In this powerful conversation with Education UAE Founder Laura Wojciechwoski, visionary yogi Sadhguru shares timeless insights on anchoring young minds in clarity, cultivating inner balance, and why true wellbeing begins from within — even in the midst of modern chaos.
- How can parents protect their children’s young minds from the conditioning that creates perceived worry and stress?
Sadhguru: Recently, a journalist asked me, “14, 15-year-olds are stressed because exams are coming. They think their rank will determine their future. So, what do you tell them?”
If learning is making people miserable, we have not understood what learning is because it is a natural human trait that when you get to know something that you did not know, it brings much joy to you. Unfortunately, we are not sending our children to school because we want them to learn. We send them to school because we want them to earn. This is an unfortunate way to handle education.
Today we have created a society founded on the premise that life is a race. Right from childhood, from kindergarten, children have been told to be competitive. Parents ask their children, “Are you first or second rank?” Essentially, they are asking, “How badly are other children doing?” The only joy you have is that everyone else is doing worse than you. If our joy is about being better than someone else, it is not success; it is sickness. We must eliminate this whole nonsense of who is first and who is second. A child is a new life with new possibilities and potential. But we are forcing them through a silly extruder system, where everyone is expected to come out as the same product. Maybe they could fly, but you are happy that they are walking one step ahead of someone else. What a tragedy it is!
Every child is a unique possibility. A child means humanity in the making. What you make of them when it is in your hands is one of the greatest responsibilities and privileges a human being can have. Bringing up your children does not mean just sending them to school so that they get marks and grades and all that nonsense. Just grades will not manifest as success. In body and mind, your child should develop his or her full capabilities. That is when success will manifest in his or her life.
- What is the best single piece of advice could you give to stay in the present moment during tough times and challenges?
Sadhguru: Challenging times mean life is in flux. It is an opportunity for individuals to rise above their comfort zones and enhance their life. Of course, there is a lot of hardship. Hardship strengthens us, emboldens us towards a greater possibility. Hardship need not become suffering. Suffering is an unfortunate consequence that a whole lot of human beings create because they have no control over their psychological space. When situations in the world are against you, your body, mind, emotion, and energy should work for you. For this, you need a little bit of Inner Engineering. This is the whole science of Yoga – how to ensure that you are never the problem in your life.
- What skills and qualities will be most important for the next generation of leaders in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, and how can the education system prepare them for these roles?
Sadhguru: UAE and Saudi Arabia stand out as probably the only region where in 50 years’ time, they have gone from being a remote desert habitation to the hub of the world in many ways, thanks to the leadership in the region. But at the same time, if economic prosperity is not tempered with inner wellbeing, then this economic prosperity will start working against us after some time. You can see this happening in many Western countries. In Europe, which has enjoyed many decades of continuous affluence, 38% of the population suffers from mental illness. In the United States, almost 70% of adults are on prescription medication. This is not wellbeing.
Before individuals step out towards external accomplishments, they must arrive at a sense of inner wellbeing. It is only in this that individual human beings can go beyond personal ambition and strive for a larger vision. This is of utmost importance now, because for the very first time, we as a generation have reached a place where we have all the necessary resources, capability and technology to address every human problem on the planet. Only an inclusive consciousness is missing.
If there is no sense of inclusiveness in individual human beings, there is no way that the systems they create or actions they perform will lead to inclusiveness. If individuals do not experience this inclusiveness, they end up creating very exclusive processes. It is exclusiveness which has rendered the world unjust and inhuman.
Yoga and spirituality are about living here in an all-inclusive way, experiencing everything as a part of yourself – knowing and experiencing life as life, not as individual personalities. At the same time, they hugely equip the individual to be more efficient, more capable, more balanced and in turn more productive. This is good for the world.
- Your teachings emphasise the importance of inner well-being. How can parents and teachers ensure that students excel academically while also growing emotionally and spiritually?
Sadhguru: First of all, we must understand that every human being is not necessarily suited for academic education. Pushing everyone through the extruder of academics is a most cruel way of handling a child. There must be a variety of offerings, so that just because you cannot understand chemistry, you are not made to feel stupid – you can do something else.
You have to physically nourish and mentally ignite children about things. The simplest way is to take them out into nature, where everything, from an insect to a flower, is exciting. But most parents today want to buy some stuff, throw it in the children’s room, lock it – everything is padded so that they cannot hurt themselves – and the parents can go to a party. That is not parenting.
Billions of dollars are spent every year on toys for thirty percent of the children on the planet, while the remaining seventy percent never get a toy in their lives. Somehow, those who get these toys are the ones who suffer most, on a mental and emotional level. The others may suffer because of lack of nutrition and other basic requirements. But the affluent ones are going through inner turmoil.
If instead you take your children out, make them climb a tree, walk somewhere with them, take them for a swim, the child will grow up physically and mentally healthy.
- What tips do you have for educators and parents to help their children blossom while creating safe boundaries and a framework for them to function in modern society?
Sadhguru: The perils of living in this world – drugs, accidents, and various perversions –are always there. But whether you like it or not, today or tomorrow, your child has to learn to live with their own intelligence, making their own choices as to how much of what to do in their life. So, the sooner they get equipped for this, the better. This does not mean you push a young child on the street to learn their own ways. But you do not try to counter-influence them with your own morality and values. You just help them to look at their life with more intelligence, rather than being influenced by this or that. If you create the necessary conducive atmosphere for their intelligence to grow fully, they will handle it the way they know.
