The Sacred Return.
For people who had a practice once. You sat every morning for a while, it held, and then a job or a child or a move took it, and the cushion became a thing you feel guilty about. This retreat is built for coming back rather than for starting.
- Length
- Seven nights
- Setting
- Partner properties, Bali. Other locations by arrangement.
- Group size
- Small, and capped. We run a retreat twice rather than doubling a room.
- Silence
- Partial. Held from evening through to after morning practice, and full on days four and five.
- Experience
- None assumed. This is the RASA retreat to arrive at cold.
- Method
- The four movements, run across the full week
- Dates and price
- Set per property and season. Ask and we will send the next dates.
The lapsed, not the beginner.
Most meditation retreats are written either for people who have never sat or for people who sit daily. The largest group is neither: people with real prior practice and a long gap, who do not need the basics explained and do not want to be treated as advanced.
Seven nights is the shortest length at which the full arc completes. Shorter retreats can get a guest to release and awareness. The turn in the third movement needs a middle long enough to get properly bored first, which is why this one does not compress.
Day by day.
Timings shift with the property and the season. The order does not.
Arrival and putting down
Arrive through the afternoon. Phones are handed over before dinner. One short sitting in the evening, deliberately easy, then an early night. Nothing is asked of you on the first day beyond turning up.
Release
The body first. Long mornings of breath and movement, two seated sessions daily, walking practice in the afternoon heat. Sleep tends to be heavy and strange on the second night. That is expected and is part of the point.
Awareness, in full silence
Silence holds across both days including meals. Sittings lengthen, instruction shortens. This is the stretch guests find hardest and later name as the reason the week worked. A facilitator is available one to one throughout.
Surrender
The longest sittings of the week, with almost no teaching. Speech returns in the evening, usually to a much quieter room than the one that arrived.
Alignment
What this looks like at home. A practical session on building a practice that survives a working week, then a closing sitting. Departures after lunch.
What the week holds.
- All practice sessions across the seven nights, led throughout.
- One-to-one time with the retreat facilitator, at least twice.
- Accommodation and all meals at the host property, single occupancy.
- Written material for the practice you take home, not a folder of slides.
- A follow-up six weeks after you leave, because the fourth movement is where retreats usually fail.
What it does not.
- Travel to the property, including airport transfers unless the host arranges them.
- Spa treatments and bodywork. Available at most host properties and booked separately, outside practice hours.
- Extra nights. Many guests add one before or after. Arrange those directly with the property.
- Any promise about outcome. We can hold the week properly. What happens in it is yours.
Ask about the next dates.
Tell us roughly when you could travel and we will send what is running.
Host this retreat.
The Sacred Return is the one we recommend running first at a new property. Seven nights, small group, low facility requirements.