Dear Sangha,
We’d like to share some photos from our retreat on the 4th and 5th series of Yantras with Honza Dolenský that took place from 20th till 23rd January at our retreat center, Phendeling, Czech Republic. Almost 20 yogis participated in this retreat.
Honza started the sessions with a light warmup and breathing awareness meditation to support our yantra yoga practice. We then continued with the preliminary practices, which we might think we know well, but anyway Honza reminded us about details that we might miss during our daily practice.
The main part of this open course was aimed at guiding us through the main yantras, so we watched with awe the presentations of all ten of them, each of which presented some sort of challenge for most of us. Fortunately, Honza led us through some of the pitfalls, such as trying to follow the form beyond our capacity rather than connecting with the lightness of our breathing. We completed explanations of all the yantras, so now our development depends — with the support of a renewed weekly group practice — on us.
The retreat was accompanied by the very serene environment of a classical winter retreat, with light snow outside the windows of our gönpa, inducing even more relaxation. This retreat was held in the “old school” way after seasons when meeting physically was not so easy, so old and new practitioners were able to laugh together over a glass of tasty Austrian wine in the evenings.
We thank our gekö for preparing the “body” aspect, the place, for us to practice, our vajra sister who dedicated her work purely as karmayoga for the energy aspect, her delicious food, and our instructor Honza for the mind aspect, teaching us with such care.
Gakyil of Kunkyabling, Prague
