{"id":1647,"date":"2002-02-14T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2002-02-14T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2002\/02\/14\/2002-02-14-india-s-laughing-guru-spreads-his-message-of-happiness\/"},"modified":"2002-02-14T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2002-02-14T12:00:00","slug":"2002-02-14-india-s-laughing-guru-spreads-his-message-of-happiness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2002\/02\/14\/2002-02-14-india-s-laughing-guru-spreads-his-message-of-happiness\/","title":{"rendered":"India&#8217;s Laughing Guru Spreads His Message of Happiness"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Source: Reuters<\/P><br \/>\n<P><\/p>\n<p>NEW DELHI, INDIA, February 7, 2002: With his &#8220;don&#8217;t worry, be happy&#8221; slogan and a breathing technique to reduce stress, His Holiness Sri Sri Ravishankar is known as the laughing guru in India. Appealing to India&#8217;s Westernized urban elite who have lost contact with their religious roots and priests, Ravishankar&#8217;s message has given this group back their sense of community. At least 1.5 million people in India have completed the course called the &#8220;Art of Living Movement.&#8221; Ravishankar&#8217;s 30-acre ashram is located near the city of Bangalore. His followers say he has changed their lives and quoting a New Delhi devotee, &#8220;He&#8217;s brought me joy. You feel like kicking off your shoes and jumping. You love him. He has given me unconditional love.&#8221; His followers have taken his message into India&#8217;s prisons and rehabilitation centers. At Tihar Jail in Delhi, tough, mean, prisoners have been given breathing courses and Jail superintendent G. Sudhakar says, &#8220;the course made the prisoners more responsible, more respectful, more polite.&#8221; According to this story news magazine, India Today, has labeled Ravishankar as &#8220;the fastest growing guru in the marketplace of happiness.&#8221;<br \/>\n<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Source: Reuters NEW DELHI, INDIA, February 7, 2002: With his &#8220;don&#8217;t worry, be happy&#8221; slogan and a breathing technique to,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1647"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1647\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}