Sicily Retreat 2021

Jivamukti Yoga Berlin is pleased to announce The 2021 Jivamukti Yoga Sicily Summer Solstice Retreat, hosted on ancient and sacred Scilian grounds, situated in a historic villa located in the deep and wandering hills of South Sicily. Join us for the breathtaking expanses of landscape, sea, and sun. The villa is teeming with life in the summer, from fresh olives to wild horses, and there is no way not to share in this celebration of Nature. The retreat will be powered by Jivamukti Berlin Director and Jivamukti Global Teacher Training facilitator, Anja Kuehnel, and supported by select members of the Jivamukti Berlin teacher faculty. Fresh, local, and vegan dishes will be prepared daily by our Italian chef and Jivamukti Canteen head, Alessia Cecconi and her team. Celebrate a week of joy and abundance around the energetic apex of the year culminating with the Summer Solstice. Nourish your body, spirit, and mind in this hermetic location, hidden away from the world within almond trees and olive groves. Our newest discovery of rugged terrain and refined accommodation makes for the ideal summer retreat. The culmination of the year is ideal in this rebuilt 17th century villa, situated on the 40 acre Sicilian Masseria, which was intentionally laid out by ancient astronomers to be in optimal alignment with the daily and yearly solar cycle. Join us and fill your summer days with asana, great local fare, gelato by the sea, ancient ruins, and lounging by our pristine pool, all under the abundant Sicilian sun.

RETREAT LANGUAGE: English (Anja teaches in English but also speaks German for individual tips/assists/questions)

THE DATES: Saturday, June 19 until Saturday, June 26 with optional early arrival/slow start on the 17th or 18th of June, 2021

THE ISLAND: “Italy without Sicily leaves no image. Sicily is the key to everything.“ - Johann Wolfgang Goethe - A Trip to Sicily

GENERAL INFO ON THE YOGA PROGRAM & OTHER ACTIVITIES

THE THEME: As the Summer Solstice, in 2020 taking place right on the start of our retreat on June 20/21, marks the pinnacle of the sun and the height of the year, symbolically it represents the fullness of life and light. Yoga is a celebration of the Sun, the supreme consciousness that illuminates all things and makes them clear. We will deepen our practice by honoring the light and connecting to the powerful energy of the time. The same solar energy that brings seeds forth, can ripen our highest intentions into manifestation. In this celebration of life-giving fire and light, our goal is to give participants the opportunity to burn off any burdens, immerse themselves in the dynamic vastness of nature, to eat vibrant and nourishing food, and to enjoy the company of uplifting community with our Jivamukti Yoga community.

THE PROGRAM: Anja will lead a 3-hour morning asana practice, preceded by optional morning meditation, chanting, and scripture reading. These will be intensive “workshop style” classes focused around the theme of warmth, light, and abundance. We start this retreat off right away with the summer solstice and will be able to make use of its special energy throughout the entire week. Anja will infuse her many years of experience from teaching international Jivamukti Yoga retreats and Jivamukti Teacher Trainings to offer a distilled vision of the practice and its purpose. You will experience and explore different aspects of Jivamukti Yoga like asanas, kriyas, pranayama, and yogic scriptures. Each afternoon we will offer shorter asana sessions, led by one of our members of the Jivamukti Berlin teaching faculty. There is abundant free time in the afternoons and evenings to relax and adventure as you see fit.

REGISTRATION AND PRICES:

Prices start at 963 EUR with SUPER EARLY BIRD (until December 21) and 1008 EUR with EARLY BIRD (until March 21).

BASE PRICE: 1098 EUR.

SIGN-UP DEPOSIT: 198 EUR. Please check out the registration form for detailed prices, discounts and accommodation options.

THE 2-STEP REGISTRATION PROCESS:

STEP 0: Download the registration form, and make sure the offering, dates, prices, options and terms are agreeable for you.

STEP 1: Make the applicable non-refundable sign-up deposit to hold your spot in the retreat and initiate the registration process. See below for payment options and instructions for the sign-up deposit.

STEP 2: Fill in and sign the registration form you downloaded in Step 0. We kindly recommend to use the free iPhone/Android App “Adobe Fill & Sign”! Alternatively, you can also print it out and fill and sign it and then either snail mail, or fax it to +49-30-48491950 or scan and email it to info@jivamuktiberlin.de. Download Adobe Fill&Sign for iPhone/ipad here and for Android hier.

PLEASE NOTE: Spaces are strictly limited due to the size of the intimate yoga shala at the Wild Woodstock Forest Sanctuary which also guarantees participants a very intimate experience with the teachers in a comparatively (relative to their usual class size) very small group. Please reserve you spot early to avoid frustration.

PLEASE ALSO NOTE: Your sign-up deposit is non-refundable, if you later change your mind and/or cannot come and/or cannot pay the full retreat price, however, you may find another person to take the retreat instead and who did not pay the sign-up deposit yet and transfer you deposit to this person.

