in Elontuli course center, Karjalohja, Finland
We are happy to offer the seventh deep rest meditation retreat in Finland and second this year with Jaya Ashmore teaching!
Jaya (jayaashmore.org) has led meditation retreats since 1999 to encourage people from around the world to live an awakened life. She draws on her decades of experience in Theravada, Zen, and Tibetan Buddhism, as well as in non-dual Advaita, yoga, deep ecology, and modern somatic disciplines. Other influences on her teaching are her youth in a Christian family, long-time friendship with her spiritual friends in India, and twenty years of practicing Permaculture and Jin Shin Jyutsu, a Japanese art of harmony. She has lived most of her adult life in India, and now lives in Catalonia in northeastern Spain.
Jaya’s focus on discovering right effort and liberating insight has led her to encourage meditation through deep rest. Just as literal rest allows the body and mind to renew themselves, so deep rest also drops us into direct and non-conceptual awareness. This contact with aliveness feeds a natural opening to deep meditation, where old habit-energies are resolved without the intense drama that occurs when we are forcing things. Life beyond ideas leaves room for spacious joy and powerful shifts that make a real difference in our lives.
Jaya gives excellent meditation instructions in mindfulness, lovingkindness, and other techniques, but she emphasizes that each person can discover the feel of her or his own unfolding path.
The retreat is held in silence. In addition to instructions, Jaya also gives a daily Dharma talk and opportunity for one-to-one meetings. All the teaching will be in English. Participants are encouraged to try lying down for meditation, but sitting is also fine. The retreat also includes walking meditation, work meditation, and connected movement as well as optional meditative singing.
The retreat is appropriate for people at all experience levels or with no meditation experience.
The standard cost for the retreat is 310€ (not including possible donations for teacher and managers). We are willing and able to support your practice regardless of your financial status at the moment. This means that it is possible to pay less than the standard cost. If you would like to support someone else with some extra payment, that is also possible and greatly appreciated.
Here you can find more information about practicalities and instructions on how to register.
You can ask more from retriitit@syvalepo.fi, or from Ulla Sillanpää (+358 40 536 4181, application and payment) or Lauri Hallikainen (+358 40 715 6227, other questions).
From participants of previous retreats with Jaya:
”My own practice has been deeply insprired by the deep rest meditation approach. For me this has offered a deep way of opening body, heart and mind; an escape from extensive doing and trying to achieve in meditation; encouragement in finding my own path; and trust in a more intuitive way of guiding my practice and my life, and in letting processes unfold by themselves.”
– Anna Backholm, Finland
”When I first heard Jaya’s dharmatalks, she spoke in a language that reached my heart, not my head. I did several retreats with her. And slowly my analytical brain, that wanted to understand, fell asleep. Cause Jaya encouraged us to lie down. Which was new to me. I used to sit straight, analyze, focus, visualize and trying to be clear. Lying down I fell asleep. I was dizzy in my head. I couldn’t get grip on my mind.
But then, after a few days, when I came up from a deep rest, the world looked differently. The light fell so beautifully through the windows. The trees were glowing. The birds were singing. And under that was a deep silence, that I had never experienced before. The whole world resonated through me. I went to Jaya. Is this real, I asked. Yes, she said, without any doubt.
When I gave up the control and my wish to understand everything, I found something much deeper. A deep wise love. That wasn’t something that I could achieve or find. But that comes to me when I surrender to life.
That is what Open Dharma teaches. No method, no goal. Rest. Surrender to life how it is right now. Be available to life.”
− Nanda, Holland
Everyone is warmly welcome!