In April I'll be going with a group of students and friends to a beautiful place in Northern Costa Rica called The Sanctuary, which is a magickal off-grid retreat center nestled between two rivers off the Pacific Coast.
The Sanctuary is the place where I did my first Yoga Teacher Training... way back in July of 2015. Since then, I've pursued Yoga as my primary "occupation" and made the study & practice of this ancient art my main objective in life. Something about this training and being at the Sanctuary really "clicked" things in for me and my path has been unfolding ever seen....
Anyways, the place is pretty awesome. I started bringing groups here in 2021 for transformational work and each time I go back, I get to see more of my own growth as it is reflected in an environment that has remained the same over the years. Each year the "retreat" and retreat group is a little different, as my teaching & practice is continually evolving, yet each year the results are incredible as is the feedback received from guests of this experience.
This year, for 2023, our focus is on a retreat & training concept that I am calling "Voices of the Earth". This will be my first iteration of this exact "model" & training concept for a retreat experience, and I am so excited about it. Let me share a little bit about why and how this vision came to be.
So, firstly, Voices of the Earth is an extension of our Yoga School Keepers of the Earth (hence the shared name). Which means that everything we do is filtered and run through the refined lens of the KotE; as in, the retreat itself is a training into the Mystical Arts presented and developed within KotE.
The organization and entity that is "Keepers of the Earth" is a community operation which emphasizes the preservation of Sacred Wisdom and Natural Law and does so by the study of ancient wisdom traditions such as Yoga and Tantra.
Thus, Voices of the Earth is a training and immersion in service to the vision & mission of KotE, and yet is placing its emphasis on working specifically with the VOICE as the primary tool for enlightenment, healing and transformation.
The traditions of Hatha Yoga, Classical Tantra, and the metaphysical frameworks of these systems are woven into the vocal work that we do WITHIN Voices of the Earth. And so the practitioner & retreat guest gets to experience a proper training and initiation into practices and concepts emerging from the tradition & lineage and then weaving this into their own vocal self-development work.
Why the emphasis on "vocal self-development work?"
We can all discover for ourselves the power of working with the voice when we stand in front of a group to share something meaningful to us and we observe our voice in its little quakes and shakes. The nervous system is sensitive to and picks up on the many ears listening to our sound and, suddenly, there is a LOT of energy that we are managing! This is an expansive moment! OR, we can see this when we share our heart with someone we love, and we share something vulnerable or perhaps scary to open up about.
The conclusion here is that The Voice is a bridge to an evolutionary outcome. We can use the Voice to affect change, or we can silence our own Voice and maintain the status quo.
Our experience brings an understanding of what is happening when we consciously and intentionally work with our voices. When we layer in an understanding of the subtle physiology of a person and examine vocal work through the lenses of Yoga & Tantra, we may come to the conclusion that....
.... Vocal Work is Kundalini Yoga ...
.... Singing is Kundalini Yoga ...
.... Expressing our Truth when it's hard is Kundalini Yoga ...
.... Chanting is Kundalini Yoga ....
By Kundalini Yoga, we mean: working with the evolutionary energy that is within us to affect change to the very neurobiology responsible for transforming our ego's fixed identity.
Kundalini Yoga describes the process of working with the kundalini, or evolutionary energy, that is dormant in the individual, to create radical change to their personality. Traditionally this energy is seen as the Goddess, is known to be nestled at the base of the spine where the conditioned mind represses and restricts this energy from rising upwards where it "wants" to be re-united with God/Source at the crown of the head. When the Goddess and God re-united, there is union, or Yoga, which is then the experience of the individual self being submerged into the Greater Self.
And so, working with the Voice through intention, through practice, through conscious understanding of what we are doing can become this very same yogic process. These conclusions are an overview and esoteric description so that the reader can start to get a sense for what we are talking about. Our next step is to understand some of the actual science behind this process which is the topic for another day. This is where we get into the Vagus Nerve, and the chakra system of the subtle body, etc. We get to also talk about pranayama and kriya, the ritual process, all of this stuff. Many of the details here are experienced during the Voices of the Earth training, but it will be good to share some of them here both for readers and for participants to review.
Stay tuned for further updates on Voices of the Earth and be sure to check out the page here if you want more info or to register. There's still a few spaces left at the time of writing this!
With love,
Grant