The Kriya Yoga Retreat

The main part of the 1-month Kriya Yoga course includes a period of silence of about 21 days, when the learning of the advanced Kriya Yoga takes place. Kriya Yoga can only be properly learned with thorough preparation and under conditions such as these, thus ensuring full absorption.

To participate in this retreat you must have completed one of our 10 day retreats or longer.
You should also practice the Ajapa Japa or Kriya Yoga that you have learned here, regularly for at least 6 months, before the Kriya Yoga Retreat.

(You can however learn Kriya Yoga on the 3‑Month Sadhana Retreat without having participated in any other course.)

The Kriya Yoga course even includes various advanced meditations and yoga techniques. We warm up with the methods that you have learnt on the shorter courses, including Shankhaprakshalana.

“I experience Kriya Yoga as a powerful meditation giving me a clearly-felt increase in energy, and a state where it is difficult to hold on to tensions and depressions. It cleans out my subconscious in a more effective way than any other method I know. The strength that I generate makes it easier to tolerate and confront the content of my mind, and makes my dreams clearer. I am able to face that which would normally distract me or make me forget who I am.

In my experience, those who use this Kriya Yoga considerably reduce their need for sleep, and also strengthen and develop their creative abilities.”  (Swami Janakananda)

Measurements taken by an Indo‑French research team (Das & Gasteaut 1957) show, that “Kriya Yoga has more thorough effects than any other known therapy or relaxation technique.” This was confirmed by Erik Hoffman, initially in 1991, in the article, "Lasting and deep-reaching effects - 6 years of research on the 3-Month Courses in Sweden" and again in 1998: "Mapping the brains activity after Kriya Yoga".

“Kriya Yoga is a rite, a ceremony, a method, a sadhana. It is a method of refining one’s forces so that the individual awareness can penetrate the depth of one’s nature.”  (Swami Satyananda)

“Anyone who is inclined to do something about his or her own development will be able to learn and use this dynamic and deep‑reaching tool. The possibility is there when the aspiration is strong enough.”  (Swami Janakananda)

Prepare yourself by practicing what you have learned here at Håå Retreat Center, especially Ajapa Japa (or Kriya Yoga), daily. Also practice being able to stand comfortably and relaxed in the Viparita karani pose and to sit in a cross-legged meditation pose.

Intensify your practice in the weeks before coming to the retreat!

When practicing Kriya Yoga, it is important not to wear metal on the body, such as piercings and other jewelry. Remove any metal from your body that you can before the retreat begins.

Also read the conditions for learning Kriya Yoga in the description of the 3‑Month Sadhana Retreat.

“The more centred or one‑pointed the human mind becomes, the more powerful, blissful and harmonised it becomes. The greater the one‑pointedness, the greater the wisdom and knowledge. On the yogic path, the mind has to become like bindu (a point) ‑ infinitesimally concentrated, yet with unlimited potential.

Kriya Yoga brings about this concentration of mind naturally, without force or excessive effort. The secret lies in the simultaneous harmonisation of the physical, psychic and mental energies of the human framework. This process automatically concentrates the mind in a perfect bindu. It is then that things start to happen that are beyond the normal comprehension of man. The blind begin to see for the first time.

Kriya Yoga converges all the energies, gross and subtle, into a bindu in the middle of the mandala of one’s being. This is the gateway to meditation...”  (Swami Satyananda)

Read more about Kriya Yoga: "On Sadhana, on Cycles in Healing and Learning, and on Silence during the Initiation in Kriya Yoga."

>>> next: The Prana Vidya Retreat

Retreat Schedule - Dates, Prices and Teachers