It sounds like carrying coal to Newcastle but a British meditation expert Casper Ingham and his partner Emily Yates are conducting personalised meditation and yoga therapy workshops for CEOs and other senior executives in the sylvan surroundings of the sprawling 50-acre Kairali Ayurvedic Healing Village in Palakkad in Kerala.

With the executives getting the opportunity to combine these specially tailored workshops with a plethora of Ayurvedic treatment options, including irresistible massage options, Ingham, who is also the Project Director-IT at this Centre, is getting inquiries for such sessions from around the world.

The couple came to Kairali in February this year and has done stress-busting workshops for senior executives mainly from the UK. A Brazilian female executive and a famous European trekker who had met with a serious accident while climbing, were the two women who attended these workshops.

“Essentially, we teach high-profile executives methods to empower themselves and their workforce through a combination of specialised meditation techniques, yoga therapy and some Ayurvedic treatments,” he says.

An essential part of these sessions is to not only de-stress the executives through a combination of breathing techniques, visualisation, “learning to act and not react in stressful situations, but also to be extremely positive towards their staff and develop compassion for them. Because that is what the world needs most today.”

Till now they have done seven such workshops; Emily says that as the needs of each executive are different, the sessions range from four to 14 days.

While the four-day workshop contains two daily one-hour sessions, a more intensive 14-day session was recently held for a head honcho of a “high-profile British company, with daily six hour-sessions.

His major problem was short temper, and through “intensive meditation and yoga sessions, we tried to help him develop an effective temperament and remain calm during stressful situations.”

While the tab for this workshop was €2,400 (Rs 2.02 lakh), the four-seven-day sessions, along with stay at his facility and ayurvedic treatment, cost between €800 and €1000 (Rs 67,600 to Rs 84,500).

‘Ironic’ Emily admits it is ironic that “an Englishwoman should be teaching yoga in India”, but as one who has studied it first in Thailand and then in India, she says despite some frivolous variations of yoga, done particularly by the Americans in introducing “yoga in bikini, there are many western variations that are valuable for therapy.

“Today, we’re having a session of Ying-yoga which combines Chinese methodology with traditional yoga. It works on the Chinese meridians and is very restorative.”

Ingham, who was involved in the launch of the “just-a-minute” meditation campaign of the Brahmakumaris in the UK, says that after the workshops the executives leave Kairali “with relaxed faces and a change in their personality which will hopefully improve not only their own but also their workers’ lives.”

Next they will be busy with sessions for some “senior executives’ wives, who are now planning to come over for a combined retreat…”

> rasheeda.bhagat@thehindu.co.in

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