About Sangham

Sangham is guided by Michael Kaplan (Swami Ramarishi), a registered Wellness Counsellor working with individuals online across South Africa and internationally.

Michael has been working with people in counselling, mentorship, and developmental contexts for more than twelve years. Much of that work has been carried out under the long-standing mentorship of clinical and forensic psychologist Bernard Altman, who has supervised and supported his development across the full arc of this career.

The name Swami Ramarishi was given within a traditional contemplative context. The work here, however, remains grounded in ordinary human life. Sangham is not built around a persona or a spiritual identity, but around lived experience, professional responsibility, and honest relationship.

Michael is registered with the ASCHP as a Wellness Counsellor. The core of the work at Sangham is one-on-one counselling: structured, relational, and practical.

His counselling approach has been shaped over many years of direct client work and sustained training under Bernard Altman, with whom he has worked closely across adolescent developmental work, group process, and the deeper psychological dimensions of one-on-one practice.

The emphasis is on careful listening, honest reflection, appropriate challenge, and the gradual development of greater self-awareness and responsibility in clients' actual lives.

Over the years, Michael has worked with a wide range of people: adolescents navigating identity and emotional difficulty, young adults working through direction and responsibility, and adults moving through anxiety, relational patterns, loss, and life transition.

This has included sustained one-on-one counselling, mentorship relationships carried over long periods, and group facilitation across South Africa, India, and Europe.

What has emerged from this range of work is a clearer sense of what actually helps people change, and what tends to leave them more capable of standing within their own lives rather than dependent on a method or a guide.

Alongside this counselling work, Michael's background includes intensive training in pranayama, hatha yoga, meditation, and related contemplative practices within established traditions, with significant periods of practice in the Indian Himalayas under experienced teachers.

These practices inform how he works, particularly around attention, nervous system regulation, embodied awareness, and the integration of insight into daily life. Where appropriate, they may be introduced carefully and practically within client work.

They are not treated as ideology or required belief. They are tools, used selectively and only where genuinely useful for the individual.

Over time, it became clear that technique alone is never sufficient. What matters most is how practice is held, how it is integrated into daily life, and how it is supported through honest relationship. The same approach that helps one person can quietly reinforce the patterns another person is trying to dissolve.

Precision in application matters more than breadth of method. Guidance is offered not as a set of answers to adopt, but as a way of helping people see their situation more clearly and begin responding differently within it.

The work is held within a clear, boundaried, and respectful framework. It is not a substitute for psychiatric care, crisis intervention, addiction treatment, or specialist clinical services where those are required. Where appropriate, referrals or collaborative support may be recommended.