Lockdown impact: People seem to find solace in meditation

The Buddha-CEO Quantum Foundation is trying to propagate its simple, meditation techniques to help people tide over any situation in life with ease.

The foundation, a non-governmental entity, headquartered in Bengaluru is reaching out to people across every stratum of the society, corporates, professionals, graduating youth, school children and so on, advocating the importance of inculcating meditation practice in everyday life.

Chandra Pulamarasetti, a technocrat-turned meditation guru and founder of Buddha-CEO, has combined ancient tradition with science to create awareness about the connection between meditation and spiritual science.

Pulamarasetti said that the foundation’s online guided meditation programme for personal resilience and peak performance began gaining momentum from March. “Though we set up this foundation much earlier and have been imparting meditation technique to those that sought our guidance, we conducted the first online programme for a group of 30 in the UK in March, when the lockdown was imposed and people were forced to stay indoors.”

“There’s been no looking back since then. We have been organising free guided programmes over the past eight months and the response for each of the programmes has been overwhelming. Close to 12,000 individuals including working professionals, retired persons, business honchos and homemakers registered and confirmed that they are being benefitted from such guided programmes. Our vision is to create the ecosystem for meditation and expansion of knowledge,” he added.

The foundation has initiated a project in Andhra Pradesh to inculcate the habit of meditation among school students. “We have in the last year-and-half taken the practice to 200+ schools (in Vizag region). We are looking to roll out the practice across 500 schools in 3 years.”

When questioned on how a technocrat got involved in another different field, he said, “When I relocated from the US in 2002 and started my own venture here, I did not take to meditation very seriously. My younger brother, a medical professional practiced the technique sincerely, and I used to watch him from a distance.”

“During that period, the pressure on the work front was huge. Over time, I was drawn to the technique; I started seeing results when I began practicing the technique with focus and consistency. This instilled confidence within me and I started getting deeper into the subject.”

In 2016, the tech company founded by Pulamarasetti was acquired by a tech-giant. This left the meditation-guru to focus full-time on “Anapana sati” (Breath-Mindfulness meditation). “Thus was born Buddha-CEO Quantum Foundation,” he said, sharing a few anecdotes and insights about his own transformation.