The Practice

These retreats are held in silence and built around a daily rhythm of yoga, meditation, breathwork, movement, and self-inquiry. Each practice supports the others. Together they create an environment for something that is difficult to manufacture in ordinary life — genuine stillness, and the direct experience of who we are beneath the noise of it.

These retreats are for those genuinely drawn to inner inquiry. Not a spa weekend, but something that goes much deeper.

Silence is the container that holds everything else. Free from the pull of conversation and distraction, something naturally begins to settle. The habit of looking outward for meaning quietly shifts to sensing ourselves from within.

In silence, we begin to notice the space in which all thought arises — the steady, ever-present awareness that is our true nature. A retreat held in silence supports this unfolding. Participants return to their lives rested and renewed, with greater clarity about what truly matters.

Silence

Yoga

Sessions draw from classical hatha, vinyasa, yin, and restorative yoga. The emphasis is not on performance or achievement but on fluid movement and personal exploration — cultivating an internal reference point rather than an external one. Surya's teaching of yoga asana is informed by his studies with T.K.V. Desikachar in Madras, India, as well as Victor van Kooten, Angela Farmer, Richard Miller, and teachers in the Iyengar and yin traditions.

Meditation

The Practice

Meditation periods are approximately 20 to 30 minutes and draw on the Vipassana and nondual traditions. Guidance is offered in breath awareness and open attention — the invitation simply to relax and be with what is, as it is, without manipulation, so that we may come to rest in the natural state of awareness.

Breathwork

Breathwork is one of the most direct paths to personal transformation we offer. A dynamic and subtle practice for releasing, purifying, and healing — it bridges the conscious and subconscious, opening the heart and attuning us with something deeper than thought.

The breathwork offered in these retreats draws from several traditions:

Sacred Breathwork — rooted in the work of Stan and Christina Grof's Holotropic Breathwork, using conscious connected breath, evocative music, and deep inner focus to open non-ordinary states of consciousness. The process brings more awareness into the body, releasing stored stress, repressed feelings, and long-held patterns.

Classical Pranayama — breath-focused practices from the yogic tradition, appropriate for all levels. Pranayama extends and expands life force energy, focuses the mind, and steadies the body. It is an integral part of the retreat's daily practice.

Middendorf Breathwork — an organic, intimate approach that allows the breather to discover the body's own natural response and the sensory awareness of breath. By focusing on perception rather than technique, this practice opens a window into the inner life and the role of breath in healing.

Self-Inquiry

Self-inquiry is an opportunity to awaken to the truth of who we are. Through honest, embodied attention to long-held patterns of conditioned behavior, the veil that keeps us from the peace of our true nature begins to lift.

Surya's approach to self-inquiry is deeply influenced by the teachings of Jiddu Krishnamurti, who stressed the importance of each individual discovering their own truth — without dogma, ritual, or technique — and by the Advaita tradition of Ramana Maharshi.

Movement

Movement explorations offer a different kind of inquiry — one that bypasses the thinking mind and drops into the body directly. Drawing from Authentic Movement and Continuum Movement, these sessions invite participants to slip through the cracks of conditioning and experience a different quality of presence altogether.

A note on what to expect

Each day moves through these practices in a rhythm that deepens naturally over the course of five days. There is also generous unstructured time — for walking, resting, sitting with nature, and simply being. This unhurried quality is part of the teaching itself.