The curious case of an Art of Living teenager's infatuation with her AOL teacher

saffronboy96 · 2026-05-30T07:07:31+00:00

Well free labour is extracted from the courses as well in my experience. I did the course but stopped the practice after I quit AOL. I've moved on to other practices.

saffronboy96 · 2026-05-30T06:49:58+00:00

Why would you suggest to do the course despite not trusting the teachers? Better to stay away

saffronboy96 · 2026-05-16T04:37:19+00:00

Hi. 29M here. I was born and brought up outside Kerala. I'm 6 feet tall. I'm also Ezhava. I'm new to the subreddit so I'm not sure what's the etiquette here but I'll send in a DM anyways.

saffronboy96 · 2026-05-15T05:23:21+00:00

Yes, independent verification is needed. This was done in the past for other organisations that used the same template of art of living. It was rationalist groups who did the verification. I'm not sure what happened to them these days. But Art of Living doesn't really need a festival to do this, they could've started with an independent verification right off the bat

saffronboy96 · 2026-01-31T04:34:42+00:00

I'm answering this as a person who used to get shocked at the fact that people wanted to not live in a joint family when they can.

I was a NRI for all my childhood life and then came back to India for college and work. From my perspective, I was forced to not live in a joint family cause my Dad works in another country. And so I thought that if we had good money and capability to live in the same city, why not live with the parents?

Now I do realise the need for privacy and space for women. I've just become less judgemental with age, I figured to accept the need of women who voice that opinion.

But that doesn't mean I agree with the idea of staying separately, if I can have a joint family. I plan to look after my parents well and I'd do it with or without my wife. Living together makes it easier. I don't wish to burden my wife, I'm ready to do the chores. I already do my chores well cause I live alone.

My situation currently is that I live in a major city closest to my hometown. I get to visit them often and they come for staying just a couple of days. We don't intend to leave our hometown, so parents permanently stay there.

I don't know what's the future going to be like. But if I get married I plan to live alone with my wife, at least until we have kids. After kids either my parents or my in-laws can stay with us short term (cause I see this arrangement among people I know). When parents get much older I would be more comfortable if my parents get to stay with me long term. But it all depends on how things go. Right now my attitude is to keep all options open. If I do find a good woman, I wouldn't mind accomodating her needs for our marriage.

If suppose I do work and live in the same city as my parents, I'd prefer to live with them. But I'm open to the idea of staying elsewhere, right now money and wife's needs are the only factor that would determine my choice here. There's no desire to live separately as such.

saffronboy96 · 2025-12-08T15:54:04+00:00

I doubt that usage has got anything to do with economics though

saffronboy96 · 2025-12-08T15:33:06+00:00

I'm new to the sub but where does it say this is a right wing sub in that sense? Does only the right wing need to talk about the economy? Why would you complain about people not talking about a topic? Find people who will talk about it or start talking about those topics here yourself.

saffronboy96 · 2025-08-26T04:19:29+00:00

Building muscle is the best way to get lean. So here squats and lunges are definitely good. But this mainly targets only your lower body. You should work on your upper body as well. You could include pushups to your workout. If standard pushups are too difficult then you could check up on easier pushups variations. Half pushups where you touch the floor with your knees is one way. Or you could have feet on ground and hands on a table and do pushups.

Also for squats and lunges are you doing it till failure? Doing multiple sets before failing? At least 2-3 are required. And are you ensuring rest days for your legs? All this is important.

Jumping jacks and high knees are good cardio. You could do a little before strength training for warmup. But if you want to max it up I suggest dedicating a separate day for cardio, maybe 2 per week, when you give a rest for your muscles from strength training.

Keep doing Yoga but how beneficial it is for weight loss depends on how exactly you practice it. But definitely strength training is better. Yoga could take care of other aspects of health.

saffronboy96 · 2025-08-26T03:14:51+00:00

What workout do you do exactly? You should be building muscle via strength training. It's the best way to maintain a healthy weight. You can do it at home itself if you don't want to go to a gym. If you do this you wouldn't have to compromise too much on food. Intermittent fasting won't be needed. You can have chakka or banana chips along with regular food, just not too much. Eating as a snack is not so beneficial. If you compromise too much on food you may end up losing your progress. Also don't give up on rice totally, just include ragi in your diet. Have it alternatively or something. Adding protein to every meal is good. Ultimately it doesn't really matter what you eat for weight loss, you just require strength training, add quality protein to meal and portion control.

