The Retreat Experience

Swaha’s retreats are an invitation to go deeper and realize the true freedom that you are.

That’s how I have designed these retreats: first you can laugh, cry, scream, paint and play to empty yourself out in many different ways. You start feeling instead of thinking. You start landing, you start enjoying yourself, becoming more alive, getting involved in the mystery of life. Then it’s easier to go into silence, because you are alive, you are happy. If you are restless, sad, angry – with all these things that you normally carry with you… who wants to be in silence? That’s why very few people are interested in meditation, because they are so full of stress, anger, projections, fear; thinking about the future, concerned about the past… First all this has to go. That is my recipe.”

Vasant Swaha

Everybody is unique, therefore we offer a wide variety of meditations and therapies during the retreats. This gives you the opportunity to explore yourself and find out what really works for you on your personal journey towards inner peace and clarity.

Retreat Structure

The retreats are normally structured in two parts.

The first part is focused on opening up and emptying out the body-mind system through creativity and celebration. This provides an opportunity to release stress and tension on all levels of your being, and to come back to the purity of the heart. Among the many different techniques we use are active meditations (such as Osho Dynamic and Kundalini meditations), gibberish, dance, singing, rebirthing and bioenergetics.

I always remind you: use the opportunity while you are here. Much more can happen here in a week than in a year alone. That is why it’s so important that you unload your mind while you are here – if anything comes up, you should empty it out. And that’s exactly why we have many active meditations. Otherwise you can understand something, but it sits in the memory of your body, of your emotions, of your feelings. So I’m all for you getting integrated as a complete human being, on all the different dimensions of your being.”

Vasant Swaha

In the second part, the focus is on silence and being. All retreats with Swaha offer you the opportunity to be in silence. This helps you to bring the focus of your energy back to your being. Gradually we invite the silence, so it can be experienced from within – an oasis for those who are longing for peace and relaxation. The whole program is arranged to give support to the silent space inside you. Techniques include: ‘Who Am I?’ inquiry exercises, Vipassana, Latihan, Nadabrahma, Chi Kung and silent walks in nature.

Meditation is our natural state of silence and contentment. It doesn’t belong to any religion or country, but is the very core of religiousness… It is universal. Anybody who travels the path of meditation will become peaceful and loving. This is what the world needs today. More than ever. Yes, you will have to face yourself – your thoughts and ideas that separate you and hold you back. But your true face is of happiness. Finding that original face is the journey of meditation.”

Vasant Swaha

During each retreat there are a variety of individual sessions available for the wellbeing of body, mind and soul.

With all this, the main focus of the retreats is Satsang with Vasant Swaha – the meeting in truth and love between the Master and his disciples and friends. Just to be around a mystic can cause a profound change; you start remembering your own inner universe. It is immeasurably deep, and brings a tremendous sense of joy, peace and freedom.

What is happening here is very unusual in this world. Where do people sit so beautifully in silence? There is a way of doing which is the way of the world, of the masses; and there is a way of non-doing, which is the way of the seeker, of the meditator. There is a way of seeing with the eyes: going out, and there is a way of seeing with the eyes closed: to learn to see from the heart. How can you see from the heart? First you have to feel it. That’s why it is so important to go in, to rest, to be centered. Then you will use the eyes in a different way – not from your head, but from the heart. Nobody is teaching that art. That is the art of the Masters, that is Satsang – to fall in tune, to fall in tune with the Master, and in that way you fall in tune with yourself. You start remembering your divine Being.”

Vasant Swaha