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This program has reached its maximum capcity, registration is closed but we are keeping a waiting list.

Tuition: $250 - plus 2 nights accommodations of your choice, which includes all meals, Hatha yoga classes and more (see below)

  Registration begins June 11 at 3:00pm and continues until 7:00pm.

Hatha Yoga or Deep Relaxation [Fridays] at 5:00pm
Meditation at 6:00pm
Dinner at 6:30pm
Program orientation and first program session after dinner at 7:30pm.

Please see Schedule for Workshops and Programs below for tentative daily schedule or click here now to print and/or download a tentative program schedule [PDF]. Questions? Please email ARC@iyiva.org or call us at (800) 858-YOGA [9642]

We are honored to host a very special weekend with internationally acclaimed yoga teacher Erich Schiffmann. The subject of this weekend is Freedom Yoga or Freeform Yoga.

Following are audio and video of Erich talking a bit about Freeform or Freedom Yoga.

    About Erich

Erich Schiffmann has gained national and international recognition for his unique approach to yoga. Having been passionately involved in the process for 40 years as a student and 32 years as a teacher, his teaching conveys a complete experience of Yoga. He is known for his unique emphasis on moving into stillness and he uses asana, pranayama, deep relaxation, discussion and meditation to elicit this experience. He says "stillness makes one more intuitive and cultivates the ability to be 'guided from within'."

Erich teaches a very healing and open style of Yoga emphasizing being guided from within. His style is unique and clear, full of freedom and spirit and he is passionately involved in the practice. His style of yoga and meditation is suitable for all levels of students.

Erich taught yoga at the Krishnamurti School in England, lived in India and has been teaching and inspiring yoga students for 32 years. He is proud author of one of the best yoga books available, Yoga: The Spirit and Practice of Moving into Stillness, and the DVDs Freedom Style Yoga with Erich Schiffmann & Friends: An Introduction to Creative Personal Practice, Yoga Inversions: Erich Schiffmann's Backyard Series, Lotus Pose: Preparations and Variations with Erich Schiffmann, Backbends: Yoga with Erich Schiffmann, Backyard Series, and Beginning Yoga: Erich Schiffmann's Backyard Series

"Yoga is the way of moving into stillness in order to experience the truth of who you are. The practice of yoga is the practice of meditation - inner listening - in the poses and in meditation, as well as all day long. It's a matter of listening inwardly for guidance all the time, and then daring enough, trusting enough, to do as you are prompted to do."

Tuition: $250 - plus 2 nights accommodations of your choice, which includes all meals, Hatha yoga classes and more (see below)

   Have enough information? Decided to take this program? Click Here to begin making your reservation now.

freeform! by Anne Jablonski, http://www.yogasetfree.com - reprinted with permission.

Freeform yoga is a truly customized yoga practice. It's a qualitative leap beyond the appropriate caution you hear so often from a teacher to always honor what your body needs and to not move into pain. An attentive freeform practice – in which you make no decision in advance about what you're going to do from moment to moment – takes that idea a giant step further along the same trajectory, tapping into your innate sensitivity to move in whatever way best clears the blocked channels through which your body's energy flows.

This "methodless method" of cultivating a home practice has been around for eons. But it's elusive for many of us as we're accustomed to striving to make our poses look a certain way or produce the result that we're told from all the books and videos to expect. It's natural if practicing this way feels strange since most of your experience on the mat so far may have revolved around following instructions from a teacher or a video, or working through a prescribed series of poses in a book or manual.

There's nothing wrong with learning this way. If it weren't for learning this way, most of us would probably have never opened the door to yoga in our lives. We have to start somewhere, after all. But do yourself a big, loving favor and make room for the notion that it's okay to do "illegal" poses. It's okay, even desirable, at some point on your journey with yoga, to cut loose and customize your practice, moving away from the mechanical routines that informed your safe alignment and toward a practice in which, because you're listening so attentively moment to moment, your alignment is not only safe, it's exactly right.

Know the Poses as Templates, Not Destinations

Life's stresses and strains, sitting at a desk all day, or any repetitive movement or poor postural habit creates contraction, stiffness, and weakness. Yoga, of course, is an elegant metaphysical science, one of whose limbs includes thousands of poses that open up areas where people are typically blocked or contracted. Each pose is, in essence, a specific shape that emphasizes opening a specific area or areas.

Triangle pose (trikonasana), for example, builds strength in the thighs and stretches the groins, hamstrings, calves, and chest. Bound-angle pose (baddha konasana) stretches the inner thighs and knees. Seated forward fold (paschimottanasana) stretches the thighs, shoulders and hamstrings. But the degree to which each of those poses can stretch or strengthen individual parts varies tremendously based on how you move into the pose, where you choose to take the emphasis point of the stretch, and the balance between doing and non-doing.

