Discovering the happiness within

Rishi Nityapragya, director of programmes at the Art of Living, will deliver a talk at a function organised by Gurgaon First today. Excerpts from an interview.

Rishi Nityapragya, director of programmes at the Art of Living, will deliver a talk at a function organised by Gurgaon First today. Excerpts from an interview.

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What are the major reasons for stress in urban lifestyle?
The educational system or the society does anything to explore the human potential. Our education system needs to go through a self-analysis. Every human mind has the ability to collect as well as drop impressions like the hard disk of a computer. Keeping too many things in your system leads to accumulation which causes stress.

So, how can people delete the accumulated data?
When you visit a website, several cookies and temporary files downloaded slow down your system. As you clean your computers, you must also clean your mind. That happens through a powerful breathing technique that we call Sudarshan Kriya.

What is Sudarshan Kriya?
It is a breathing technique formulated by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. I call it catharsis. Impressions of past experiences and negative emotions are relieved through this scientific process.

You were a successful engineer. How did a change of heart come about?
I met Sri Sri Ravi Shankar in 1993. During one of his sessions, someone asked him why he was providing the course when he had achieved everything in life. He had said he wanted to see a smile on every face. Since then, this has been the purpose of my life too.

(As told to Snehil Sinha)