Retreat from modern life, march ahead

Auroville packages such as Parents-To-Be and Joyful Living offer fresh perspectives

March 04, 2015 12:00 am | Updated 05:51 am IST - PUDUCHERRY:

PUDUCHERRY, 03/03/2015. Auroville Retreat offers renewal and rejuvenation.Photo:  Special Arrangement

PUDUCHERRY, 03/03/2015. Auroville Retreat offers renewal and rejuvenation.Photo: Special Arrangement

Not everyone who looks up to Auroville as a universal township that shines a beacon on an alternative worldview needs to become a resident to come in contact with the profundity of its philosophy.

The monthly retreats Auroville has been hosting for the past few years have been opening up fresh life perspectives for people who have come from Indian cities such as Delhi, Mumbai or Kanpur or from overseas metros such as Dubai, Singapore and Hong Kong.

Broadly, these packages that signify ‘a retreat from the modern way of life’ fall into individual (Reboot with Juice), group (Yoga, Joyful Living and Parents-to-Be) or customised (Happy Feet, Stress Buster, OneFamily or Team Bonding) programmes.

The retreats are the people-oriented initiatives of Auroville Consulting which concurrently drives environmental sustainability projects.

This March, Auroville Retreat is offering a Parents-To-Be programme (March 21 and 22) aimed at couples planning to start a family and a Joyful Living module (March 17 to 21) that involves life coaching on aspects such as work-life balance and finding a spot of peace in a hectic lifestyle.

“We find that almost 75 per cent of retreat participants are women, mostly working professionals, but the occasional homemaker as well,” says Vikram Devata, one of the founding members of the team at Auroville Retreat. Participants also get exposed to a multicultural environment as these programmes attract a fair share of international guests, he said.

Departing from the convention of clustering the retreats around weekends since it launched such renewal and rejuvenation programmes in 2011, this is the first time that Auroville is offering a residential retreat for its Joyful Living programme.

“Health and wellness are the underlying principles of these programmes,” says Hugo Sahdra, a facilitator who has been associated with Auroville Retreat for over a year.

Joyful Living is all about learning to make ordinary days extraordinary, says Julie Mosmuller, life coach, who brings to the programme her experiences with the flip side of corporate life in London and over three years of coaching corporate professionals.

Joyful Living is a new programme she has designed, anchoring each of the five days on a theme that makes for meaningful experience, from waking up with awareness, yoga and meditation, eating what one’s body needs, learning to flow through the day and how to unwind.

It is also the longest retreat yet spanning five days.

According to Ms. Julie, most professionals struggle to cope with stress or find work-life balance.

But, the solutions too are with the individual. It is just that often, those who lead a hectic professional life fail to see them and need guidance to the moment of epiphany.

The ‘Parents-to-Be’ is a weekend retreat on natural fertility, pregnancy and birth and the programme is administered by a five-member team of international facilitators — Zsolti, Bogi, Manuela, Sigrid and Christine.

Offering relatively longer-duration, residential retreats could be the way forward as they heighten the community feel among participants. It could also help explore aspects in greater depth, facilitators said. Though a fee is charged for retreats, it is intended more for the self-sustenance of the programme.

0 / 0
Sign in to unlock member-only benefits!
  • Access 10 free stories every month
  • Save stories to read later
  • Access to comment on every story
  • Sign-up/manage your newsletter subscriptions with a single click
  • Get notified by email for early access to discounts & offers on our products
Sign in

Comments

Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.

We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of The Hindu and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.