3-day Residential Retreat Program: 7th August to 10th August 2025 Thursday 4:00pm to Sunday 11:00am IST Venue: Arulville, the Hermitage, near Chennai – Pondicherry
This retreat beautifully unfolded this weekend. Sharing here:
1. Summary of retreat experience
2. Next retreat dates
3. Some photographs
4. Some sharing of participants captured
5. Original brochure for reference
1. Summary of retreat experience
With deep joy the Divine Body project completed a 3 day residential retreat today with Shweta Rajurkar as facilitator. We looked at different forms of body perfection – yoga asanas, Kalari and Tai Chi. Through it all we explored conscious movements, connecting to vastness, surrender and deeper body work. We had the Havan, a sacred flame process, as a conscious way to practice the inner process of harmony. We went out to the back waters one of the days to connect to vastness and open ourselves more.
There was memory work. Lots of breath work was there. We had both normal food and very healthy food prepared like sathu mavu kanji, soup, kitchedi and the like.
Body opened up more. We learnt to open to higher consciousness all done in a simple, well interwoven way.
There was simply chanting. Some offered their singing and flute as a new way of re-beginning their habits.
The retreat was a blend of some structured sessions and some organic- natural- spontaneous- intuitive sessions. Keeping the body as the central point – the anchor – we tried to connect the other parts of our being like mental, emotional, psychological and spiritual. We explored vastness, mantras and Divine Qualities for a better vision of the future.
The venue was Arulville, the Hermitage, a wellbeing retreat centre in Cheyyur Village.
2. Next retreat dates
The next residential retreat offered by Shweta Rajurkar is fixed for 23rd to 26th January 2026. Same venue
3. Some photographs
4. Some sharing of participants captured
“Ārambha The 4 day experience was a mosaic being created in real time and unfolding itself in an emergent here and now. Our sensei, Shweta has travelled far and wide and collected seeds that now are shared with us. Her foundation has been with the Body ever since she became a yoga practitioner. And then comes her metamorphosis into bringing the Divine into Body consciousness. The typical day comprising of pranayama, jala neti, yoga, agnihotra, kalari, conscious bodywork and music give us pathways to new worlds awaiting us. The meal times were special, offerings of so many natural and sattvik foods were offered to us as prasad. All gathered, cooked and served with love. Tremendous behind the scene preparations was evident without any proclamations. The invitation has been extended, the volition is in place and each one of us will create our own unique mix of what is best suited to our mind-body- consciousness matrix.
For me, this year is the year of the Body. My tarot card was : Perseverance : and it was the divine Mothers Grace to receive this offering. I am so humbled to introspect on how my body has allowed me to follow my aspirations, supporting me for the past 60 years, never asking any gratification. I seek forgiveness from my body for neglecting her. Now the time has come for giving back. The body has not aged, it is the Mind that has. Breaking free from the biases of gender, age, legacy is my challenge. But the workshop has given me just that nudge to walk the new paths. I must seize the moment before the fire burns out.
I am filled with gratitude for being a part of the cohort and my pranam to our Sensei Shweta. 🙏🏼
Joy”
“Dear Team, Thank you for the three wonderful days with you all. I have learned so much and will cherish the good memories and lifelong friendships we’ve built. I am currently practicing Mudra Yoga for half an hour each day and plan to extend it to include pranayama and physical exercises. A special thanks to Sanjay for introducing me to the workshop…” Azha
5. Original brochure for reference
Are you caught in a state of “How do I begin?” Then this retreat is that starting point for you where you get a simple, gentle, and genuine hand holding to be steadfast on a profound and lifelong journey towards a more healthy, Beautiful and integrated ‘Self’.
This residential rejuvenation retreat is being offered by Shweta Rajurkar. She is collaborating with Rajvardhan, to bring the Kalari and Yantra elements in.
The aspiration of this retreat is to give you a deeper experience and greater capacity to utilise a few tools for your Sadhana, physical culture, inner work, daily conscious living and transformation.
The aspiration is to take the cream and the best of these ancient tools, and raise it to a new frequency in the light of Integral Yoga of The Mother and Sri Aurobindo.
Retreat venue is Arulville, the Hermitage set in nature with aesthetic and indigenous architecture.
An ‘Inner Transformation’ retreat based on – Collective Deeper Body Sadhana. – Growing from personal to impersonal – Being a receptacle for Divine Manifestation
DATE: 3 day residential retreat program happened on 5th June to 8th June 2025 Thursday 1:00 pm to Sunday 11:00 am IST Venue: Arulville, near Chennai – Pondicherry, TN
FACILITATOR: ARUL DEV Author | Leader | Practitioner
WHO WAS IT FOR: Any individual interested in – Sadhana | Healing | Transformation | Evolution – The Self, Impersonal growth of Power & Harmony, Synchronicity in self & collectives.
