Art & Science of Breathing

Course topic: 

Art & Science of Breathing 

The current management theories are by and large prescriptions for the business organizations. Even when issues pertaining to individuals are addressed they are in the context of organizational performance. For instance, theories on motivation are developed to improve the organizational performance. This overwhelming focus on organizations has over time pushed the “individuals” to the residual in the equations.

Ancient Indian wisdom has a set of ideas that present a different perspective of the problems that individuals and organizations face and proposes alternative ways of understanding several aspects pertaining to the domain of management. This course is an attempt to bring these perspectives using Bhagavad Gita as the main reference frame for culling out ideas from Ancient Indian wisdom.

The course is designed with the following main objectives:
a) To identify some of the commonly felt problems that individuals, organizations and the society faces
b) To illustrate the usefulness of Gita in addressing some of these problems
recommended background

There are four pre-requisites for attending this course:

This course critically depends on the self-interest and self-regulation of the course participants. This is a major pre-requisite for the course.

This course will heavily draw from the original sources of Gita, Upanishads and other such Ancient Indian wisdom. Therefore many may think that good knowledge of Sanskrit is required. While it may be an added advantage, it is not required. Familiarity with the Devanagari script (Hindi Script) may be useful at times.

Another major pre-requisite is a sense of openness with which the ideas need to be received. A “reflective and intuitive mind” is more likely to benefit greatly than a pure “logical or analytical mind”.

The other major pre-requisite is a sense of deep commitment to the basic idea of exploring alternate perspectives present in Ancient Indian wisdom. Without this basic commitment students may find it difficult to maintain the motivation level as the course proceeds.

course format

The class will consist of live session with the instructor, YouTube videos, articles for further reading, graded discussion sessions, quiz and a graded final exam.