2023 Weekend Retreats

• March 10 – 12
• May 12 – 14 –
  “What is the future that I am drawn to help develop?”
• September 22 – 24

2022 Weekend Retreats

• March 18 – 20
• June 17 – 19
• September 16 – 18
• November 4 – 6

2021 Theme:

The responsibility of the yoga practitioner
in a world in transition.

“All shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.”

– Julian of Norwich

2021 Dates & Themes

• 22-24 January – Cleansing Yoga Weekend – €350 all inclusive  – Cancelled due to Covid
• 19-21 March
• 18-20 June – It is not ‘Thou shalt not be tempested, thou shalt not be travailed, thou shalt not be dis-eased.’ But it is ‘Thou shalt not be overcome.’”
  – Julian of Norwich
• 12-18 July – Yoga Week – €850 all inclusive
• 17-19 September – “Our life is all grounded and rooted in love, and without love we may not live.”
  – Julian of Norwich
• 22-24 October – “See that I am in everything. See that I do everything. See that I have never stopped ordering my works, nor ever shall, eternally. See that I lead everything on to the conclusion I ordained for it before time began, by the same power, wisdom and love with which I made it. How can anything be amiss?”
  – Julian of Norwich
• 10-12 December

2020 Theme:

The responsibility of the yoga practitioner
in a world in transition.

Working with Negativity

We all experience negativity – the basic aggression of wanting things to be different than they are. We cling, we defend, we attack, and throughout there is a sense of one’s own wretchedness, and so we blame the world for our pain. This is negativity.

We experience it as terribly unpleasant, foul-smelling, something to get rid of. But if we look into it more deeply, it has a very juicy smell and is very alive. Negativity is not bad per se, but something living and precise, connected with reality.

– Chogyam Trungpa – The Myth of Freedom (1976)

2020 Dates & Themes

Yoga Room

• 7-9 February
  • “Everything is workable … chaotic situations must not be rejected … we must respect whatever happens to our state of mind. Chaos could be regarded as extremely good news.”  – Chogyam Trungpa – The Myth of Freedom, pg69
• 19-21 June
  • “Mindfulness is the process of relating with individual situations directly, precisely, definitely.”  – Chogyam Trungpa – The Myth of Freedom, pg49
• 6-12 July – Yoga Week
  • Yoga, Shamanism, Personal Therapies. 7 nights. €750 – all inclusive
• 18-20 September
  • “There but for the grace of God, go I”
• 23-25 October
  • “For Hegel, the inner movement of reality is the process of God thinking as manifested in the evolution of the universe of nature and thought; Hegel argued that, when fully understood, reality is being thought by God as manifested in a person’s comprehension of this process.”

2019 Theme:

The responsibility of the yoga practitioner
in a world in transition.

Ch 3 v27 – All actions take place in time by the interweaving of the forces of Nature;
but the man lost in selfish delusion thinks that he himself is the actor.

Ch 3 v28 – But the man who knows the relation between the forces of Nature and actions,
sees how some forces of Nature work upon other forces of Nature, and become not their slave

– The Bhagavad Gita

 
This programme runs over 4 residential weekends during the year, costing €245 per weekend per person sharing, single room available for €295, plus one week of yoga (see below for price). These weekends can be participated in a one by one basis. Starting Friday evening at 7pm and finishing after lunch on Sunday 3pm. Teaching, accommodation and food all included.

2019 Dates & Themes

“The extra-ordinary question we are facing now is:

‘Are we going to make it as a species at all?’

Civilizations tend to collapse; this is the norm. What is different today is that we have a globally interdependent civilization with unmatched technological advances in artificial intelligence and biotechnology while we are also debasing the substrate on which we depend.

We are dealing with a society which supports rivalry in the middle of:

• exponential population growth
• exponential depletion of our resources
• exponential pollution while factoring in
• technologies that enable us self-terminate on a global scale taking most of the other species with us.

What could be a narrative for the 21st century that could lead to a different social bond that is not based on rivalry, the exponential depletion and exponential pollution of our habitat?

And how can or does a yoga practice contribute to that?”

Marlene ffrench Mullen, 2018

Yoga Room

• 1 -3 March
  • “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy) – John Lennon
• 7-9 June
  • “Reality leaves a lot to the imagination” – John Lennon
• July 8 – 15 – Yoga Week
  • Yoga, Shamanism, Personal Therapies. 7 nights. €750 – all inclusive
• 27 -29 September
  • “A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.” – Yoko Ono
• 25 – 27 October
  • “Everything will be okay in the end. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end?” – Fernando Sabino

2018 Theme – Choice versus Mastery

BREAKING THE GRIP OF IGNORANCE

स्वयसवाही णवदुषोऽणऩ तथारूढोऽणबणनवशे: ॥ ९॥

II.9 Insecurity is the inborn feeling of anxiety for what is to come. It affects both the ignorant and the wise.

– T.K.V. Desikachar, Patanjali’s Yogasutras, An Introduction

This programme runs over 4 residential weekends during the year, costing €245 per weekend per person sharing, single room available for €295, plus one cleansing weekend and one week of yoga (see below for prices). These weekends can be participated in on a one by one basis. Starting Friday evening at 7pm and finishing after lunch on Sunday 3pm. Teaching, accommodation and food all included.

