Art Of Living Adventure Camp of GCC Children

Art of Living Foundation, Oman Chapter has been organising adventure camps in Himachal Pradesh in India for the last five years. This year, they organised an adventure camp in the first week of August for children from the GCC countries in the age group of eight to 17 yearsm at Coorg in Karnataka. They also visited and stayed at the Art of Living International Centre, Bangalore.

Twenty-seven children from Oman, Dubai, Bahrain and Kuwait attended this camp. The children did the Art Excel, YES and YES 2 programmes. These are programmes offered by Art of Living Foundation for children in various age groups. Children across the globe have benefitted immensely from these programmes. Besides yoga the children learn how to handle negative emotions like anger, jealousy, etc.

The adventure camp at Coorg gave an opportunity to the children to get close to nature surrounded by the greenery of thick coffee plantations and lush rainforests and beautiful valleys of Coorg.
The children enthusiastically participated in different adventure activities like rock rappelling, river crossing, river rafting and mountain trekking. Besides these the children also enjoyed learning clay modelling, candle making, bead and bracelet making. All the adventure activities were conducted by professionals and experienced people.

The children visited Mysore. Thereafter they spent three days in the serene and beautiful international headquarters of Art of Living Foundation, Bangalore, where the children and young adults learnt yoga, breathing techniques and principles of creativity and good living in a stressful world, in the Art Excel and YES (Youth Empowerment Seminar) courses. 

The children also met with Gurudev Sri Sri Ravishankar for almost an hour where they shared their experiences with the founder and enlightened master. Gurudev Sri Sri Ravishankar is a spiritual teacher, humanitarian leader and an ambassador of peace. 

He is the founder of The Art of Living and The International Association of Human Values. He founded The Art of Living as an international, non-profit, educational and humanitarian organisation. His vision of a stress free, violence free society has united millions of people the world over through service projects and courses of Art of Living.

Sharing their excitement, Gurudev guided them to focus on their studies along with their hobbies; but most importantly asked them to be friendly with all their fellow students back in school, help their parents at home, and take care of the environment. 

The children were accompanied by Pallavi Wagh and Namita Malik, senior faculty members of the Art of Living Foundation. The adventure camp was supported by volunteers -” Meenakshi Arunachalam, Swati Risbud, Sangita Rachh, Nitya Kannan, Ramaprasad, Kavita Ramaprasad and Nikita.