The retreat is ideal for anyone who believes in deeper body work and aspires to be a conscious instrument for Divine’s Creative Manifestation
In many ways this retreat emerged as a new turning point in deeper body work. It also turned out to be a Integral Yoga retreat where the transformation of mind, thoughts, memories, emotion, sensation, sexuality and body was all touched and explored. The book ‘The Supreme’ – Conversations with the Mother recollected by Mono Sarkar was the reference book for this retreat. Subtle practices on deeper body got illumined by connecting to select quotes from this book. The yoga sessions in the morning by Shweta Rajurkar was inspiring. A young participant Bhagyashree inspired us by waking up early and doing her own daily practices from 4 am to 5 am on her own. Many more insights and experiences emerged as a turning point in this retreat, it is best to be silent on them for now and allow it to fully flower into our future retreats. The next retreat has been fixed for October 2nd to 5th 2025 at the same venue – Arulville, the Hermitage.
Sharing the participants photo:
Few casual photos from the retreat are shared below:
RETREAT To Make Thy Inner Light Visible – A Sadhana residential retreat to assimilate Grace Light within our Body and Being
3 April to 6 April 2025 | Thursday 1 pm to Sunday 11 am IST | Venue: Arulville, Chennai – Pondicherry route
Facilitator: Arul Dev
Immerse yourself in a 3-day retreat surrounded by nature and a quiet, joyful setting. Experience inner practices that transform your body, senses, energy, emotions, thoughts, and memory imprints. This experiential portal will deepen your capacity for healing and integral transformation.
We will spend time to deepen our connect with Source Consciousness – Above Head, within Cave of Heart and Sacred Depth beneath feet. We will draw guidance from the subtle support of flowers for our Sadhana. We will learn to work at the level of inner vibrations and allow these subtle and loving intense vibrations to open up, what still lies untransformed within.
The retreat’s sweet spot is the possible discovery of subtle substance within the depth of the body and the loving intimacy of cells. The subtle substance is always self-lit, soft, joyful, pure and filled with love. This once touched within, fundamentally shifts the orientation of our body and life.
The vision for this retreat is to empower people to do Deeper Body Sadhana on a daily basis to Transform their Total Self.
The prerequisites to participate are an aspiration to transform inwardly and express creatively one’s Self in the world, a faith and connection with something larger – Nature, Universe, or Divine, and a basic level of love to do deeper body work.
This upcoming residential RETREAT starting on April 3rd 2025 seems to take us into our next era of deeper body work. Healing and transforming personal experiences within our body is a necessary part of our work to reduce the inner noise and entanglements. However we need to learn to do the Sadhana impersonally and give a lot of time and space to the main work – to link our body and its substance to the Divine’s (Higher Consciousness) Qualities and Substance. An intuition has clearly come to do this tangibly and concretely in this coming retreat.
The retreat is facilitated by Arul Dev. Every morning to open up our body we would have yoga and dynamic flow exercises by Shweta Rajurkar. And in this retreat we have a new addition as a session on day 1 to prepare us for the whole three-day retreat.
Post the ‘Decoding Shakti’ session on Women’s Day Dr. Vishwapriya Pillai who facilitated one of the sessions had an intuition to offer a session for this retreat participants. On day 1 she will be guiding us on connecting to the Divine energy within through the Shree Chakra.
The retreat Venue Arulville founded and run by Anthony Raj built with indigenous architecture is a beautiful space to run wellness programs and retreats: https://www.arulville.com/
To get a glimpse of what normally unfolds in these retreats do find a summary and some photographs from our previous retreat:
RETREAT To Make Thy Inner Light Visible – A Sadhana residential retreat to assimilate Grace Light within our Body and Being
30th January to 2nd February 2025 | Thursday 1 pm to Sunday 11 am IST | Venue: Arulville, Chennai – Pondicherry route
Facilitator: Arul Dev
What was the focus of this retreat?
Immerse yourself in a 3-day retreat surrounded by nature and a quiet, joyful setting. Experience inner practices that transform your body, senses, energy, emotions, thoughts, and memory imprints. This experiential portal will deepen your capacity for healing and integral transformation.
We will spend time to deepen our connect with Source Consciousness – Above Head, within Cave of Heart and Sacred Depth beneath feet. We will draw guidance from the subtle support of flowers and crystals for our Sadhana. We will learn to work at the level of inner vibrations and allow these subtle and loving intense vibrations to open up, what still lies untransformed within.
