Art of Living- Day 1

As promised earlier, I am writing about my experience about the Art of Living course which was designed specially for the youth called YES+. I had heard quite a few rave reviews about it and considering the utter disarray my mind was in, I gave it a shot.

The instructor was a young female and was surprised to see a normal crowd because I was half expecting overtly spiritual people with serene looks on their faces. The first exercise was introducing yourself to the participants. Now here is the catch- You hold hands with that person and say, "My name is ABC and I belong to you", and this is where my enthusiasm took a south-bound plunge. It sounded so absolutely fake and when they asked about the experience, I heard all the more fake answers like "good", "great", "refreshing" etcetera.

We were imparted a few words of wisdom called sutras which was appealing enough for me. They were very basic and no-nonsense types but still we never think of implementing them. It was followed by a round of breathing exercises and Sudarshan Kriya-the star attraction of the course.

They got an interesting way to underline the meaning of the sutra because we played a game first and then they explained what they were trying to stress through the games. My ankles hurt pretty bad sitting in vajrasan for almost thirty minutes or so and feet were all numb from sitting cross-legged. Sore with pain, we left after 9.30 and headed home. I was more sore with disappointment.