There is a way of meditating that doesn’t ask you to withdraw from life. It asks you to enter it more deeply. To listen from within. To sense the body as the first doorway into awareness.
This retreat opens into that way. Guided by the Vijñāna Bhairava Tantra, the ancient Kashmiri Shaiva text that reveals 112 doorways into existence, this retreat invites you to rediscover meditation through breath, touch, movement, sound, and the ordinary moments of a day.
Here, the sacred is not something distant. It shows itself quietly in gesture, in rhythm, in the pulse of the body, in the wind across the Nilgiris.
What this retreat offers
This is not a retreat of effort. It is a retreat of softening, of coming home to the senses, to the ground beneath your feet, to the simple intelligence of the body. Over three unhurried days, you’ll explore:
Dhāraṇās from the Vijñāna Bhairava Tantra
Selected practices are introduced gently, first understood in essence, then entered directly. They reveal how awareness is woven into breath, movement, relationship, and life itself.
Somatic movement journeys
Quiet, internal movements that awaken sensitivity and settle the nervous system. These sessions help you feel spanda, the subtle pulse where the physical and the subtle meet.
Creative & group explorations
Playful, expressive moments that shift us from isolation to participation. Through mirroring, responsive movement, and shared creativity, we experience awareness as a field we inhabit together.
Celebratory relaxation sessions
Evenings open into humming, soft rhythm, gentle percussion, and heart-opening relaxation. Joy becomes a doorway into presence.
Nature connection
Walks through the Nilgiri hills invite you to sense the living earth as part of your own awareness. In Kashmir Shaivism, the 36 tattvas are not abstractions, they are the world itself, shining.
Evening circles
Simple, unforced spaces to listen, share, and let the day settle into meaning. This is meditation as participation and not escape. Meditation as intimacy with life.
Daily Rhythm
07:30 – 08:30 · Internal-awareness movement
08:30 – 09:30 · Breakfast & silent integration
10:00 – 13:00 · VBT explorations & meditations
13:30 – 15:30 · Lunch & quiet assimilation
15:30 – 17:30 · Creative movement & group practice
19:00 – 20:00 · Satsang · humming & relaxation
20:00 – 21:00 · Dinner
21:15 – 22:00 · Optional integration circle
22:30 · Lights out
Invitation & Participation
This retreat is primarily for those who already have some regular meditation or contemplative practice and feel a genuine pull to explore the embodied methods of the Vijñāna Bhairava Tantra.
If you are relatively new to meditation but feel a strong, unexplainable resonance with Kashmir Shaivism or with the idea of meeting life itself as meditation, please write to us - we welcome sincere beginners who sense they belong here.
We also joyfully invite scholars of Kashmir Shaivism who wish to move from theory into lived practice and, in time, share these teachings with others.
In short: if something in your heart quietly says “this is for me,” trust that feeling and reach out. We will listen and respond with care.
If it calls you, please tell us a bit about yourself through this form (takes 2 minutes) by 12 Dec 2025.
