MiBoSO Program by SEWA International Australia & Suchindra Kanakanapalya(Coach)
Teenagers Program in 2025
10 Mar 2025
A recap of the MiBoSo program conducted by Sewa International Australia
The MiBoSo (Mind, Body, Soul) program, conducted by Sewa International Australia, took place in February and March 2025. This program was conceived and executed by Suchindra Kanakanapalya, a dedicated coach who envisioned creating a holistic experience focusing on improving individuals’ overall well-being by integrating the mind, body, and soul.
About Coach Suchindra — To give you a brief background of Suchindra K, visit the LinkedIn profile at https://www.linkedin.com/in/suchindrak/?originalSubdomain=au.
In one word, Suchindra is true to its word “Coach”. We will cover more about his coaching activities below but before that please note that he is Engagement Director in TCS Consulting group in Australia if my memory is correct he has worked across Deloitte, KPMG and EY consulting companies which brings its flavour in the way he operates and the way he thinks about problems, issues, strategy etc. He usually thinks using “First Principles”, a thinking method. You can always Google around what first principles thinking is.
Why teenagers? — The MiBoSo program represents mind, body, and soul, and that’s what this program is about. This program is targeted at the Gen Z generation. Typically, let’s call them the teenagers between 12 and 19 years old. This is an exciting cohort because teenagers get left out of the kids’ birthday parties. They don’t belong there. These kids are not of adult age at this point, so they are left out of those conversations, too. They have their dictionary, their Gen Z language, which is very, very popular these days. And as adults, we need to go through a quick program to understand Gen Z language.
Wandering minds of teenagers — Well, this is also the time for these teenagers to experiment with new things in their small world, testing the boundaries of themselves, testing the limits of their peers/ friends and testing the limits of the adults around them to learn how far ‘they can stretch themselves’ and how much ‘others allow them to stretch themselves’. These two are very important and very distinctive points. Understanding how much they can stress themselves is in terms of their body. Let’s say they’re doing physical weights, push-ups and something like that. They are stretching their capacity in their own body by pushing themselves. The second part is how much they can stretch and understand the adult’s perspective. This is to understand more about how much of the boundary the adults are willing to relinquish. It’s an excellent line of difference. Let’s see how this goes in the program.
How was MiBoSo born? — The MiBoSo program was conceived as part of a casual conversation between two individuals. Sewa International Australia conducted a hiking program covering 13 km in Mount Kosciuszko in March 2024. Similarly, Sewa wanted to conduct another hiking program in February/ March 2025. That’s when the question arose (from Suchindra) about why you are only limited to hiking programs. Why don’t we combine a couple of other elements and make it a package for the audience wanting to receive this information? Hence, the mind, body, and soul programs were initiated. A question from Vijay (Sewa) about when the program was near closure was posted to all participants. The answers from participants did not match the true effort spent!.
Do you know how much planning effort has gone into this program? Well, Suchindra, the coach and the members of Sewa Australi, like Vijay, Saraswathi Chechii, Bhaskar, Ravi, and Rajesh, have spent over 75 hours on planning. Apart from the effort, around 20 to 25 hours are spent in logistics, conducting the sessions and providing and taking feedback daily.
How was the program structured? This program was structured across three different dates and in three weekends.
First session was about the ‘Mind’- The mind session lasted 4 to 5 hours and was conducted in Ingleburn, NSW, Australia (Dr Prasad’s Happy Star Tutoring). The 34 teenagers who turned up for this session were surprised by how the session was conducted and how it made them interact with each other. These kids are predominantly meeting for the first time, I would say. Of Course, there are friends from their schools or the neighbourhood or our family friends. For the first time, it’s a very healthy mix of boys and girls. It is also a very good mix of age groups from 13 to 18/19. The kids were from year seven in high school until year 11 and 12. That gives the breadth of the cohort. I would say that the mind session was mind-blowing for the kids for a simple reason: they were asked and probed into setting goals for themselves in varied categories like academics, sports, personal, fitness, career, and more. What do they want to be in the next 5 to 10 years. Believe me, these are all the seeds in their minds. I will try to give an example or a metaphor for the Bamboo trees. It takes 5–6 years for them to germinate and grow slightly. But then it starts to shot-up/ grow further very fast. That will happen to these kids when they reach their potential from now (in 2025) to 21 or 22. They won’t forget all these lessons in their lives, and that’s the one purpose I would say. All the parents were so excited to enroll in this program. They know their results will not be seen immediately, but they still invest their time, money, planning, and logistics to allow their kid/s to participate in this program.
