Residential Retreat – “Yoga in Everyday Life”

Dates: 27^th to 29^th December, 2024

Venue: Sri Aurobindo Dhama, Sangama-Mekedatu, Kanakpura, Karnataka

The BhāratShakti team conducted a 2-day Residential Retreat on the theme – “Yoga in Everyday Life” on 28^thand 29^th December, 2024 at Sri Aurobindo Dhama, located in the serene and beautiful natural surroundings at the banks of Kaveri river in Sangama-Mekedatu in Kanakpura, Karnataka. This was the institute’s second retreat at this venue, and built on some of the ideas explored during the first retreat conducted in 2023 on the topic – Sri Aurobindo and the New Age.

The workshop was planned and organised by the core team of BhāratShakti (Dr. Beloo Mehra, Director, Mr. Narendra Murty, Research Associate, and Ms. Biswajita Mohapatra, Research Assistant). Detailed planning went into finalising several details of the retreat. Along with the team’s core members, the facilitators’ team at the retreat venue included three more volunteer resource persons – Dr. Runalika Roy, Mr. Siraj Dutta, and Ms. Pallavi Krishna. The programme execution had complete support from the administrators and trustees of Sri Aurobindo Dhama.

The retreat began on the evening of December 27^thwith a brief concentration to invoked the Divine Mother’s presence. This was followed by an Introductory session. This meet-and-greet session allowed the group of about 40 people to know one another and get an idea of what to expect during the retreat. Shri Aryamuni, the President of Om Shanti Dhama was the special guest for the evening. He shared with the participants his journey of discovering Sri Aurobindo’s and the Mother’s vision of a new race, and how this led him to deeply study the works of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Dr. Mehra then gave a brief overview of the retreat schedule and encouraged the participants to actively engage throughout the sessions and particularly in the Question-and-Answer sessions.

On both the days, the programme began early in the morning with chanting and readings from Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri. Specific passages chosen from Savitri also resonated with the themes that were explored during the retreat. Such references were made throughout the different sessions. On the second day, this morning meditation session was held at the riverbank, which made the experience especially enchanting and elevating for all. A few of the participants also joined in with their offerings of bhajans.

The sessions began with some Mother’s music followed by a few minutes of Concentration with Bansuri music, played by Ms. Pallavi Krishna. On day 1, she also briefly explained about Nada Yoga and helped participants experience deepening of the concentration.

The chosen subjects for the retreat were addressed through a variety of activities including presentations, Q & A, creative individual and group activities, and reflective exercises. The main emphasis was about making Yoga relevant to Everyday Life – especially in the areas of Work, Money and Human Relations.

Following key sessions were held during the retreat.

Integral Yoga and Life

Dr Beloo Mehra in her opening presentation built on Sri Aurobindo’s fundamental premise: All Life is Yoga. She emphasised that Integral Yoga is in no way cut off from life but rather aims at elevating life to its divine possibility. To highlight the life-affirming nature of Integral Yoga, as all true spirituality is, she zoomed in on selected passages from The Synthesis of Yoga to expand upon this point. She illustrated these points with simple explanations and examples.

The Yogic Attitude to Work

In her second session focused on Work, Dr. Mehra highlighted the significance of Yoga of Works in Integral Yoga. She used selections from various passages of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother to emphasize that work helps us to keep up the balance between the internal experience and growth and its manifestation in external life and world. Through simple examples and anecdotes, she expanded on the idea that if we only focus on inner development in our sadhana path, we may develop exaggerated ideas about our progress and through our work, especially with others, we can bring out the inner progress into the external nature and life. And this helps with the integrality of the sadhana.

Dealing with Change at the Workplace

Siraj Dutta presented a lively session drawing from his own experience when he underwent a mental and emotional challenge at his workplace and how he coped with it. He gave useful strategies about how to weigh options, making an assessment of one’s own financial assets and liabilities, exploring possible avenues for upskilling, assessing how the change would impact the family etc. He focused more on the deeper psychological aspects and implications of going through a major change at workplace.

The Money Force

Narendra Murty spoke on the importance of money for the physical and vital base of our existence but wondered at the materialistic obsession of our culture where amassing of wealth becomes the sole motivation of life which Sri Aurobindo termed as economic barbarism. Thereafter drawing from the quotes of Adi Sankara and Sri Aurobindo, it was presented how to integrate the money force into our lives and thereby making it a part of our Yoga instead of clinging to it or shunning it and viewing ourselves as trustees rather than possessors of wealth.

Humour in Spiritual Journey

In his next presentation, Narendra Murty drew from his book Eating His Money to bring to light how Humour has been used for inner purification by the Sufi Masters through the jokes of Mulla Nasrudin. He told the audience that the jokes of Nasrudin were meditation exercises developed by the Sufi Masters over centuries for their disciples. He used two jokes as illustrations where two essential qualities on the spiritual path, namely self-mastery (Swarat) and aspiration and also what Sri Aurobindo had to say about them.

What is This Thing Called Love?

On the second day of the Retreat, Dr. Beloo Mehra spoke on the theme of love. The focus of the session was on highlighting how much of the disharmony we experience in the emotional part of our being is due to our inability to fully grasp the true nature of love which is or should ideally be the basis of all relationships in life.

Dr. Mehra began with a brief recounting of the Mother’s description of the story of creation which explains the descent of Love as a Force of the Supreme which hides itself deep down in the Inconscient. This story, she explained, highlights how Love is at the very foundation of entire manifestation and what we human experience as individual love is an expression of this universal force which is looking to manifest in an instrument that is open and receptive.

Human Relations and Yoga

In his presentation, Narendra Murty dwelt on the root causes of conflict and the need for detachment in relationships instead of clinging and possessiveness which make them toxic. He stressed on the importance of giving rather taking which was illustrated by the quotes of the Mother like The Rungs of Love and Sri Aurobindo’s assertion that no permanent satisfaction can ever be found in human relations which can only be found in the divine.

Q & A sessions

Every session was followed by open interactions where the participants came up with their questions and they were discussed in depth with inputs from the facilitators and from other participants as well.

Experiential Learning

Additionally, three main creative and reflective learning-based experiential sessions were held during the retreat. These were co-facilitated by the team members and volunteers.

The Money Movement — this rhythmic movement exercise was designed to help participants deepen their understanding of how to cultivate right attitude toward money by reflecting on their own experience.
Harmony in Work – this group exercise helped participants use their creative imaginations to work as teams while also deepening their understanding of a key passage from one of the writings of Sri Aurobindo or the Mother about yogic attitude to life and work.
Let’s have some fun – this was another enjoyable game to facilitate an experience of humour while also exercising our concentration power and deepening a sense of collegiality.

The entire 2-day period was spent in a joyful spirit of learning and communing with nature. During the final closing session, the participants expressed their heartfelt gratitude. Token gifts expressing mutual gratitude and goodwill were also exchanged between the BhāratShakti team and Sri Aurobindo Dhama team.

Sample of some feedback from the participants:

I appreciated learning about the right value and place of money when trying to practice sadhana, and also about the right attitude toward human relationships.
All the topics concerning Love, Relationships, Attitude towards life and work were very helpful.
The idea of integral surrender for Divine’s work and becoming the perfect instrument for Divine’s work was strengthened in me.
Appreciated learning about how Integral yoga can be integrated into life.
Learned how one can dedicate one’s work to The Mother.
It was helpful for me to rethink from a spiritual perspective my mental ideas and formulation about money.