THE SOUNDS OF SANSKRIT spiral

Begins 27TH April 2024

Three retreat days to enquire into the nature of the Self through sound, enquiry, teachings, and silence.

Super early bird ends February 15th – £290
EARLY BIRD ends 15th March ~ £340
FULL PRICE ~ £390

(plus a 10% discount for previous course participants – either ‘The Sounds of Sanskrit ~ The Language of Yoga’, ‘The mṛtyuñjaya’, or ‘Learn to Read Sanskrit’)

retreat orientation

For those who are new to this work, or for those who have joined a course in the past, this is a way of gently entering, or rejoining the spiral of knowing that Sanskrit offers.
Through meditation, sound, enquiry and teachings, we will find an experiential reference point for the depth and breadth of the realm of sound, meaning and vision.
We will also offer the mind a knowledge base that helps to embody further our experience.
Orienting towards allowing the kernel of this teaching to arise within ourselves, we let go into the recognition of that which is already within.
And rest in the fluid and revelatory force of the sounds of Sanskrit, in response to the requirements of the moment, as they gently guide us into themself.

spiral of knowing

We will touch upon and enquire into the themes below, as they are called forth in the moment.

cakra: sound and silence
cakra sing the ancient lullaby of the Mother, softly holding between.
svara: the celestial spirit of the veda
It was the glints and glimmers of light within the svara that led me into the heart of mantra.
haṭha yoga: from exile to wholeness
And so it was that one Saturday morning, the dismembered parts of myself rose to meet me as I became the yielding of parts into the fabric of love; the space into which the dark and light commune.
Sensing tantra, mantra, yantra
As we thread the warp, tantra extends beyond the confines of a physical loom; its essence hidden in the mantra of finger rubbing fabric, and the yantra of
emerging form.
The golden dawn of gāyatrī
Over the past twenty years of my own life, the glow of gāyatrī (perhaps the most famous of all mantra to have ever existed) has cracked through the apparent solidity of form, dawning its hue of splendour in a myriad
of scented expressions
mātṛkā: held in the arms of the mother
The fourteen vowels, and the two essential movements of the timeless and the vast lead us back: held in the sweet uninhibited embrace of the mother.
yoga sūtra: walking away from the bank of the stream
It was as though I had spent my entire life sitting on the bank of a stream, mesmerised by my reflection in the rippling water. And then one day I stood up. And I walked away from the bank of the stream.

saṁkalpa: bringing the mother of the Gods to court
The words “not guilty” rang like an explosion through my being. The English judicial system had been ignited with the force of a love so raw and fundamental that the crucible of its transformation now howled through me. The mother of the Gods had been brought to court.

maheśvara: the cosmic dance of creation
The dancing śiva – the effects of these sounds reverberate throughout the Sanskrit system and beyond. And the Lord of the dance sings forth.

The āsya: the light rays of the Sanskrit language
‘Letters with the same articulation are one’, or to put it another way, ‘when the unity of the inherent efforts of our being are seen, equality prevails’.
The cosmos of the word
How did ‘the Word’ become flesh? And where exactly does ‘the Word’ dwell amongst us? This elusive ‘Word’ is first mentioned by St. John in the opening of his gospel: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”. But what is ‘the Word’? And could turning to actual words help me to find the answer?
The cosmos of the sentence
Each sentence is an expression of the interplay between verbs and nouns: between the fundamental and universal forces of the formless and form, of the unseen and seen, and of movement and stillness. Everything we think, or express being contained within this structure, the sentence cannot thus be separated from our experience of life.
The four stages of speech: a voice unfolding
As a child I couldn’t speak in front of most adults: I felt as though I had an impenetrable block in my throat and my being would freeze as I failed to produce a sound.
  Surrender when the shit really hits the fan
As I lay convulsing on the hospital floor, my body exploding with resistance, my jagged mind splintering, it didn’t appear that my year of meditation on the experience of surrender was throwing me much of a lifeline.

Retreat dates (All Saturdays):

27th April

25th May

22nd June

Retreat TIMES:

9:30*–16:00
(1 x 30min break in the morning,
1 hour for lunch
1 x 20min break in the afternoon)
* Start at 9.00am on the first day to give time for introductions.

LOCATION:

online via zoom.
all videos available after the event if you are not able to make the live event.

Retreat includes:

meditative writings on the points of enquiry we dwell upon.
Notes to help the mind embody the teachings.
mp3 recordings of mantra.
access to the videos after the live event.

About the Sanskrit language:

Sanskrit literally means ‘the perfected sounds of of unity’ – every micro step of creation has been observed and reflected through it sound, and the entirety of its expression can be felt or known in a single moment.
The ‘san’ of ‘Sanskrit’ is the etymological root of the English ‘same’, and it also carries the sense of being ‘refined’. Sanskrit therefore, is the refined vision of the imperfect mess we find ourselves in. Our passion, our wisdom, our love, our peace, our stability, all are refined, into one broken vision of wholeness through the Sanskrit sounds.
Embodying the chaos of life living entirely through us, the sounds allow us to realise ourselves as life, perfectly done, flowing through this human form. And finally, we are free.