New place for south/central Austin II

As we all know, Art of Living Austin is growing and expanding, even though we loved to gather around Shraddha and Anoop’s home for the weekly long kriya, there were times (very frequently) that we were running out of real-estate and had to place yoga mats creatively to make space for more.

So, the thought occurred to move out of the private home and move to a neutral location like a community center (like we used to do) and may be probably find a place few miles north that way it would be equally convenient/inconvenient for every one. 

We combed through churches, schools, fitness studios, yoga studios, Pilates studios and dance studios. Surprisingly a lot of the churches had availability but not at the time we required (Sunday evening) for they were booked for their youth ministries. as for the yoga studios, they didn’t want to entertain us for the conflict we may have with their practice (fair enough, I guess). Schools would have been ideal but the rates were not conducive enough for our operations. While some Yoga studios were willing to work with us, it was either the location or the lack of air circulation (core to our existence)  prevented us from signing the place.

So, Austin we believe we have found the ideal place in terms of size, location, cost and accessibility.

Please do join us every week for long kriya follow ups on

Day and Time: Sunday’s at 5:30PM

Location: 4544 S Lamar Blvd #200, Austin, TX 78745 Studio 1

And help us prove that we made the right decision in renting this studio. 

I would not be fair if I didn’t thank Shraddha and Anoop on their generosity for letting us use their place every Sunday evening for the long kriya.

Thank you Shraddha and Anoop for lending us your space and wishing you luck on the new phase of your journey. 

As with any new thing it would be a learning curve for all of us so please do bear with us for the location is as new to you as it is for us :).

New place for south/central Austin

Austin, specially south and central Austin time to get excited. Yes we heard you and your concerns and we have taken steps to address one of your comments/concerns, we have started negotiations for a new place for weekly follow ups. Yes, this location will be north of our current location, will be easily accessible through freeways, will have natural light and fresh air circulation and most of all it is not someone else’s home. 

Stay tuned we are in final steps of our negotiations and will be posting the details very soon.

ps: it could be as early as this weekend

Art of Living center address – update on Google

Some reason, Google believes that our new Art of Living center is located at 13699 Pond Springs Road Austin TX 78729 and it is permanently closed.
You all know our new center address is 13091 Pond Springs Road, Suite 208 Austin TX 78729 and our center is open and thriving. I request your help in fixing this. It is a simple 3 step process,

1. Search on Google for Art of Living Austin and it comes with permanently closed link like below  
   

   
2. Please click on the feedback and suggest the new address 13091 Pond Springs Road Suite 208 Austin TX 78729
3. Hit submit and you should get an email in your account saying that your feedback is being reviewed

I have done my part and few of us have done it too and I am hoping if more people do submit the change then hopefully Google will act on it fast and change to the right address and show us open.
We appreciate your effort.
We have one more issue with Yelp which believes we are still in our Lamar location, if you are the owner of Yelp account for Art of Living Austin please ping me.  

World culture festival–curtain riser in Austin

Every 4 years there is a Cricket world cup, same goes for Football or for that matter Olympics too but is there a world wide get together for culture and spirutuality?, I am not asking the question but the question is being asked by a great humanitarian Sri Sri Ravishakar.

Sri Sri Ravishankar (fondly known as Guruji), founder of Art of Living and other organizations operating under the umbrella of Art of Living. If I may steal his words, March 11-13 marks one such historical get together with cultural and spiritual events from all over the world, from Japan to South America showcased on a single stage in Delhi, India.

As a precursor to it, we started off with a bang today morning with 1 world 1 meditation event. The event was watched live from over 155 countries.

That said, as a next level in the run up to the festival we plan to do an official curtain riser here in Austin.

Date: February 6 2016
Venue: Art of Living center (13091 Pond Springs Road, suite 208, Austin TX 78729)
Time: 4:00-6:00PM

At a high level the plan is to get community and spiritual leaders from all over Austin under one roof and inspire and inform them about the world culture festival.