2018 Dates & Themes

“Good times come and go. And the bad times do the same. Still, we spend much of our time and energy trying to get the good times back. We fail to notice that the good time arrives of its own. Likewise the bad times appear even though we spend much time and energy trying to keep it at bay.

We don’t want bad times, of course. But bad times are out of our control as much as good times. The times we don’t want will come (and go) no matter what we do to control the situation. The good times will do the same. Thus, beyond just simply living fully in each moment, we should realize that such control is impossible, a pipe dream.

This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t set things up for the future. It does mean that we would do well not to become attached to particular outcomes. We’d do better focussing our effort on being present rather than on isisting on what the future must be.

Breaking the grip of ignorance and craving comes with just seeing, not with doing something particular about it. Once you see, your course of action will naturally follow.”

Steve Hagen, “Buddhism Plain and Simple”, Penguin Books 1997

• 12 -14 January 2018
  

  Yoga Room

  • Cleansing Weekend (Fully booked)
• 9 – 11 March 2018
  • To act or not to act is never the question. You can’t help but act.
• 18 – 20 May
  • The Germans have an expression, “Whoever has choice,has torment.” Can freedom be defined as the maximization of choice?
• July 7 – 14 2018 – Yoga Week
  • Yoga, Shamanism, Personal Therapies. 7 nights. €595 – all inclusive
• 21 -23 September
  • What is the difference between wanting and craving, picking and choosing?
• 16 – 18 November 2018
  • Who am I? What am I doing here? Can I control my destiny?

2017 Theme – Further Testing Yoga

“तपः स्वाध्यायेश्वरप्रणिधानानि क्रियायोग”

“tapaḥ svādhyāy-eÅ›varapraṇidhānāni kriyā-yoga”

“The practice of Yoga must reduce both physical and mental impurities. It must develop our capacity for self-examination and help us to understand that, in the final analysis, we are not the masters of everything we do.”

– T.K.V. Desikachar, Patanjali’s Yogasutras, An Introduction

2016 Theme – Further Testing Yoga

“The universe exists in order that the experiencer may experience it,
and thus become liberated.”

– Yoga Sutras Of Patanjali

Yoga Room

2016 Dates & Themes

“Your duty is to be and not to be this or that. ‘I am that I am’ sums up the whole truth.”

― Ramana Maharshi

• 29/30/31 January 
  • There is no balance, there are only balancing acts?
    • The gunas are a great map for navigating your way through life. When you can recognize which of these energies is at play in your life, it makes it so much easier to bring about a state of balance.
  • My Stroke Of Insight (Ted Talk)
• 22/23/24 April
  • “The object of experience exists only to serve the purpose of the Atman” – Patanjali Yoga Sutras
  • Who decides what morality is?
  • Deepak Chopra Higher States of Consciousness – Youtube video
• 27/28/29 May
  • “The happiness of one’s own heart alone cannot satisfy the soul; one must try to include, as necessary to one’s own happiness, the happiness of others.” – Paramahansa Yogananda
  • Death As An Invitation To Freedom – Anam Cara Quotes by John O’Donohue
• 15/16/17 July
  • “What could be more insane than to oppose life itself … Say “yes” to life — and see how life suddenly starts working for you rather than against you.” – Eckhart Tolle
  • “The decision to lead a sacred life is our own to make, everything else we get from the universe” – The Sacred Matrix – Dieter Duhm
• 19/20/21 August
  • “Never apologise for what you do well” – Anon
  • “Hide not your talents, they for use were made,
    What’s a sundial in the shade?”  – Benjamin Franklin
• 16/17/18 September
  • “Would you rather be right or would you rather be happy?”
• 21/22/23 October
  • “The problem for us is not are our desires satisfied or not. The problem is how do we know what we desire.” – Slavoj Žižek
• 2/3/4 December
  • “The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.” –  Mark Twain

2015 Dates and Themes – “The pain which is yet to come may yet be avoided.”

“There are three kinds of karma: the karma which has already been created and stored up, so that it will bear fruit in some future life, the karma created in the past or in some previous life, which is bearing fruit at the present moment, and the karma which we are now in the process of creating by our thoughts and acts. Of these, the already existing karmas are beyond our control; we can only wait until they have worked themselves out, and accept their fruits with courage and patience. But the karmas which we are now creating—”the pain which is yet to come”—can be avoided. Not by ceasing to act—that would be impossible, even if it were desirable—but by ceasing to desire the fruits of action for oneself. If we dedicate the fruits of action to God, we shall gradually unwind the wheel of karma and thus avoid its pain.”

– The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali (transl. Swami Prabhavananda)

• 30/31 January/1 February
  • This Moment Matters
• 27/28 February/1 March
  • Karma and Forgiveness
• 27/28/29 March
  • The body never stops speaking
  • There is no balance only balancing acts
• 5/6/7 June
  • Karma and Healing – what astrology has to say.  Nele Costers from Adara Astrology produced a powerpoint presentation on Saturn and Karma for download.
  • The pursuit of happiness; not a “deathbed conversion”
• 18/19/20 September
  • Karma is not what happens to you but who it happens to.
• 16/17/18 October
  • Life doesn’t just happen, it requires our participation.
• 27/28/29 November
  • Everything happens for a reason. Or does it?