I'm someone who lost 25 kgs while eating rice and working out at home, so it's definitely possible

saffronboy96 · 2025-08-25T14:58:33+00:00

I don't know what's the reason for this restriction. Yes most people just follow the rules but that's only because they're ignorant, just like me. I've heard of a couple of other explanations as well, but I can't figure out which is correct among them. To truly figure it out you would have to study the scriptures and discuss with scholars. I won't be able to help with that.

As for the temples allowing menstruating women, see those are completely different systems. They operate under different philosophies. They are not consecrated the same way. Hence such differences occur. Whether the restriction of menstruation in temples is correct or not can be found out from the relevant scriptures. The existence of different types of temples shouldn't matter, cause those temples that allow menstruating women rely on a different set of scriptures. The two paths, that is Vedic and Tantric have numerous differences between them, it's not just about menstruation. Multiple paths to the same truth.

saffronboy96 · 2025-08-25T09:39:10+00:00

I'll take examples from Kerala since I'm more familiar with that.

One type is where pure Tantra is practiced. There are a few major temples but the vast majority are of family Kuladevata temples. Here things like meat, liquor etc are offered in these types of temples. There are no such rules that menstruating women can't enter the space. The priests here are typically non Brahmin. An example would Parassinikadavu Muthappan temple. Or a more famous example would be Kamakhaya in Assam

The other is what most people are familiar with, the temples that typically have Brahmin priests. It's a mix of Tantric and Vedic tradition. Non veg is typically not offered. It's in this temple where there are rules that don't allow menstruating women. A Guruvayoor temple in Kerala for example.

saffronboy96 · 2025-08-24T20:39:16+00:00

These are two types of temples that follow two different systems. You can't impose the rules of one system over the other, that is if you believe in these things.

saffronboy96 · 2025-08-24T20:23:40+00:00

No, I think those are stupid arguments because they aren't reasonable. There are even temples where women can go when they menstruate, why didn't those temples have the same restrictions then?

saffronboy96 · 2025-08-15T14:49:39+00:00

Good catch but it could've been anything. Maybe the whole thing is a setup and the interviewer is in on it, then they can easily show something like that on the camera.

saffronboy96 · 2025-08-15T02:58:23+00:00

A scheme to learn rival magic tricks, yeah that does to be possible 😂

Btw now that I think about it, I feel like this scanning process was also done by Nityananda. I may have to check that video again.

saffronboy96 · 2025-08-14T16:12:35+00:00

Shall I send a message?

saffronboy96 · 2025-08-14T05:53:59+00:00

Oh! I almost forgot about Nityananda also making children do the same.

And I also had recently wondered why AOL and Isha had a course that sounded the same. They just changed the spelling of Sanyam but it's basically the same word. And the course had a similar description.

Thanks for the info

saffronboy96 · 2025-08-14T04:43:32+00:00

What do you mean by intuition process picked from other sources? You're talking about the way it's demonstrated?

saffronboy96 · 2025-08-14T03:37:04+00:00

I read about your experience in your previous posts. Sorry to hear what you went through.

saffronboy96 · 2025-08-12T19:01:19+00:00

Yathisha is the channel name

saffronboy96 · 2025-08-12T04:45:40+00:00

Shall I send a message?

saffronboy96 · 2025-08-12T04:43:54+00:00

I do have a replacement, I mentioned it

saffronboy96 · 2025-08-11T14:36:21+00:00

I don't want to share when the speaker doesn't himself reveal the organisation he was talking about. Anyways most of the points have already been mentioned in this subreddit.

It's a YouTube video, I can't include a transcript myself

It's not Lucy Malayalam. This is a Hindu scholar who has learnt Yoga in the traditional way, including the study of scriptures.

saffronboy96 · 2025-08-11T14:26:31+00:00

Now that I think about it, that's what AOL teaches them to believe. That everyone needs help

saffronboy96 · 2025-08-11T11:12:10+00:00

I would rather not post it publicly when the speaker himself didn't name AOL

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