Since yoga is about moving out the mental, physical, and spiritual obstructions that constrain the inspired life-energy that you're made of, one creative and extraordinary way to approach a home practice is to get out of your own way and allow movement to happen. And to therefore tailor your practice to what is most appropriate and freeing for your whole self during that session on the mat.

Instead of orchestrating the poses and sequences, relax deeply and listen attentively to the subtle messages your body conveys about what it most needs. Relax even more deeply, connecting to whatever image, sense, or deity connects you to your truest, deepest self. Just be there, and act as a willing and grateful witness to the body's own intuitively healing meditative motion. Use the general shapes within each pose as rough draft inside which you have full license to explore the entire landscape as you're guided to.

First: Get Quiet

It's a good idea to begin with a quiet meditation or centering, getting as deeply relaxed as possible. Keep it simple. If your mind is racing, then find something to which you can tether your attention: you can begin counting your breaths backwards from fifty down to zero. Each time a thought creeps in, think nothing of it and just return your attention to your breath. Sink into and stay interested in the stillness. You're not flat-lining here. What you're doing is sinking further and further into the mind-state where you've stilled the chatter in your mind enough to hear and appropriately respond.

Make no effort to control the breath here. Let your breath be as free and full as possible, without straining in any way to change it.

Another technique that works for many people is to focus attention on a distinct "something," such as a candle flame or a stone or really absolutely anything, and fully participate in the experience of being wholeheartedly interested in the object. The idea here is to use whatever works best for you on any given day to still the mind's noise enough to stop being quite so involved with and distracted by your thoughts.

Don't make this complicated: simply be quiet and listen.

Quiet listening is a very big deal. Huge things happen. But don't make getting to that quiet listening place a complicated event.

Next: Listen and Be Moved . . .

Wait for the inner cue. If movement doesn't happen at first, be content where you are, sitting or lying down. Give the stillness a chance to cook. Chances are, if you're patient and stay relaxed and gently alert, you'll notice that a part of your body that's in need of letting go of some contracted energy will send you a clear signal. But instead of immediately acting on that signal, relax even more deeply, and wait to see if something starts to move without your forcing it. The initial movements may be extremely subtle and small. Then, often—but not always—they evolve and change as more and more of the body gets involved.

There's a delicate interplay between your natural, conditioned urge on the mat to coerce your body into shapes and staying in a state of meditative, relaxed alertness to allow the movement to happen.

The first few times you try practicing this way, you might be tempted to coax some movement along, concerned that if you don't, you'll be sitting around for an hour doing nothing at all. So if you're moved to move -- do that. You're not trying to fake yourself out here or make this some titanic struggle between the mind and body. Quit struggling. Let mind and body inform each other and align with the harmony that already exists.

If you're familiar with ujjayi breathing, you can allow that breath to emerge. Ujjayi breathing is a beautiful way of letting the breath channel the energy into the places in your body that most need it. It also offers a nice aural cue to remember to let the breath animate the event. Let the shift from thinking to being quietly and attentively happen. But do pause often and listen with your whole being. Do that over and over. Sometimes it will feel just right to amp up the "current" or muscular energy in a particular place. Other times the current will naturally want to slow down. But to know that, you need first to be still and listen. Allow those pulsations to happen and enjoy the ride.

You might be pretty surprised at what happens. Maybe you felt a twinge in your hip, but the part of your body that began to move was elsewhere at, for example, the neck. Just stay with what's happening and trust that whatever it is that's moving you knows what it's doing.

To see how beautiful, creative, and joyful this kind of practice is, check out Erich Schiffmann's beautiful video, Freedom Style Yoga with Erich Schiffmann & Friends: An Introduction to Creative Personal Practice

You Can Most Definitely Do This

It may sound a bit mysterious or even wacky at first, but absolutely anyone can do this. Have you ever been lost in a moment, riveted to an unfolding drama of beauty in nature? That quality of presence during which, instead of mentally describing or editorializing on what you're seeing, your thoughts have become a whisper as your attention shifts fully to what's happening?

That's what you're doing in a freeform practice on the mat. You're fully immersed in attending to each moment, animating your yoga practice with awareness so that it's no longer a routine – even though it might look like it on the outside – but is instead a series of new Nows.

Make it less about striving to achieve and more about creating conditions where the obstacles and barriers that are between you and your connection to Spirit are free to evaporate.

And what you'll have left? That's yoga.

You've already got it, in fact. Your work on the mat, your life practice, is a graceful stagger to remove the constraints and begin fully savoring the source of joy that's always been there and always will be there.

Oh yeah, that's definitely yoga.

    Program Start Time

  Registration begins June 11 at 3:00pm and continues until 7:00pm.