The retreat’s sweet spot is the possible discovery of subtle substance within the depth of the body and the loving intimacy of cells. The subtle substance is always self-lit, soft, joyful, pure and filled with love. This once touched within, fundamentally shifts the orientation of our body and life.
The vision for this retreat is to empower people to do Deeper Body Sadhana on a daily basis to Transform their Total Self.
The prerequisites to participate are an aspiration to transform inwardly and express creatively one’s Self in the world, a faith and connection with something larger – Nature, Universe, or Divine, and a basic level of love to do deeper body work.
Experience and glimpse the transformation! Contact us to learn more about how you can participate in this unique and transformative retreat. Kindly do pass this brochure to all interested.
The retreat Venue Arulville is a beautiful space to run wellness programs and retreats: https://www.arulville.com/
We were 16 of us from different paths with one common aspiration – interest in deeper body work. Few people were repeating. Many had come for first time even without attending any of our earlier programs. Day one we set the ground of basic principles on which this beautiful work unfolds. Then the whole flow of the retreat was organic. We explored many inner practices like:
Deeper body awareness
Placing mantric sound vibrations within body
Uniting awareness with breath
Discovering pure substance within body
Transforming memories at body sensations level
Recovering goodness from thoughts and turning our eyebrow enter to the above to receive light and intuitions
Discovering Divine Qualities like Vastness, Joy, Silence, Love, Light and Force above our head, cave of heart and sacred below feet
And many more
A ghee lamp was lit throughout our three day retreat as our companion. We practiced tratak on flame (agni) to connect to the soft core of the flame and its qualities and to connect it across our body’s substance. We also practiced tratak upon resonant Divine Master’s being and subtle body. We learnt to keep our body receptive in a posture of surrender and receptivity.
Flower work was an integral part of our retreat. We learnt how to connect to internal and external sources. We learnt how to place our awareness and breath within a flower and wait until we sense out there within the flower its qualities and vibrations. We remain connected to the flower and its above (sky and sun). We learnt to keep our body very receptive so that the qualities of the flowers permeate within our body’s receptive substance. We also discussed how to make flower essences on our own for healing and integral development.
This is the inner view of the retreat space. Anthony Raj the vision and creativity behind the Arulville Retreat center has built a beautiful space that is conducive for retreats, healing and well being workshops. This is where we did the entire retreat. This allowed freedom for people to sit as was comfortable to them and do the inner practices that unfolded with a lot of good break times.
Each day we started with a morning dynamic body practice, yoga and chanting. This helped to open up our body to its sensations, to the breath that flows within, to the pranic energy and we also practiced some chanting together. Shweta Rajurkar led these beautiful sessions.
Simple and nourishing vegetarian meals, refreshments and snacks were served during the retreat. The high points was the mint-ginger-tea and the organic butterfly pea flower (sangu poo) tea that was made for us.
This retreat seems to have opened some new doors and windows in deeper body work. The condensation and expansion – a master process in deeper body work came out quite easily for many. Direct memory work and identification of the inner sensorial body language of accumulated habits and pattens unfolded with depth and joy. We learnt to connect this inner sensorial memories to Universal qualities that shift it to a new vibration. The last two days brought more focus to the ‘waiting’ part. We learnt to go within points / cells within body, connect it to a Divine Source or Quality and learn to wait. We learnt to go beyond hurry, pushing efforts and tendency to dictate to the Divine with an attitude of ‘Heal me now’. Rather we learnt to become very subtly aware with our inner senses and wait within our body connected to a Higher Source. We learnt to embody the posture of faith, deep acceptance to what is present now with its plus & minus, aspiration to shift our inner and a state of humility or non-knowing of how the shift would unfold. We learnt to rely on Divine Grace for this shift to unfold. We learnt to wait for the the natural experience of release or dissolving of older entanglements and the in-swelling of healing qualities like light, peace, joy, flow and love within body.
The sound of AUM was our companion throughout many of our retreat practices. We learnt to offer this sound within our body in the surface parts and within the depth of our substance. We learnt to observe as to how the sound vibrations stir our body to open it and make it more receptive.
In the evening break times, participants went to the nearby back water and paddy fields and soaked in the nature, vastness and freshness.
Our inner processes unfolded in a natural sound bath of vastness, sounds of birds and nature.
Something new has opened up through this retreat and we are all back to our lives now exploring how to practice what we explored both at our inner practice times and across the day alongside our activities.
The next retreat dates have been fixed in Arulville retreat venue : April 3rd to 6th 2025.
