Course on Happiness at IIM Ahmedabad: Teaching future leaders to be happy with Breathe Awareness, Yoga and Meditation, also a class of generosity

Due to Corona, happiness in business and job decreased, keeping this in mind, started the ‘Heal’ course. (Associate Professor Vishal Gupta)

Students at IIM Ahmedabad these days are learning the techniques of Breathe Awareness, Eating Meditation, Thought Meditation, Loving and Kindness Meditation, Body Scan and Yoga along with the nuances of management. Actually, due to Corona, there have been many changes in the field of business and job. Due to this, stress and anxiety among working professionals has increased tremendously.

Vishal Gupta, Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior at the institute, says that during research on Emotional Intelligence-Mind Power and Leadership after Corona, it was found in conversations with industry people that happiness in life has decreased. Or despite being happy, people are not able to feel it better. That’s why started the course related to Happiness. The name of this program is HEAL (Happiness, Emotional Intelligence and Authentic Living).

This course is offered as an option for IIM-A’s two-year PGP programme, one-year PGPX and PhD students. More than 100 students from these three verticals had expressed their desire to join the course. But only 45 students have been taken in the first module. At present, this program is only for students, next year it will be started for industry professionals as well.

During the course, students are also being taught theoretically and practically about the various methods of attention to the breath, proper meditation and its various methods. For example, during eating meditation, it is taught to realize the importance of 15-20 minutes after eating and enjoy every bite in the present moment. It is also called mindful eating.

Mindful meditation is done to relieve stress. It can be done anywhere at any time. The course is not held online. By having classroom teaching, students will be able to do it in a better way, if there is a problem, then there they can also find a solution through discussion.

Happiness is also related to yoga, so it was also added to the course: Prof. Gupta
Yoga and happiness are directly related to each other. Therefore yoga has also been added to the course. Professor Ashish Pandey of IIT Mumbai will give training in Yoga and Emotional Intelligence. Pro. Vishal Gupta explains, “To be generous to others will be taught through Loving and Kindness Meditation. This meditation is not done to achieve the goal, but it is only a process of experiencing. This will greatly benefit the participants.