Prema first met them in 2015 on his way to a meditation retreat in Vrindavan. The collaboration that began there continues today: Prema and Yama design each scent’s character and evolution, while the artisan family bring their generational mastery in sourcing, blending, and refining.