Hatha Yoga or Deep Relaxation [Fridays] at 5:00pm
Meditation at 6:00pm
Dinner at 6:30pm
Program orientation and first program session after dinner at 7:30pm.

Please see Schedule for Workshops and Programs below for tentative daily schedule or click here now to print and/or download a tentative program schedule [PDF]. Questions? Please email ARC@iyiva.org or call us at (800) 858-YOGA [9642]

    Program Registration

The price of accommodations includes all vegetarian meals. To register for this program, you have the choice of either using this online registration process or calling ARC [Ashram Reservations Center] at the following numbers:

    In the US please call:      (800) 858-YOGA [9642]
    International callers:       (434) 969-2048

    Monday through Friday :: 9:00 am - 5:00 pm EST
    Saturday [Spring & Summer] :: 9:00 am - 12 noon

Making your reservation online

Choose your desired accommodations below, indicate if you are eligible for a discount, request pick up or drop off if needed and complete the registration process. If you are a returning guest, you will only need to login with your email address and password. New guests will be required to fill in your personal information.

Once your reservation is submitted, you will receive an email notifying you that we have received the reservation and are processing it.

Once we receive your reservation we will:

Verify that your choice of accommodations is available
Deduct any applicable discounts
Charge your credit card
Email you confirmation that your reservation has been completed

The confirmation email we send will include information which you may find useful in planning for your program experience, as well as final confirmation of your reservation, which will then allow you to make any travel arrangements you may require.

Please do not book travel [ie. flight, train, bus] until we have confirmed your reservation. Please allow 12 to 24 hours for us to complete the processing of your reservation.

The cost of tuition and accommodations is per person. If you are reserving for and paying for two, please provide the registration information for each participant during the registration process.

    Accommodations and Prices

The price of our accommodations includes three delicious buffet style vegetarian meals daily, meditation, and Hatha Yoga classes in addition to other yogic practices and activities as part of your stay.

Dormitory [Shared Room - Shared Bath]

The most popular accommodations we have are Dormitory Accommodations - shared room and shared bath.

We have two dormitories, Vivekananda Vihar and Ramalinga Nilayam, which are centrally heated and air-conditioned and convenient to meals and programs. The rooms are able to comfortably accommodate from two to eight people in upper and lower bunk beds.

Please advise if you are not able to climb stairs.

Dormitory Private [Private Room - Shared Bath]

Private dormitory rooms with shared bathrooms are also available for one or two people. (One room available for the physically challenged.)

Please advise if you are not able to climb stairs.

Lotus Guest House [Private Room - Private Bath]

Private rooms are available in our three Lotus Guest Houses.

 Each room in our six unit guest house is equipped with kitchenette, full sized bed, sofa, and full bath.

 Each room in our nine unit guest house is equipped with queen sized bed, queen sized sofa bed, and full bath, without kitchenette.

 Our new Lotus Guest House 3 has twenty-two private rooms with private baths and wireless access. Ten of these rooms have a full-size bed, five have a twin bed and seven have two twin beds.

Rooms available for the physically challenged.

Tenting & Camping

Set off in a quiet, wooded area adjacent to the Lotus Guest Houses are twelve campsites. Campers have use of the bathroom, shower, and laundry facilities nearby Vivekananda Vihar dormitory.

Camping is available from March 15^th to December 1^st. Please bring your own tent, bedding and towels.

Tent sites are available both with and without platforms. Should you have a preference please make the request when reserving.

Since we have a limited amount of private accommodations available, it is necessary for us to first receive your reservation and make certain that there is availability for your choice.

To insure your first choice of accommodations please register early.

Tuition: $250 - plus 2 nights accommodations of your choice, which includes all meals, Hatha yoga classes and more (see below)

    Applicable Discounts

You are entitled to benefit from discounts that you qualify for. Limit of two 10% discounts per workshop. Discounts will be verified and deducted from your reservation after submission. You will be advised of the discounted total.

10% International discount is offered for participants residing outside the US.

10% Student discount is offered for full time students. A valid, current student ID is required.

10% Senior Citizen discount is available for those ages 65 and up.

10% IYTA member discount is available for those with current membership.

10% Military discount is available for those currently on active or reserve duty in the U.S. armed forces or the National Guard.

    Program Start Time

  Registration begins June 11 at 3:00pm and continues until 7:00pm.

Hatha Yoga or Deep Relaxation [Fridays] at 5:00pm
Meditation at 6:00pm
Dinner at 6:30pm
Program orientation and first program session after dinner at 7:30pm.

Please see Schedule for Workshops and Programs below for tentative daily schedule or click here now to print and/or download a tentative program schedule [PDF]. Questions? Please email ARC@iyiva.org or call us at (800) 858-YOGA [9642]