Art of Living Foundation

Week before the last week , i attended a workshop by Art of living Foundation. It was a 6 day workshop with nearly 3 hours every day ; a wonderful experience which i enjoyed a lot.

This is my first workshop that made a lot of impact on me. They focused on teaching breathing techniques and yoga. I have been studying many things about yoga and breathing on internet from a long time and i was feeling the need of such kind of a workshop.

The basic concept of Art of Living Foundation is to teach exercises that increase prana. What is Prana? Its a life energy - probably the same as qi/chi. Through Yoga you can considerably increase the prana in your body.

The effects of the workshops are lasting. . There were a number of spiritual lessons which might become a part of my life now. There was one exercise which i will mention as it had a very deep effect on me. In this exercise, the participants were told to sit in pairs facing each other with eyes closed. Then we were told to open our eyes and look at each other silently and then a question was asked. "If God ever comes to you in this face, will you be able to accept Him as God?". It was a very deep thing. The question hit me somewhere deep. and it still echoes in my mind now in my free times.

Earlier i was told by someone that Art of living foundation is promoting hindu concepts. What i have learnt is something that is beyond the domain of any religion (or may be i havent studied enough religions). The founder of the course is an Indian . true !!! ..his teachings are not . He is the follower of the Maharishi guy - the one who started Transcendental Meditation. The main exercises of the Art of living course are clearly given on their website . see. This is unlike other workshops as other instructors usually try to keep their teachings secret and sacred - making it impossible for a person to know what will be offered unless he/she gets registered for the course. Art of living makes it clear as to what they do and thats why they seem honest.

I came to know about Art of living when i was in Michigan , US. The course would have cost me some 400$ , had i done it in US. but lucky me!!.. i found them here and did the workshop at a much much much much lesser price .. :D ..There are only 2 Art-of-living instructors in Pakistan. luckily both are based in islamabad . . Btw, one of them is a VP in Mobilink.... kool ..

Ali Bhai and Noman also attended the workshop. Ali couldn't complete but Noman completed it and is as happy as i am.

The advanced level of the course will be offered after Ramzan. and in that we will have to go and stay at somewhere for sometime... for some 3-4 days.. isolated from the world.. What does that sound to you.. kool or weird.. :d ... well. ...kool to me atleast.. Reminds me of the time when i used to go on Tableeghi Seh Rozas - (a 3 day trip to a mosque) . Those , too , were days.

Oh btw!!... i lost 2 kg weight during the workshop. :D

My life for Aiur!

"My life for Aiur" - this is what a Zealot says when it comes out of the warp gate. Zealot is a unit in Starcraft and along with starcraft it has made its appearance in my dreams as well when my starcraft addiction was at its peak in 1998 or 99.

Anyways, these days my life is for Aiur as my starcraft addiction is growing again and why shouldnt it grow when i spend two nights every weekend playing this game with my old gikian fellows and have started winning few of the games. .

I have been a loser in the game for a long time. Failing to understand the basic concepts, i make mistakes that usually provoke my allies. Long time ago, while in Giki, while on bnet (the server on which starcraft is played) I made a mistake - ( to be more specific , i had a dozen dragoons but i couldnt make them cross a river bridge when my ally needed them badly to protect his base ). My ally got pissed . He sent me a few angry words & left the game. On that day , like a priest who takes the vow of celibacy , i took a vow that i will never play starcraft on bnet again. This was a stupid vow . As then i started playing against computer only and a computer AI is extremely predictable .You can neither have fun nor learning by playing with it.

On May 19, Blizzard announced that starcraft II is in production and so i finally decided to listen to bodi's constant calls to join bnet . Thus I shifted from playing-warcraft-daily to playing-starcraft-daily , got DSL at home and came back on the bnet server again.

Last weekend i followed a good routine of staying awake all night for the love of starcraft. Bodi and KB were too nice to teach me to overcome the main mistakes that i usually do. Bodi went out of the way by giving me a proper walkthrough lecture on the very basic build order in the game . Now i daily follow this practice religiously to improve the game.

