Puran Bair is the pioneering meditation teacher most responsible for bringing heart-based meditation to the public's attention. Over the last 35 years, he has taught meditation and universal mysticism to tens of thousands of people; with Susanna, he has developed a comprehensive curriculum that brings spiritual teaching into practical application for improved health, relationships and accomplishments in life.
A businessman, scientist and author, Puran came to his mystical experiences the hard way -- decades of discipleship to noted Sufi master, Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan, including a 28-day retreat fasting in solitude in a cave in the Alps with around-the-clock meditation -- and it's his hope that his teaching will make the path shorter for his students. He takes his responsibility for those who come to the Institute for Applied Meditation (IAM), which he co-founded with his wife Susanna, very seriously, discouraging fantasy and transcendence in favor of scientific instruments and character development. "Mastering meditation is the most challenging thing a person can ever do," he says. "Why would one bother if it doesn't produce a better life?"
With Susanna, Puran is the co-author of a new book, Energize Your Heart In Four Dimensions, which highlights a ground-breaking method that utilizes unique heart-centric meditations to decrease stress, reduce disease risk, and energize the physical, emotional and spiritual heart. Their first book, Living From The Heart, was praised by Random House as being "one of the most important texts ever written on meditation."
The Tucson-based meditation master has traveled across the nation and Europe, teaching Heart Rhythm Meditation to CEOs, teams and individuals. He has taught meditation to executives at multi-national companies and to celebrity singers and actors. He has created four web courses for The Institute for Applied Meditation, Inc. using innovative software to integrate the instructional material with a worldwide forum for dialoguing with a live teacher on a daily basis.
He has also worked with leading researchers to document the physiological changes that occur during the different stages of meditation, including metabolism, heart rhythm, brain waves, light emission and electromagnetism. Known as the "Whistling Dervish," his music is enchanting, a direct transmission of his inner state to his audience. He sings his original songs as part of his teaching, and demonstrates and teaches his method of high-speed whirling as an ecstatic dance.
Puran's background is in technology and business, and his teaching often refers to applications of the heart in business. Until 2003, he was the president of BAR Systems, Inc., the developer and vendor of a large, computer system for portfolio analysis, still used by several mutual fund companies. For fifteen years he was an analyst for Fidelity, Putnam, and Merrill Lynch, becoming a vice-president of MFS, a mutual fund company in Boston. Previously, he worked as a computer scientist for IBM, Burroughs, EG&G and AT&T. He has developed several environmentally-sound inventions. He holds one patent in wind-energy power, with a second patent pending in high-speed, computerized composting, both from companies he started in those fields. Through that work he was invited to speak several times to the United Nations Environment Programme. Puran holds an MS in Computer Science from the University of Pennsylvania and a BS in electrical engineering from Bucknell. He was born in 1944 and has four children.
Susanna Bair is the cofounder and President of the 20-year-old Institute for Applied Meditation (IAM). She is a charismatic speaker and author at the forefront of the emerging cultural shift to a heart-based society. Her methods for accessing the spiritual heart that connects all hearts, also heals and strengthens the energetic-emotional heart and is grounded in an effective therapy for the physical heart.
Susanna's work as a spiritual teacher spans the arena from speaking at large conferences, addressing radio and TV audiences, and leading transformational workshops, to mentoring individuals, supervising mentors, and guiding people on private, intensive, solitary retreats for weeks at a time. Her consistent effectiveness across such a range of activities, from the most public to the most personalized styles of transmission, demonstrates the depth of her background and the authenticity of her personal, mystical experience.
The cofounder of a revolutionary process called Heart Rhythm Meditation, Susanna reveals her method in a new book, Energizing Your Heart in Four Dimensions. Her previous book, with her husband Puran, Living From The Heart, was praised by Random House as being "one of the most important texts ever written on meditation." Her groundbreaking paper, "The Use of Self-Generated Sound in Modulating Consciousness," delivered at the first World Council on Psychotherapy in 1996, has become a classic text defining a western view of the energy chakras and the use of vocalized sound to stimulate them.
She was born in Hungary, educated in Vienna and New York City in psychology and theater, and conducted a 25-year study of the teachings of Hazrat Inayat Khan, the founder of a universal school of mysticism in France. Recognized as a master teacher of meditation in that lineage, she has developed her mystical experience over decades through retreats in the Alps of France, the ocean shore of Massachusetts and the desert of Arizona. Her life experience through step-parenting four children, her counseling practice, theatrical direction and as a professional trainer and manager has also contributed to her spiritual realization and given her the ability to lead others through the steps of discovery of the dimensions of their heart. Susanna designs personalized, transformational processes and then guides individuals on life-changing, solitary retreats that range from three to 40 days in length. Leading these retreats is a major part of her work, occupying 120 days per year. She also supervises 15 mentors in a certified mentoring process she designed at IAM. The most active teacher of Heart Rhythm Meditation, she conducts weekly classes in Tucson as well as up to 40 national and international seminars a year to groups of professionals. Susanna also presents yearly at the national conference of ISSSEEM.
For 19 years, through 2006, she had a private counseling practice in Boston and Ipswich, Massachusetts. For ten years, she was a featured presenter at the Padagogic Institute in Austria where she taught advanced personal development techniques to Austrian school teachers and headmasters.
Previous to her teaching of meditation, Susanna was the director of the Kleinen Buehne of the Basler Stadttheater (Women's Experimental Theater of The State Theatre in Switzerland). She is a former actress who performed in television films in Vienna. Susanna studied in New York City with Lee Strasberg at the Actor's Studio, and Stella Adler at the Stella Adler Conservatory. She earned a Master of Arts in Counseling Psychology at Antioch University in New Hampshire after attending the PhD program in Psychology at the University of Vienna in Austria. She resides with her husband, Puran, in Tucson, Arizona, where her son, Gerred, attends the University of Arizona.