Another highlight of the day related to the mind session was the booklet given by Sewa Australia and Coach Suchindra. I’m sure the kids are going to have this booklet for at least a couple of years. I presume these booklets are very informative for them to Think and do. Each of these days was very well supported by Sewa volunteers, and also, I would say the food was supplied to the kids after the session was sumptuous and wonderful. Thank you.
The second session was about ‘Body’. It was on a Saturday, and it was another weekend. The kids came to Doyle ground in North Parramatta. Coach Suchindra is also a running coach and his coaching group is called ‘Paramatta Runners’ (www.instagram.com/parramattarunners). He probably trained around 225 runners+ in the last eight years. It’s about running, keeping yourself fit and active daily. Very small things that you can do at your own home using weights and other things. For the kids, interval running, sprint running, and stretching exercises are covered during the session. Apart from the regular body sessions, a physical obstacle race was organised, which included two ‘Mind’ obstacles (BODMAS and General Quiz). He made it very entertaining for the kids by dividing them into Group 1 and Group 2. Both groups competed and crossed every obstacle while their group’s start and end time was computed. Every ‘wrong’ answer in the ‘Mind’ obstacle constituted a 3-second penalty. Group 2 won the competition by a mere 15 seconds. Both groups were taught to congratulate each other whether winners or losers. Thanks to Rimple and her Laddulicious team, who came and sponsored Ladoo for all the kids and the parents. They have a very good Instagram page you can always follow. They are based in North Parramatta. All laddus are home-made, fresh and healthy. You can try it out.
The third session is about ‘Soul’- They say you usually get connected to yourself when you’re amongst nature. Away from any digital devices that distract you incessantly. So, this hike was planned to be 11.5 km, and it took around four hours for the kids to complete the hike with regular rest breaks. I must mention Suchindra’s courage in taking the teenagers along with him and other Sewa volunteers for this hike. It is a belief in him that he can handle, and it is also the belief in the teenagers that they will hold themselves. The hiking route was in Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park. You had to pay around $12 per car to enter the national park, and they started the hike from Bobbin Head picnic area, went up to Sphinx Memorial, and returned to Bobbin Head picnic area. It was well planned so the kids don’t struggle with the elevations. As usual, after the hike, Sewa Australia provided the kids with yummy food, probably 25 teenagers participated on this day, along with 10 parents who also went for the hike. Overall, Coach Suchindra executed this entire concept of mind, body, and soul very well.
The closing ceremony — was also very well conducted. Each of the participants in the MiBoSo program was given a framed certificate by Sewa Australia, signed by Vijay and Coach Suchindra, depicting the program’s purpose. I am 100% sure each kid was proud to get this Certificate from Sewa Australia at the end.
Last, but not least, Parents were engaged in an appropriate and at required frequency to keep a tab on what’s happening with the program (pre, during and post). Examples include sharing of YouTube videos/concepts explained to kids, like System 1 and System 2 thinking.
While the program had delivered immense benefit to kids, indirectly it had also prompted and influenced all the families of 34 kids participated. The key question is How? One of the ask from the Program is for the parents to explain the session to kids and make them understand what they are signing up for. Only when the kids understand, it would be helpful to them. By this way, it has helped and prompted the family to have a conversation for right purpose.
Through out the program, parents were also encouraged to know about the concepts being socialised with the teenagers. From parents perspective, it had prompted them to get into a zone of understanding more about parenting and how their positive lifestyle would impact others in the family, especially kids/teenagers. Every human being follows the visual cue first(before the language started). So, don’t tell. Do first. If the parents does first and sets a bar (not even high bar), kids would ultimately follow.
We will look back on this program after a few years and be tremendously grateful that these teenagers went through it. Thank you.
Written by
Gurusubramanian Swaminathan
guru_subbs@yahoo.com/0431467829
[Parent of the teenager who attended MiBoSo Program]
Reviewed by SK,VijayA
