USA Retreat May 11 – 14 Session Details
Power of Relaxation
Yogi Ashokananda will examine what is meant by true relaxation – a state that leads to self-awareness, good health, happiness and increased productivity.
Harnessing the energy of your subtle body and acquiring self-knowledge are key to relaxing into your true self and realizing your inner power. Yogi will highlight the traditional yogic beliefs that have influenced the meditation & mindfulness techniques and practices and will delve a little deeper into:
- Importance of yoga & posture
- Effects of relaxation on the nervous system
- Power of Self-realization
- Breath & Prana
You will be guided through basic relaxation practices, a fully guided meditation and Yogi will provide you with techniques to help you on your journey of self-fulfillment by encouraging self-examination, self-awareness and self-acceptance.
The practices are based on embracing the whole self and trying to create a sense of humanity, through accepting and transforming the lower three chakras, concerned with grounding, rootedness, mental and physical constipation, anger, sexuality, self-confidence, greed and lust.
The workshop will allow you to relax into your authentic self without the pressure of having to be “happy” all the time. When this pressure is released, you will feel more content and fulfilled. You will become more aware of your own patterns of behavior and the split between your material personality and your spiritual self. As life around you becomes increasingly frenetic, it is increasingly important to find inner stillness
Body Awakening – Himalayan Hatha Yoga
These sessions will allow you to experience the essence and authenticity of true Hatha Yoga with Yogi Ashokananda’s signature style of Himalayan Hatha Yoga.
During the Himalayan Hatha Yoga sessions, you will understand precise alignment and its effect within the asanas to stimulate correct engagement of the muscles and the importance of breath attention to open the body for awakening.
Awakened body through Himalayan Hatha Yoga practices brings ease into your day-to-day life, allowing the body to channel the energy and to embrace the emotions to live mindfully in everyday activities. An awakened body is anchored and balanced physically, mentally & emotionally.
Suitable for all levels, focusing on joint & ligament health, alignment strengthening the muscular system through the balanced sequences of Himalayan Hatha Yoga Series 1 & 4.
Himalayan Hatha Yoga is a strong, yet supportive form of yoga, working through the entire body, cleansing and revitalizing through a combination of physical & subtle body practices and special sequencing, each sequence with its own emphasis.
The focus of Himalayan Hatha Yoga is on inner body strength, breath, accuracy and alignment of the asanas, with consistent regard for a safe, healthy and balanced practice. To achieve this requires a strong connection with the breath and the body, which evolves over time through discipline and practice.
The philosophy is embedded in the practice itself, and the spiritual benefits occur through the physicality of it.
Breath Healing – Prana Kriya Yoga
These sessions will allow you to experience the essence and authenticity of true Kriya Yoga with Yogi Ashokananda’s signature style of Prana Kriya Yoga.
Prana Kriya Yoga harmonizes and unites the flow of the physical movement in our bodies (kriya) with its energetic power helping you become aware of your creative potential.
This form of yoga is one of the most effective means by which to achieve your goals and aspirations, material, emotional and spiritual, and bring your actions in line with your mental and emotional state. Prana Kriya Yoga has also long been highly regarded among many great masters and yogis to hold the key to slowing down the aging process. It achieves this by recharging the blood with oxygen and decarbonizing it, thus rejuvenating the brain and spinal centers and preventing the decay of tissues in the body.
It awakens the hidden energy (kundalini) within you allowing you to transform and free yourself from limiting beliefs and old behavioral patterns that hold you back.
Regardless of your physical strength and ability, Yogi will expertly guide you so that you can experience the layer of your highest consciousness by focusing on the fundamental principles of the practice. In these energetic and empowering sessions, we will go into fascinating detail and experience of Prana Kriya Yoga, the physical and subtle body alignment, stimulating the energy with the breath to channel throughout the body.
These sessions are suitable for all levels, focusing on gentle and subtle Kriyas in combination with the breath, primordial sounds and mudras, to create effects on the physical and subtle body with awareness of the sensations.
