The Art of Living is more than just a meditation group. It’s actually a volunteer-based organisation that was founded in 1981 by famous Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. The non-profit organisation stands for the philosophy of peace, a violence-free society and a stress-free mind. Today the Art of Living foundation is active in 156 countries.
Last Saturday we attended a conference by Swami Jyothirmayah at the Palacio de Congresos in Marbella, it opened with some uplifting Sanskrit music and beautiful chants by Bhavini Vyas from London.
As I came into the conference room I saw the stage with a lovely decor and ‘spiritual’ music going on in the background. Swami came onto the stage with a big smile on his face, which immediately made the vibe different for me because if I’m honest I really didn’t know what to expect from this event. He started by asking us the question: Are you happy? And giving us a moment to think about this, he started to explain why we are sometimes very happy and energised, and sometimes we are a little bit down and don’t have the motivation to do something.
Swami told us about the beauty of meditation. Relaxing deeply is meditation. When you are really happy and in love, you are meditating. Meditation is that space when the thoughts have moved away, and the mind is in complete rest.
So after Swami explained the benefits of meditation he started to practise a deep meditation session with the whole audience. Starting off with our eyes closed we did some breathing exercises and ended off with complete silence. After a few moments of peace, Swami woke us up from our meditation. And asked us to review the moments of rest. I really enjoyed it, although it was quite strange that you could come to peace by just having to breathe in and breathe out. The meditation took over 27 minutes but by not realising that the time flew past was something special.
I personally want to thank Swami and the whole Art of Living team for organising these conferences throughout the world. It’s truly inspiring and it definitely made me think twice about giving myself some inner peace each day.
– Sven Overdijk