“Will everything go right?” It may go right, it may go wrong – that is not the point. But the chances of it going wrong are minimal. When the child grows up exercising their own intelligence, if they make one mistake, they have the intelligence to correct it. As long as they are working towards their wellbeing and not doing something negative against their own life, you must wait. For the entire time until the child becomes 21, you must feel like you are still pregnant. Just wait. When the child was inside, you did nothing, right? Just nourished yourself well and waited. Just like that – provide the atmosphere and wait.
Parents encouraging the child to use their own intelligence to see what is best for them is always the best insurance for the child to grow up well.
- What advice do you have for teaching children to turn inward from a young age? What practices are age-appropriate to help maintain their presence from a young age?
Sadhguru: Children are very close to a spiritual possibility if only they are not meddled with too much. So, create an atmosphere where this meddling could be minimized and a child is encouraged to grow into their intelligence rather than into your family or into your identity of your religion or whatever. The child will become naturally spiritual without even knowing the word spirituality.
At Isha, we have well-structured children’s programs but they are not meditative processes. They are towards health and wellbeing. A very simple form of Yoga could start at the age of seven. There is something called Nada Yoga, which is the mastery of sounds, which can lead to wellbeing and the proper development of body and mind.
Once they start seeing the benefits and how it sets them apart in a group of people, naturally they will pursue higher forms of Yoga as they go.
- You mentioned that “An educator’s role is not to create successful people, but to create valuable human beings.” Can you elaborate on this and how educators can shift their focus accordingly?
Sadhguru: We need to address the exploitative nature of today’s education that is constantly training people to think only about themselves and nothing else. There is a deeply set attitude in the human mind that everything must be exploited for our benefit. Initially, you use the planet, then the trees and plants, then animals, then of course, even human beings for your comfort and convenience.
Education leaves one hugely empowered. When people are empowered but have no love in their heart, it is very dangerous. We will end up with tyrants. Before being empowered, you must have a sense of inclusiveness. This is why in Indian culture, education always started only after certain initiations, where in some experiential way, it is brought about in the child’s life that they feel for everything in the existence.
Traditionally, the basic mantra which was taught to the child in India was “Aham Brahmasmi,” which means “My identity is cosmic.” When the child chanted this, he or she was taking responsibility for everything around them. The idea was that before you empower them with mathematics, astronomy, science or anything else, you must ensure that their identity is not limited, that they take on a universal identity. The understanding was that only those who have gone through this must be given the power of education.
So, we should always ensure our children’s attitude is about responsibility, inclusion, contribution, and constantly seeing how to make a difference around them.
- How can schools integrate practices that promote mental and emotional health, ensuring that students are not just academically successful but also emotionally balanced and liberated to explore their true potential?
Sadhguru: It must be understood that what is taught in the school is not an absolute. A school must provide an ambience for the child to interact with their own age group and grow by exposure; above all, to develop a thirst for knowing something new every day. If the thirst for knowledge is kindled in the child, you cannot stop them from learning. This is all a school should do.
Education can no longer be about just gathering information, passing examinations and getting a job. What we need is an inspirational schooling so that a child does something beyond his or her limitations. If you can do something that you never thought you would do because of someone’s influence, then this is inspiration.
We run a residential school in the Isha Yoga Center in India, called the Isha Home School. Groups of twenty children are part of a household and taken care of by teachers who are like dedicated parents for them. The teaching community is absolutely committed to the development of the child. We use a thematic mode of education. What this means is, for example, during the two months of the monsoon season, the pouring rain will soak you through and through. We expose the children to the rain and use it as a fulcrum to explore many other subjects – the chemistry, biology, physics and economics of rain. There is an enormous enthusiasm in learning because it is a very exploratory approach. There are no marks and no branding the child with grades of “A, B, C,” but among the teachers there is an evaluation method, and constantly the children are being nurtured.
In today’s world where information is so easily available online, teachers don’t need to provide information. They should provide inspiration, focus, experimentation and various other things. You do not have to be an expert in a particular subject to teach. All you need to be is a loving human being, who is inspiring for the children to be with. If you ask children why they took to a certain subject, most of them will say it was because of one of their teachers. If it was a teacher they loved, they naturally loved the subject also. This is how a child functions.
- What would be a useful practice for peace and happiness in daily life as a young person?
Sadhguru: Most people experience the mind as a misery manufacturing machine that is constantly turning against them because they have not been given the tools to take charge of this fantastic mechanism. Meditation is that process through which you learn to operate this mind so that it functions as a miracle.
Towards this, in February 2025, we launched the Miracle of Mind app, which offers a simple 7-minute meditative process that can be practiced anywhere to bring a sense of peace, joy, and exuberance into one’s life. The app has been gamified so that people can play with it as they go through the process every day. Through this movement, we want to touch at least 3 billion people in the next 18 to 24 months, so that they close their eyes for at least 7 minutes every day.
It is my wish and my blessing that every human being on the planet experiences the Miracle of Mind. All are welcome to assist and fulfill this most important cause for the wellbeing of future generations.
Editor’s Note: Amidst a rising tide of mental health challenges, the Miracle of Mind app is the latest offering by Sadhguru to empower at least 3 billion people to take charge of their mental wellbeing and discover the mind’s untapped potential in just 7 minutes a day! To know more, visit: isha.co/mom
Ranked amongst the fifty most influential people in India, Sadhguru is a Yogi, mystic, visionary and a New York Times bestselling author. He is also the founder of the Conscious Planet – Save Soil movement, which has touched over 4.1 billion people, and the Miracle of Mind app, which aims to empower 3 billion people with tools for mental wellbeing.
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