Restore & Revive – Himalayan Hatha Yoga
The Himalayan Hatha Yoga restorative practice will explore a limited number of asanas, using the mind and breath to take you deeper in the posture allowing you to truly let go.
Once you let go, the restoration can take place. The restorative practice will include asanas that bring your mind to a state of calm and stillness, lessening the strain on the nervous system, with less engagement of your physical body.
The postures will be done either seated, lying down on back or stomach. All the parts of the body are being used in such a way where the mental approach to them means you have less strain on your muscles so that the flow of the blood happens effortlessly and releases the tension from your nervous system for healing.
This type of restorative practice will give energy to the body and recharge you.
Atma Kriya Meditation
Yogi Ashokananda’s Atma Kriya Meditation holds the same transformative qualities as Prana Kriya Yoga. As a meditation it draws the energy inwards and an ecstatic and all peaceful state of being can be experienced. It moves the prana (life force) through the body into your higher consciousness by using the breath, gentle concentration of the mind and subtle awareness of the process. In Atma Kriya Meditation you offer up your energy to your higher self.
This meditation is one of the best remedies for improving concentration and memory as it fine tunes the mind. It also affects your nervous system, which feeds your organs and renews you from the inside out. It is highly effective for erasing depression, anxiety and stress giving you greater self-awareness and self-love.
Atma Kriya Meditation is not about going somewhere else, about imagining ourselves on a beautiful beach or a mountain summit. We are here. It is about staying here and going deeper. Deeper and deeper into the depths of ourselves. Journeying right down into the center of self (Atma).
This practice will help you calm your mind, relax the nervous system and let you feel positive overall in life while creating a positive and healing vibration for your body.
Atma Kriya Meditation will renew your energy, heighten intelligence by awakening and altering your perceptions, help you to have greater self-awareness, feel a connection to yourself, to others and to a source greater than you. Each one of us is entitled to feel greater inner peace, love, joy and fulfillment, happiness, freedom and success and this meditation will allow you to have access to the source within YOU from which these experiences can develop and make them a natural part of your life and who you are. It will help you to feel a connection to the energy of the universe.
These sessions are suitable for all experience levels.
Drop-in Participation Welcome, Meal included before or after the session
Mantra Chanting
Mantra Chanting has been in use since the period of the Vedas (c. 1500 –1200 BC) and is still prevalent today.
Mantra Chants in Sanskrit helps you to connect to yourself, with the universe and your spirit. Each Mantra impacts a specific area of the physical & energetic bodies and varying levels of vibrations are realized.
Mantra chanting creates a positive vibration that eliminates negativity from your mind. The increased vibration helps you to feel alive, peaceful, centered and detached from an unsettled mind. For example, chanting OM creates peace, tranquility and calms the nervous system, empowering growth.
Yogi will guide mantra chanting in sanskrit, with a call and response approach, unless or until the group is able to chant in unison with Yogi. There will be an opportunity for discussion on the meaning and focus of the mantra along with each individual’s experience with each mantra chanted.
Drop-in Participation Welcome, Meal included before or after the session
Discourse Sessions
Yogi will lead intriguing, thought provoking discussions related to self-fulfillment as the life journey to know yourself, to truly know yourself and to live your life based on your inner self.
Discussion topics will include managing and controlling your mind, your senses and your emotions, instead of reacting to them. The importance of transforming samskaras, which are hidden at a cellular level, created by a lifetime of emotions, stresses and memories that can result in disease, illness and poor health, i.e. poor, physical, emotional & mental health.
Yoga can be viewed as a basic physical practice, or it can be viewed as a way to live a meaningful and mindful life. on the foundation of yoga from a traditional perspective and how it applies in our modern day to day lives.
Yoga can be viewed as a basic physical practice, or it can be viewed as a way to live a meaningful and mindful life. Yoga is the life journey to know yourself, to truly know yourself and live your life based on your inner self.
Yogi will highlight the relevance and importance of meditation and mindfulness practices on the brain’s development and activity. The research in this area has been growing steadily for years with new studies being published weekly to illustrate the benefits, scientifically proven through MRi or EEG the benefits of these ancient practices.
