Yoga Retreats

Yoga retreats create a special time and space for us to retreat from our everyday life routines and daily habitual activities while being concentrating on disciplined yogic cleansing practice, yoga asana practice, pranayama practice, meditation practice, relaxation, karma yoga (selfless service), bhakti yoga (faith in the guru and the teachings, and surrendering the selfish ego) and jnana yoga (hearing, learning and contemplating on the yoga philosophy).

It allows us to have the opportunity to let go of our familiar habits and move away from the attachment towards familiar living environment and activities. It allows us to have the chance to be temporary letting go of our worldly duties, relationships and belongings, and to focus on our personal development and our relationship with our very own Self.

 

It is a very efficient way to learn about our own self and how the mind works, when the body and mind are being restricted for a period of time not being able to do what they usually like to do and want to do. As well as learning how to cope with tensions and how to let them go. Most important is that we learn how to stop generate tensions into the body and mind.

Yoga retreats are not about pampering ourselves in luxury comforts or learning how to do more yoga asanas or to runaway from our everyday problems.

It is a time and space for retreating from the bustling egoistic world of competition and stress. It is for us to get a relief from physical, emotional and mental tensions but it is not ignoring or running away from our problems. It gives us a space or a distance to look at our problems in a different angle. It can help us on how to confront and deal with everyday problems and able to remain calm without fear and worry, and being undisturbed by any unpleasant conditions and situations in life.

It is a great time and space for good satsanga (being with positive energy and wise company).

It is recharging, rebalancing, conserving and channeling the energy fields for higher realization.

It is a great purification process for the body and mind to be lighter and brighter physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.

It is a mind deprogramming and reprogramming process. It is like an operation done onto the mind to remove "diseases". It helps to train the mind to be more open and having the confidence and courage to face the challenges in everyday lives.

It is a great transformation for anybody in learning about the yoga philosophy, materializing the philosophy practically in our everyday lives, and going deeper into the yoga practices that can help us to understand the nature of the mind and knowing the truth of things we perceived through the mind, and to be able to accept the truth of things as they are. And the most important thing is, to be able to accept ourselves as we are, and to be able to let go all the limited conditions that derive from attachment towards the qualities of names and forms, judgments and expectations.

It helps us to develop morality, faith, patience, self-control, tolerance, forbearance, perseverance, determination, confidence, will power, positive thinking, courage, fearlessness, mind flexibility, concentration, forgiveness, truthfulness, loving kindness, humility, equanimity, simplicity, respect, gratitude, thankfulness, appreciation, adjustment, adaptation, acceptance, accommodation, cheerfulness, contentment, generosity and etc, to realize selflessness, compassion and wisdom.

It is life transforming, changing the "incorrect" way of thinking and changing the habits of the mind (such like the habits of like to judge, to compare, to compete, expecting, projecting, assuming, non-concentrating and etc).

It helps us to be happier in life, not by rejecting our imperfect personality or imperfect life condition, but it is by accepting ourselves as we are and accepting our lives as they are, while at the mean time, without any expectations we are improving ourselves towards a better quality of life for ourselves, for the society, for humanity, for the world and for all beings who are sharing this whole universe.

It gives us the space to take a look at our own self, about the nature of our minds, how the mind reacts when it is being moved away and restricted from what it usually familiar with. It allows us to know about how much craving, clinging and attachment do we have in our mind and whether we are being over-powered by these craving, clinging and attachment, when we are not able to do the things that we usually do in life. We also learn about the aversion in our mind, whether we are being over-powered by what the mind likes and dislikes, how much control we have over our own craving and aversion, when we are asked to do things that we usually don't like to do, and not doing the things that we like to do, especially in a silent retreat where all types of communications with the world are restricted to the minimum.

It is a great opportunity to practice non-attachment and letting go.

Without any expectation towards what are the benefits that we will be getting from attending yoga retreats, everyone will have different experiences and different levels of transformation. While some people might have great resistance in letting go of the ego, pride and arrogance, craving and aversion, and be disturbed by their own conditioned and dissatisfied restless mind.

May all be happy and be benefited from attending yoga retreats.