He came and we meditated

I remember during the last days of my tenure as Secretary for the Austin Steering Committee, we all were furiously working on a proposal to bring Sri Sri to town. At that time when we thought we almost had him coming, it got cancelled and then it changed again.  In short it was very chaotic at the micro level but with all these chaos came the much needed visit of Sri Sri to Austin (almost a decade later).

Yes he did make it to Austin this time, he addressed a gathering ~1000 people; with his usual innocence and charm he won over many more hearts than we ever imagined. There was chaos at the registration desk, there were concerns of “we need to usher in 1000 people in 25 minutes and make them comfortable”, there weren’t enough water mugs for the guests and all such small things. But there was one faith in me that kept saying, “this event is for Sri Sri, an enlightened soul, people will come, they will have a good time and this event will be long remembered” and I can have my registration lead to vouch for it, everything from the registration and ushering went as smoothly as it possibly can. All were seated, comfortable and ready to listen. The live music by Austin’s own Vishaal Sapuram was divine and while the MC’s were doing their best to keep the people entertained and engaged, the sun shone through when Sri Sri walked on to the stage. 

The meditation, the talk and the Q and A was addressed to an audience of close to ~1000 people yet the message felt as personal as though I am having an 1-on-1 conversation with him. He truly has the skill to bring spirituality down to a common man and make us feel we all are one with the bigger self. The lightening moment for me was when he said “make me a promise to look at everything from a bigger picture view”, at that moment I dropped all the complaints I had about the chaos, confusion, need-to-know information sharing and all negativity in general. It didn’t matter at all, it was all good and always good. The other best one was answer to an audience question “what is the sign of maturity to you?”, he said when all questions disappear that is sign of maturity.   

The best part for us was when his flight developed mechanical issues and he had to stay an extra night in Austin. I did get to witness him in a very personal setting and in an even more personal space when I was awarded the opportunity to drive with him to his hotel room. Since I am in the mood, one major take away from the intimate car ride were his words “you can’t put your hand in the fire and expect it not to burn you for you are a good person”, I will leave it to your interpretation.  

Podcast on Creativity

I am a recent convert to podcasts, turned to them specially after my good friends visit from California. Anyways, off the many things I subscribe to now one thing I am regular with is Ted Radio hour from NPR. The podcast runs for an hour or so in which they combine multiple ted talks on a particular topic, in essence it is a superset of ted talks. 

One such Ted talk that I recently heard were on Creativity, they covered few different aspects for creativity

1. Not being selfish, no me and mine 
2. Ability to fall on your face and make mistakes
3. Frontal cortex of brain or as we call Ego which monitors me and mine to be off
4. Practice a lot of it also helps
5. Creativity needs to be nurtured
6. Showing up every day and being consistent about the process

All good points, one thing I really loved if they had covered was aspect of meditation. For a good meditation more than a few criterion listed above are to be met and in my experience more and more creative ideas flow right after a good meditation. As Shri Shri Ravishankar says for a good meditation, you want nothing, you are nothing and then sit with that attitude and meditation will happen. 

Our Art of Living center here in Austin do offer Meditation courses among others. Needless to say there is the Happiness Program which is also offered on a regular basis which helps one with the awareness of interaction between the different layers of existence.

On other hand people say, meditate on the issue that you want to solve and I believe that is the most useless thing to do.

Sri Sri yoga – a honest experience sharing

Two of my dear friends recently became Sri Sri Yoga teachers and have decided to organize a course here in Austin. I thought what better way to publicize to an event than to share my own experiences practicing the same. 

What is Sri Sri yoga?
In my humble words, it is a sequence of poses that would take around 30-40mins to complete and if done on a regular basis can improve the quality of the day and life in general

What makes it different from others?
I have explored other yoga studios in the past and none of them offered any take home practice and everyone wanted me to come back to the studio to practice in the studio. With Sri Sri yoga, we have a take home practice. The best part, in the 2 weekends (format could be different now), we were given enough knowledge to take our yoga practice as deep as we wanted to, essentially saying one can tailor the practice to their needs and time availability.

Can I elaborate on it’s impact?
I did the yoga course almost 3 and half years ago but never ever practiced it, let alone regularly. What was the excuse?, very simple, it is hard to find that 40mins of alone time to practice.

But, in 2013 when I was in some sort of low phase (relatively) and wanted to get out of it, upon a friend’s suggestion I took up the challenge to practice Sri Sri Yoga for 40 days and I saw the difference in my energy levels on the very first day.

Ever had the feeling of “floating in the air” or “things are getting done more efficiently” or the feeling of “I can handle this”, yes that is my state of mind after completing the practice and I carry that throughout (most of) the day.

Since then, every time I become aware that my energy levels are not up to the mark than what I expect them to be, I know the trick to get out of it.

If my memory serves right, somebody had asked the question as to what is the difference between this Yoga practice and Padmasadhana and SriRam-ji had said both have similar set of postures but one is designed for a healthy and happy state of mind while other is meant for deeper meditation. I have no knowledge about Padmasadhana but yes Sri Sri Yoga will help you to have happier state of mind. 

The blog post won’t be complete without thanking Sandhya, who pushed me to do the course. Rewind 4 years back, my excuse was, what is the point of learning something when I do not have time to practice?, but she proved me wrong and showed me that one needs to learn when they can as one never knows when it would come handy.

At the outset knowing your Ayurvedic body type and tailoring the yoga practice accordingly would make the practice better and enjoyable. More about that in a later post.

So, good luck friends and have fun co-teaching the course. 

ps: I was told the course has been renamed to Art of Living Yoga and no longer advertised as Sri Sri Yoga