Bernd’s weekly blog No.3 : The Power of Retreat

Hi everyone!

It’s time for my weekly ramblings on various important yogic topics. If there’s ever anything particularly important for you personally you’d like me to write or talk on, please do reach out and let me know, and I will do so. Today I shall share some words with you on the topic of retreats!

The art of retreat is something crucial to understand and dive into, whatever your life aspirations may involve. In fact, even coming to any yogic/meditative practise involves retreating from the rest of your life for a time, and the more successfully you do this, the more deeply you travel within the yogic realms, and the more magic arises in your life. 

There’s a beautiful old saying in the yogic tradition that states, “You will only go so deep in your practise as much as you can renounce the world.” This is nothing to do with literally renouncing the world, as in becoming a celibate, minimalist monk, with no ties in life whatsoever! In fact, when we read the lives of the great yogis in history, most of them were in romantic relationships and marriages, and frequently had rather a staggering amount of children. What this really means is that when we are practising, we renounce the world. At the time of meditative practice of any kind, whatever it may be (and yes, of course all yoga is a meditative discipline, even the fun modern types! Just try moving through a complex vinyasa flow practise while the mind is not paying attention and focused…), we need to retreat from our lives for a time, and simply work with the body, the breath, awareness. 

All our usual concerns about our various life complexities need to be set aside, like one (if you are anything like me) gleefully gives the heavy suitcase to the human at the flight check in desk, leaving us multiple kilos lighter and happily traipsing through the airport, in search of a suitable chilling area. Our life concerns can indeed be very heavy, and taking them with us while practising these techniques doesn’t work so well. I would hazard a guess that many of you have experienced the lightness that comes from having worked with ourselves for a time, and allowing all our worries to recede into the background.

And yet we can take this a great deal further again. If you imagine all the joy of having at least a little break from stresses and worries, multiply that by a LOT, and you have the situation of being in a retreat or training or practise intensive situation. Actually stepping back from life for a few days or weeks can completely refresh our lives, frequently in quite dramatic and surprising ways. 

A personal and recent example. I was just recently on retreat myself, as a student, with my primary teacher, Guruji Pradeep Ullal, in India, at the Kevala Foundation. I was in that space for just under two weeks, and it quite literally changed my life. A lot happened, pretty much all of it joyful and liberating, and I came back to Bali feeling full of purpose and direction and trust in the unfolding of my own sacred life and journey. I will talk about this a lot more, and share stories, both in this format and my IG posts and lives, in coming times, but for now suffice it to say that having drawn from the well, and drunk the sweet, cool water of freedom, nothing is the same any more. In the best possible way.

By stepping away from it all, we first of all actually find our own depths again, but there’s even more than that. Our daily life will feel very different when we come back to it. It’s no longer a case of survival and challenges, or (while this has never been an issue for me, it’s certainly common for many) boredom. Life itself feels more, well, alive! There’s a brightness and vividness there that was in fact always there, but unseen and unfelt. Life unfolds with more of a sense of magic, rather than mundane materialistic existence.

However you do it, find a way to do something like this. Even if you just manage to take a long weekend, book into a quiet cabin somewhere on your own, and practise yogic things as deeply as you can, with your phone having a bit of a break too, you may be surprised at how replenishing this can be, and how new perspectives can arise for us, making a lot more sense out of all the mess of our lives.

Actually all of this is my inspiration for our upcoming 200 hour Yoga Teacher Training at The Path, running throughout February 2024 (click through on the homepage for more information). Whether you wish to teach yoga or not, this is largely irrelevant. The opportunity is there to spend a month (with some days off!) going as deeply as possible into your own inner landscape, being totally immersed in yogic explorations. I have given myself the task to guide you as best I can into the mythical worlds of experience that are actually there, but usually remain behind the scenes, to lead you into a deep forest, where mystery and wildness lurk behind every tree, and your life can actually open up in quite possibly a dramatic, staggeringly beautiful way. The whole team will be there to support you in this. Feel free to ask me or the team for more information.

I will close these words with an exhortation. Find a way to retreat. At the very least, as often as possible per week (the yogi ideally practises daily), but if you can, go forth out of your current world of daily concerns, leave them for just a little while, and enter the world of your true nature for a time.

You will not come back the same person you were going in.

With love and encouragement on all our journeys,

Bernd.