Ravi Shankar, commonly known as Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, was born on 13 May 1956. He is also frequently referred to simply as "Sri Sri" (honorific) or as Guruji or Gurudev. He is a spiritual leader and founder of the Art of Living Foundation created in 1981, which aims to relieve individual stress, societal problems, and violence. In 1997, he established a Geneva-based charity, the International Association for Human Values, an NGO that engages in relief work and rural development and aims to foster shared global values,Ravi Shankar was born in Papanasam, Tamil Nadu to Visalakshi Ratnam and R. S. Venkat Ratnam, who was then active in the automobile business. He was named "Ravi" (a common Indian name meaning "sun") because his birth was on a Sunday, and "Shankar" after the eighth-century Hindu saint, Adi Shankara, because it was also Shankara's birthday.By age 4, he is said to have been able to recite verses from the Bhagavad Gita. Ravi Shankar's first teacher was Sudhakar Chaturvedi, an Indian Vedic Scholar and a close associate of Mahatma Gandhi. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Bangalore University (St. Joseph's College). After graduation, Shankar travelled with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi giving talks and arranging conferences on Vedic science, and setting up meditation and Ayurveda centres.
In the 1980s, Shankar initiated a series of practical and experiential courses in spirituality around the globe. He says that his rhythmic breathing practice, Sudarshan Kriya, came to him in 1982, "like a poem, an inspiration," after a ten-day period of silence on the banks of the Bhadra River in Shimoga, in the state of Karnataka, adding, "I learned it and started teaching it".
Shankar says that every emotion has a corresponding rhythm in the breath and that regulating the breath can help elevate the individual and help relieve personal suffering.
In 1983, Shankar held the first Art of Living course in Europe, in Switzerland. In 1986, he travelled to Apple Valley, California in the US to conduct the first course to be held in North America.
In the 1990s, Shankar initiated a number of humanitarian projects, which continue to this date under the auspices of the Art of Living Foundation and its numerous national organisations. In 1997, he started the International Association for Human Values, a humanitarian organisation, and its 5H program, for sustainable development in rural areas and revive human values.
He visited Pakistan in 2004 on a "goodwill mission" and again in 2012 when he inaugurated Art of Living centers in Islamabad and Karachi.The Islamabad center was burned down by armed men in March 2014.
During his visits to Iraq (at the invitation of Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki) in 2007 and again in 2008, he met with political and religious leaders to promote global peace. In November 2014, Ravi Shankar traveled to the relief camps in Erbil, Iraq. He also hosted a conference to address the dire condition of Yazidis and other non-Muslims in the region.
Ravi Shankar is involved in interfaith dialogue and currently sits on the Board of World Religious Leaders for the Elijah Interfaith Institute. Through interfaith summits in 2008 and 2010, he has been engaging faith-based leaders for collective action against HIV. In July 2013 at a meeting in UNAIDS headquarters in Geneva, issues including HIV prevention, gender based violence, stigma and discrimination were discussed.
In 2003, he initiated the Ethics in Business - Corporate Culture & Spirituality dialogue with an aim of strengthening human values and ethics in business. This evolved later on in the formation of the World Forum for Ethics in Business which convenes international conferences on ethics. World Summit on Ethics in Sports, a one-day event held in September 2014 at the FIFA headquarters in Zurich, focused on "morality and openness" in sports.
In 1992, he started a prison program to rehabilitate prison inmates and help them reintegrate into the mainstream. His volunteers assisted the 2004 tsunami victims,Hurricane Katrina victims, in Haiti, and many other regions of conflict and natural disaster
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