I dont think of Starcraft as an addiction anymore.(earlier, i used to) Although it distracts me from my life routine and has all the ingredients of a proper addiction but now i have surrendered to the fact that of playing Starcraft lifts my mood..it keeps me happy.. it keeps me running . :D

Nomi and Timmy

Two of my very good friends started blogging. They are both a gift from Pakistan Telecom Authority (PTA) to me . I worked in PTA as Assistant Director for nearly an year and these two guys were my colleagues there.

Of Nomi.

Noman Yasir Jelani (NYJ) was hired in PTA with me and we got the same "Engineering" department. I was in "Type Approval" section and all kind of telecom equipments imports used to make their way to approval through me (please dont get impressed- the work sucked big time!! ) . Noman was/is in the Numbering Plan section. All kind of telephone codes, UAN numbers etc. make their way to approval through him. When i left PTA , Noman started handling both the areas. He is quite an efficient and hardworking person and is a really fun work partner. Together we have seen a time of hardships and frustrations. I consider him quite mature and I guess i can discuss almost everything with him .A few of my present day concepts have resulted because of my long discussions with him . He doesnt usually know about the cutting edge mumbo jumbo (IPod, Iphone wagheera) but grasps new ideas very quickly. He is a very very very good friend of mine and i always enjoy his company a lot.

Of Timmy

Timmy is in some software related department. I never understood his work . :D . He is a luminite (graduate of LUMS) and has interests in japanese animes and gadgets. He is the one who introduced me to the world of Naruto though he curses it now as i keep telling him the spoilers. See! he only watches the anime (cartoon) whereas i also read the manga (the comic book) and I am always more updated about the story than him as the manga's story is always ahead of the anime. When i returned from US i brought a Naruto action figure for him and he is still keeping that in his office. He owns a Nintendo DS, an Xbox 360 and a PSP and i am waiting for him to buy a Wii as well :D . (you can see the naruto action figure along with Timmy's other gadgets in the picture) Now all these possessions clearly give an idea that he has a good knowledge of the latest technical Mumbo Jumbo . He can easily talk for hours about the various differences of the different gaming platforms, their future strategies & plans and their upcoming games and blah blah ... but sometimes it becomes impossible for me to bear him and that happen mostly when he is making a request and when he does that , he makes use of a long-duration low-frequency low-amplitude sound that becomes so irritating that the listener finds himself with no choice but to accept his request .. not only to stop the sound but also to stop his lower lip that vibrates aimlessly to help him generate merciful feelings in the hearts of the others.

Of these days

Life is going all fine. Unusullay, Princess is going fine. No customers yet. I received calls but very few people actually came to see it. bad :( . Islamabad is having the Lal Masjid issue , not sure wether its over or not. Once you are in office you are not connected to the real world anymore - there is no TV here :( and you have to wait for things to appear on internet to know about them. Lal Masjid is near to my living place . Its in G6 and i am in G7 but nothing crossed the sector borders. Life remained peaceful in my area. I am completely unaware of the latest update but its really sad to see people doing such things. Once i used to have such kind of thinking (yeah! I used to be a devoted Tableeghi) but I am happy that now i have chosen the right path :D

Of Spiritual

I might start a 6 days class with Art of living Foundation . I came to know about them while i was in US. Got their Pakistani branch's address from there and now the Islamabad branch is going to have some classes next week. I might attend them . Unlike the fourth dimension and mind power , this seems to be more oriented towards Yoga and breathing exercises. I am not sure of the course contents yet but i hope it will be more of a practical thingy. You can read a wiki about them here.

Of today

Me leaves for Peshawar today - For the love of Starcraft . Bodi gave a sacrifice last weekend by being my ally in the game - As expected we lost all of the games and then a frustrated bodi taught me a Protoss build order (though i still think i can play better with Zerg) that i am suppose to follow religiously to increase my chances of winning. Lets see how it goes this weekend.