AOL

This AOL stands for Art of Living. Around april, attended their part-I course and here is my take on the same --

1. Good endeavor to help people realize peace and alleviate stress by breathing techniques.
2. They teach you mainly the "Sudarshan Kriya" (amazing feeling when I did the first time), some subtle yoga exercises. Would need roughly 30-45min per day to practise. But really worth the time and effort.
3. Lot of discussions on introspection, life in general and knowledge points.
4. People repeat the course just to refresh their understanding or to see how different teachers approach aspects of life. But basic material of kriya/yoga remains same I guess.
5. Bit expensive here in US than in India. Not sure how the quality compares.
6. I guess the fundamental requirement of any therapy course is a belief that the therapy will work for you and help you. Same here.

My wife attended the same the last week of June. Her class was young compared to mine. Hoping to start doing the sudarshan kriya regularly. Definitely would recommend this to anybody.

On a tangential note, while things like Art of Living etc give you tips on how to manage stress and control emotion, life keeps giving you events to test it out in the field :-) Here is one -

My wife's I94 was stamped as H1B by mistake by the immigration office at the LA airport. Our immigration attorney found it out and asked us to get it corrected. All's well till this point. What irked us most was the attorney's comment that its our duty to make sure I94 is stamped correctly by the immigration office upon our arrival. Who is supposed to be agile here - a sleep-depreived family that has just flown 36hrs OR a burger-fed officer at home in his A/C office ? Remember art of living. Take a deep breadth, and let it go ....

This post's pic is tangentially related to the subject AOL. It shows a sun (sudharshan) . This is a revolving decoration item and the center sun is still while the periphery shows the nice motion though its in the same focal plane.