The lineage
Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar
Spiritual teacher, humanitarian, and the founder of the Art of Living Foundation — Gurudev has brought the timeless wisdom of yoga and meditation to over 180 countries, touching hundreds of millions of lives. His teachings are the root of everything Shreya offers.
Who he is
A life in service
Born in 1956 in Papanasam, Tamil Nadu, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar showed an extraordinary gift for stillness and scripture from childhood. By the age of seventeen he had completed a dual degree in modern science and Vedic literature — a union of inquiry and wisdom that would define everything he taught thereafter.
In 1981, after years of deep study with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, he founded the Art of Living Foundation in Switzerland with a single aim: to make the stress-relieving power of breath and meditation accessible to every person, regardless of background, belief or circumstance.
Today the Art of Living is one of the world's largest volunteer-based humanitarian organisations, operating in over 180 countries with programmes for personal transformation, community development, trauma relief and sustainable living. At the centre of it all is the Sudarshan Kriya — a unique, rhythmic breathing practice that Gurudev received in meditation after ten days of silence in 1982, and which has since been validated by peer-reviewed research across multiple medical and psychological institutions.
His vision
A stress-free, violence-free world
Gurudev's teaching rests on a deceptively simple premise: when people are at peace within themselves, peace follows in the world around them. Breath is the bridge — the one function of the body that sits on the border of the voluntary and the involuntary, and through which we can, consciously and deliberately, shift our nervous system, our emotions, and our perception of reality.
He has mediated conflicts in Iraq, Kosovo and Colombia. He has addressed the United Nations, the World Economic Forum and the European Parliament. He has walked with trauma survivors of war, natural disaster and violence, offering them the same simple tools available to anyone in a morning workshop. The consistency is the message: the practice works, and it works for everyone.
For children and young people in particular, Gurudev holds a special concern. He has championed youth education programmes — ART Excel, YES! and the Sri Sri curriculum — that embed emotional awareness, breath tools and ethical values into the earliest years of learning. His conviction is that if children learn to manage their minds, the future will take care of itself.
"When you stop complaining and appreciate the abundance around you, grace begins to flow."
The connection
Why this lineage matters
Shreya has trained directly within the Art of Living tradition, and the programmes she offers — from the playful Utkarsh Yoga for young children to the profound Sahaj Samadhi for adults — all trace directly back to Gurudev's body of work. Teaching here is not a franchise; it's a transmission. The warmth, the scientific grounding and the insistence on joy that characterise Shreya's sessions are properties she has absorbed from the tradition itself.
When you sit in one of her classes, you are connecting to a lineage that has accompanied people through wars, exams, bereavements and quiet Tuesday mornings with equal steadiness. That continuity is part of what makes these practices so reliable — they are not Shreya's invention, they are her gift to pass on.
Step into the practice.
Curious whether this is right for a child you love — or for you? There's no booking here, just a conversation. Reach out any time.