We would love your help in organizing and executing this event. There are multiple levels in which you can help (all the way from invites to planning and execution), Please contact Art of Living Austin for more details.

In case you are still wondering what WCF or world culture festival is,

World Culture Festival (WCF) will bring together over 3.5 million people from 150 countries representing different global cultures, nations and faiths as a one world family to celebrate cultural diversity and the Art of Living Foundation's 35 years of service to humanity. The Art of Living is a global movement founded by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar – an Indian humanitarian leader and peace ambassador.

The three-day celebration will open with a one-of-a kind peace meditation, for 3.5 million people, setting a new Guinness record for largest mediation gathering ever. The concert stage will host more than 10,000 artists who will play 40 traditional instruments in a never before seen symphony collaboration. WCF will also host an all-inclusive inter-faith meeting where international spiritual and religious leaders will participate in discussions on global concerns. Lastly, the Global Leadership Forum will occur on the second and third day of the event and will bring together leaders from varied backgrounds such as business, government, politics, sports, science, NGOs, spiritual and religious organizations, media and academia.

You can find more details by visiting the website

Welcome to the new Art of Living Austin center

Remember the blog post “Bye bye Lamar center”, in that I had mentioned in the last sentence “its time to translate the learning to a newer and better center”, we the Art of Living family are proud to announce that we have to a large extent (in my eyes) have exceeded that expectation and are almost ready to welcome you all to the new center, got to wait a couple of weeks before it will be officially open for business though. For the impatient few the address is 13091 Pond Springs Road, Suite 208 Austin TX 78729

I think that was a good teaser, now to the actual reality of things. We worked for almost 6 months and churned out 3 different Realtor's before narrowing down to Travis Waldrop who I must say almost miraculously found a space, negotiated a good deal and made us set for the next five years.

What did we gain from this new center? a fair question to ask and here is the list

• 2600 SQFT of open customizable space, mind you even in retail spaces it is not easy to come by. 
• A good retail location, there are advantages to it including extra parking spaces and one contiguous self contained space with better visibility 
• Bigger meditation hall (~300 SQFT bigger than Lamar center) with cross ventilation for fresh air
• Recessed lights in the meditation hall
• A break room/kitchen (no cooking though) with counter tops and cabinets
• Wood laminated floors for the whole center
• 3 independent areas for conducting courses and events
• In terms of sheer square footage we are almost 800 SQFT bigger than Lamar Center
• All the above without substantially increasing our monthly operating expenses

Some of us did visit the under construction center today and were blown away the way it looks. Thanks to some of the volunteers who worked tirelessly in the search and planning phase for the new center. Apart from all the above good things that are coming with the center, it is an achievement to close 1 center and open an another one with only 2 months of non availability. 

February 1st is when we will officially get the keys for the new center and that is when we will be officially open for business. 

Bye bye Lamar center

Back in November 2009,  we started our Art of Living center in Austin and fast forward 6 years later and the time has come to say good bye.

Yes we had great run for 6 years which included innumerable weekly follow ups, happiness programs, yoga and meditation programs, knowledge series to name a few along with a few volunteer training sessions, DSN’s and pre-TTC’s.  

As many would know, this was our first effort in maintaining a physical real estate of our own, proud of the fact that we were the first in Texas and amongst the first in nation to have a physical center. The most important one for us was maintaining the finances in order over the last 6 years. Many thanks to all the volunteers for donating and doing donation drives and most importantly to volunteer their spare time in upkeep and maintenance of the center.Yes it is a great achievement.

We did learn a lot from owning and maintaining the center and we have grown leaps and bounds in terms of memberships and the activities we are doing as a chapter. Most of which can be attributed to having a physical space of our own we could use barring the calendar conflicts.  

As with anything long term, we had our ups and downs, I personally like to believe we had more ups than downs. It wouldn’t be fair if I don’t thank our landlord PS business parks with whom we have maintained a very cordial relationship from the beginning to end. 

Now that we have wound up this place, its time to translate the learning to a newer and better center. It is coming and stay tuned for updates on the same.