Meditation practices have an amazing variety of neurological benefits – from changes in gray matter volume to reduced activity in the “me” centers of the brain (the brain network responsible for mind-wandering and self-referential thoughts – a.k.a., “monkey mind”) to enhanced connectivity between brain regions.
Meditation does produce measurable changes in our most important organ and whether you require scientific proof or not, it is never too late to being an actual practice to receive brain these impacts on your brain which will be highlighted during this retreat:
- Preserve the Aging Brain
- Reduces Activity in the Brain’s “Me Center”
- Its Effects Rival Antidepressants for Depression, Anxiety
- May Lead to Volume Changes in Key Areas of the Brain
- Improves Concentration and Attention (only after a few days of meditation)
- Reduces Anxiety — and Social Anxiety
- Can Help with Addiction
You will receive direct techniques for Self-Discovery that will help you to become more aware and able to directly transform your physical, emotional & mental health.
Drop-in Participation Welcome, Meal included before or after the session
Sangha
Sangha – Sanskrit means association or community.
The group gathering strengthens the magnetism of everyone’s association through discussion on a relevant topic. Yogi Ashokananda will lead the discussion and participants are encouraged to actively participate in the discussion.
The essence of a sangha is awareness, understanding, acceptance, harmony and love.
Sangha topics with Yogi have ranged from specific questions about an asana practice to deeper spiritual questions, including the meaning of life and everything in between.
Drop-in Participation Welcome, Meal included before or after the session
Puja – Sacred Vedic Fire Ceremony
Yogi will lead the Puja – fire ceremony with the focus on a specific intention, in this case the puja will focus on self-fulfillment.
The fire is prepared with specific items to support the intention, participants will be guided by pujari, Yogi Ashokananda, through the vedic rituals, including mantra chanting and offerings engaging each of the senses and elements.
Participants are invited to receive a blessing, represented by a specially prepared Puja Chandan Tilak (powder) as a symbol of loyalty, devotion, and commitment. Yogi will invoke the blessing with a mark on the forehead (at the ajna chakra), to recognize your own intellect.
Respecting your intellect ensures that thoughts, speech, actions, habits and ultimately your character becomes pure. The ajna chakra involves balancing the higher and lower selves and trusting inner guidance. Its inner aspect relates to visual consciousness and clarity on an intuitive level. The mark placed at this position is said to retain and enhance this energy, strengthening your concentration.
Drop-in Participation Welcome, Meal included before or after the session
Self-Contemplation / Free Time
Invest in yourself, spending very precious time to connect to yourself for Self-Contemplation.
Yogi will discuss the importance of Self-Contemplation and techniques to support this aspect of the practices.
Self-contemplation is a key practice during our time together and your empowerment towards self-fulfillment. It is an essential take-away from the retreat as you will develop an understanding of the concept & techniques that can continue beyond our retreat time together.
Self-contemplation helps you to refine the process of thought development, the further you go, the freer you can become.
Your entire body is a frequency, sound and space. When you go into silence you start to watch the ways in which your frequency may change. When you are not engaging or interacting physically, you can begin to observe without reacting to your mind.
Spend time with yourself, getting in touch with your senses. Make a conscious decision to understand how your senses are reacting to everything around you. Realign your awareness to your senses, it is important to fine tune this ability to hear and see yourself.
During your retreat “free time” walking, exploring and connecting in the natural surroundings of Camino Ranchito, between the meals & sessions in the Yoga Barn with Yogi are encouraged.
Connection to self through nature is natural, as we are made of the same 5 elements – Air, Space, Water, Fire & Earth. Each of these elements exist here at Camino Ranchito supporting your connection throughout the retreat. Where is your Nature when you return home?
Drop-in Participants are Welcome to enjoy the grounds of Camino Ranchito for Self-Contemplation
Q&A and Closing
The closing remarks from Yogi, summarizing the techniques to take home and how to continue the practices beyond the weekend. There will be more opportunity to discuss with Yogi any questions you have from the retreat.
Drop-in Participation Welcome, Meal included before or after the session