From Thursday 7th to Sunday 10th May, we conducted our first online yoga and meditation retreat for the first time! Twenty-five people participated (from Bolivia, Spain, Argentina and United Kingdom), most of whom did not practice yoga or meditation and wanted to learn about it, taking advantage of time as most of us still were in a quarantine due to the coronavirus (COVID-19).
It was very gratifying for the organizers (Anna, Rukmini and David), we all were surprised by the outstanding results in the participants performance during the retreat, especially with the meditation sessions.
We previously had the "belief" or perception that an online yoga and meditation retreat was not feasible as it requires a special environment, an energy field conducive to this type of activity, not to mention the compulsory disconnection from digital and other media as well as other external distracting elements. All these to be able to carry out the yoga and meditation practice for participants to become more inward in their personal practice; However, when doing the online retreat with 3 sessions (two hours each) per day, on the second day, in the afternoon, when everyone started sharing their experiences until then, we realized that we were achieving the objectives of a normal face-to-face retreat although we still didn't understand how this was possible.
Many of the participants managed to have deep experiences in their meditations, especially when making the connection with the Spiritual Heart. Initially, on the first day we started with a little theory class looking for everyone to have a clear picture of the scientific facts on how yoga and meditation works or helps people in their well-being. We do this important fiirst step to give the participant´s mind a logical framework that most of them need to keep calm and increase their trust on the practice; in other words, the participants were preparing psychologically to be more receptive and open to new experiences that arises during or after the yoga and meditation practices on the second and third days of this retreat.
It was very interesting and motivating to notice that almost all the participants expressed a lot of interest in learning and having new experiencesl. Almost everyone had several good experiences in each practice session which motivated them to keep tuned and participate in the following sessions, looking for more practice, more experiences.
Having an eLearning platform on our website (used for our online workshops), it helped a lot in organizing this retreat by days as if they were lessons, uploading all presentations, brochures, videos, talks and audios that were used and produced during the retreat, to give support to participants who needed it and to keep it after the retreat as a reference material. At the end of each session, the recorded guided meditations were uploaded in a matter of minutes so that those who wanted to repeat those meditations could do so right after the session ended.
In order to have a smooth advancement in the teachings of the meditations, we divided the learning process into 3 basic stages. First we teach the "anapana" technique that consists about focusing on breathing in the nose area, seeking to relax the body more and more while trying to understand the direct relationship of the subconscious mind and the physical body experientially. The second stage is to learn "Vipassana" in order to develop the sensitivity of the mind to perceive more subtle sensations and understand experientially that we have an aura or an energy field around us. Although Vipassana seeks to reveal the impermanence of objects of observation and develop equanimity, ina 3 days retreat we only aspired to understand the basics of the meditation itself. The third stage was the conscious activation of the Spiritual Heart, propitiating the revelation of the Supreme Being that we all carry in the zone of our heart and thus go much deeper in meditation.
On Saturday afternoon when we shared experiences, the vast majority of the participants were delighted to have experienced for themselves the essence of the Inner Being and the positive physical and energetic symptoms that this entails. As it was explained in the theory that scientists had discovered in the last 10 years of research. For many it has truly been a before and afterwards in their lives and for us it has been a day of great joy and wonder! considering we where on an online retreat, we achieved an excellent result! participants discover their Inner Being by own experience and became stronger in their connection with their Spiritual Hearts!
For these reasons, we now consider that an online retreat definitely has real benefits for people who want to do it.
We invite you to join the Meditation group on facebook to share experiences, questions and courses on meditation!