Casa Payer, Luserna San Giovanni (TO)
March 22-24
From 2:30 PM on Friday to 4:00 PM on Sunday.

Struggle is a natural dimension that has nothing to do with conflict. A sprout struggles to push its way through the soil towards the sunlight. Newly hatched sea turtles must overcome a myriad of dangers to answer the ancestral call that draws them to the water. There is great struggle in the metamorphosis of a larva. The Arctic tern, a bird no heavier than a teaspoon, migrates from pole to pole, traveling up to 77,000 kilometers a year. Is this not an epic fight for life?

Life is a continuous and constant drive to evolve. This natural pull towards realization—be it of an ideal, a new possibility, or one’s innate calling—always involves struggle, overcoming limits, attachments, habits, and fears. Even Love itself—of which Nature is an expression—is a struggle because it dialectically implies the dissolution of resistance to Love and freedom. Conflict, on the other hand, stems from fear and judgment and is always aimed at egoic, divisive, and appropriative goals.

We live in a world of conflict, competition, geared towards prevarication and opposition. We see enemies everywhere, outside of ourselves.
At the same time, we shun—within ourselves—the natural dimension of struggle, commitment, harshness, and imperfection, making it a great repressed element. “When an inner fact is not made conscious, it happens outside, as fate,” as Jung stated. We want a life without problems, without flaws, without pain. And we become victims of this desire. We self-relegate ourselves to a state of inertia, passivity, depriving ourselves of our power to achieve, stiffening in our certainties (which, according to Nietzsche, are our greatest lies).

This is why a yoga that pacifies us, that offers illusory prospects of escaping daily problems, is not a tool that can lead to realization. We need another kind of yoga, another kind of meditation, one that carries the “sacred charge of the original.” One that is both an understanding of reality and an aspiration to emerge. One that is rebellion or a yearning for rebellion, which is, in essence, a form of love.

Life is not the effort to resist in the storm, but the joy of dancing in the rain.

We will dedicate our hatha yoga, shamanic yoga, forest bathing (link to page here), and meditation practices to these themes during the retreat days, inspired by the forest and nurtured by the delicate and attentive welcome of Paola and Luca. We’ll transform the obstacles, limits, discomforts, and problems we honestly prepare to encounter into opportunities to broaden our perspective and achieve goals grander and more elevated than those our minds propose.

Let’s rediscover the warrior within us, awakening the custodian of the struggle.

For info and program details sarangiyoga@gmail.com

The sessions, courses, seminars, retreats, and materials offered by Sarangi are intended for inner exploration, problem-solving, and personal growth. They are not a substitute for the work of doctors or psychotherapists, as their purpose is not to consider, treat, or resolve medical or health-related pathologies and symptoms.