Youth Training Program (YTP)

YOUTH TRAINING PROGRAM

The Youth Training Program (YTP) in India focuses on the education of the rural youth and encourages them to work for the betterment of their community. Arranging medical camps, distributing clothes to the poor, creating sanitation facilities and setting up local cooperative groups.

Working on the principles of love and essential human connectedness as delineated by their founder member, Sri Sri Ravishankar, the Art of Living tries to follow a holistic way of living coupled with humanitarian values. It teaches a wide variety of courses including a meditation course called sahaja samadhi, a natural and effortless meditative technique. It admits that all its self-development courses and programs are a form of yoga, which is nothing but a "union with the Self." The sudarshan kriya and other related techniques, propounded by the Foundation, are all based on the ancient yogic science of breathing, which explores the connection between mind, body, the emotions and rhythms of breath. Over a million people in more than 100 countries have taken Art of Living courses.

The Foundation has Vyakti Vikas Kendras all over India, to teach people how to revive love among themselves, improve their interpersonal interactions and to reach out to the world in a positive manner. Corporate courses are offered to executives and all, to enhance their efficiency and team spirit.

When Sri Sri Ravishankar addressed the August 2000 UN Millennium World Peace Committee of Religious and Spiritual Leaders, his speech was widely received as a path breaking one. The Art of Living, as the instrument of Guruji's ideals, promotes the idea of preventive diplomacy in the case of conflict situations in the global arena. An idea that was proposed to the UN in its 1995 World Social Summit.

Above all, the Foundation endeavors to drive home Sri Sri Ravishankar's message that—even though practices remain different, all great religious traditions share the same common goals and values, and mankind would do well to cut across these barriers and anomalies to connect with each other through love.