MORE INFO ON THE LOCATION

THE LOCATION: Cloistered away upon a lonely hill in southeast Sicily between the UNESCO World Heritage site of Ragusa Ibla and the popular summer beach destination of Marina di Ragusa , our historic 17th century Sicilian Masseria is an oasis with lush gardens, vast patios, beautifully restored rooms, and a grand swimming pool. The entire complex is enclosed by restored ancient stone walls, featuring within them the central courtyard, the ancient villa, and surrounding suites. Situated only 10 minutes away from the Mediterranean Sea and close to a small town for shopping and exploring, the Villa is surrounded by a serene natural park with centuries-old olive, carob and almond trees, embodying the quintessential Sicilian countryside with all its historical hand cut stone masonry, pre-Christian caves, breathtaking views and hills leading to sandy beaches of the Mediterranean Sea. During the peak of the year, experience coming to full flourishing with the Scilian hills as they abound with green and vibrance.

Our Masseria grounds and a brief history of the ancient Sicilian knowledge of mathematics and astronomy The 17th century villa that we will be exclusively having as our retreat headquarters was designed to align with the sun, featuring the summer solstice sunrise at an approximate azimuth of 54 degrees and sunset at approximate azimuth of 305 degrees. The front of the house features a round holed stone window paired with an identical feature in the back of the house. These were constructed in such a mathematically precise fashion as to capture the intense sun on the solstice. The villa was built around these markers, and means that the sun will perfectly intersect and be directly over the grounds during the solstice. We should not consider these holed stones as a precise calendars or an instruments to observe the sun’s cycle, but rather monuments that provided information on the solstices for practical and agricultural purposes. The summer solstice is often considered to be a celebration of Apollo and the upcoming harvest. Thus it is a time of light, fullness, power, and abundance. It is fascinating to discover how our ancestors already thousands of years ago, were able to apply precise astronomical canons to their constructions and living quarters. They would plan the axis of their living quarters at the moment of the laying of the foundation. They would divide the arch of the daily itinerary of the sun through projecting on the ground the shade of the sun itself on a fixed pole in the style of the ancient meridian clocks. In Sicily, the sun was an object of veneration and people felt always in a position of inferiority to the Sun and all its related and inexplicable events. At the center of their lives was the Sun, the Morning star that dictated the rhythm of nature and conditioned their everyday life. It was certainly a reason of great anxiety for Sicilian people at the start of winter to see the Sun getting lower and lower on the horizon while the daylight would diminish and the dark night extend its duration. At one point the Sun seemed to fall into darkness and the fear that it might not come back was always a tragic experience that seemed to threaten life itself. With time, Sicilians noticed that on the occasion of the winter solstice the Sun would always regain its strength as an invisible force over darkness which they celebrated with rituals starting fires symbolizing their effort to give heat and light to the weakened Sun. The celebration of the returning sun continued until it reaches its pinnacle in June, where fires are burnt and the fullness of the cycle is embraced. To understand the level of mathematical and existential knowledge in the old days we need simply to look into the life and writings of some of the Sicilian people of the time. Especially to Pythagoras who founded a school on Sicily, in which initiates were sworn to secrecy and lived a communal, ascetic lifestyle. This lifestyle entailed a number of dietary prohibitions, traditionally said to have included vegetarianism, although modern scholars doubt that he ever advocated for complete vegetarianism. The teaching most securely identified with Pythagoras is metempsychosis, or the "transmigration of souls", which holds that every soul is immortal and, upon death, enters into a new body. He may have also devised the doctrine of musica universalis, which holds that the planets move according to mathematical equations and thus resonate to produce an inaudible symphony of music. Pythagoras was credited with many mathematical and scientific discoveries, including the Pythagorean theorem, Pythagorean tuning, the five regular solids, the Theory of Proportions, the sphericity of the Earth, and the identity of the morning and evening stars as the planet Venus. In addition, to the astronomical markings, the Masseria features its own small cave cemetery or necropolis located to the west of the Villa itself in the Egyptian tradition of building cemetery and pyramids west of the village / living quarters. This cave is visible on the immediate north side of the hill halfway along the main driveway and it is aligned with the winter solstice sunrise.

CARBON (CO2) OFFSET – WE WILL HAVE 3 TREES PLANTED FOR YOU

As of 2020, your Sicily Summer Solstice retreat tuition already includes a carbon offset for the estimated CO2 produced by the retreat partic- ipants travelling to Sicily and back. For each 2020 Sicily Summer Solstice Retreat participant, JYB will have 3 trees planted. A tree absorbs approx. 11.7lbs of CO2 every year, or approx. 468lbs. of CO2 over 40 years, so 3 trees for each participant will absorb roughly 1,404lbs. of CO2 over this time, which is about the same amount of CO2 from a round- trip flight from Berlin to Sicily. We know this is a lot of CO2 and we commit to CO2 reduction whenever possible. As of 2020, we will try at the very least to offset the CO2-related travel costs of our non-local retreats through having trees planted. In no way do we want to white-wash the impact on the climate that our Jivamukti Yoga retreats have, and we are committed to offering more local yoga retreats going forward. It is not an exaggeration to say that Jivamukti Yoga has made countless yoga students worldwide aware of the benefits of a vegetarian and better vegan diet for the planet as a whole as well as for their individual yoga practice and their general well-being. Converting to a vegan diet has prominently been named by The University of Oxford, among others, “as the single biggest way to reduce your envi- ronmental impact on earth”, “reducing an individual’s carbon footprint from food by up to 73%”.