SRI LANKA
INTIMACY, NOURISHMENT & BELONGING
8 Day Yoga and Ayurveda Retreat
YOGA & AYURVEDA RETREAT
SEPT 16 - 25, 2028
ULPOTHA
OUR RETREAT
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Ulpotha is a living haven nestled in the heart of Sri Lanka offering authentic Sri Lankan
It is one of the few places on earth where profound well-being arrives as a natural consequence of simply being here.
Ulpotha is an experiment in traditional living that allows like-minded friends to experience an elegantly comfortable lifestyle intimately attuned to nature and community.
Set in a completely private and sublime natural environment of Maitripa Centre in Healesville, this retreat is a rare opportunity for us to let go of the pressures and distractions of our day-to-day lives and turn towards the clarifying wisdom of the Dharma.
The heart of our work is to open towards a deeper relationship with the essential foundation and innate intelligence of our lives.
Each day an opportunity the dive a little deeper into the intimate terrain of our bodies, hearts and minds,
gathering in and integrating the sometimes fragmented impulses in our lives into a cohesive wholeness.
Nourishment will be the main theme for this retreat.
How we make contact with the immediate felt reality of our lives and the world round us.
How we touch and are touched by life can open for us a profoundly nourishing relational exchange.
While we will be practicing some embodied movement and asana, mostly this retreat is a deep dive into the qualities of, and our relationship to contact (sparsa), intimacy and nourishment and how available we can be for our practice.
So expect 3 days of deep rest through restoratives, yoga nidra, pranayama, meditation and inquiry as well as nourishing time in nature.
We will learn to relax to find our home in the simple elegance of embodied living, uncontrived, open and natural.
OUR RETREAT VENUE
Ulpotha is one of Sri Lanka's most enchanting retreat sanctuaries. Far removed from the noise and distractions of modern life, it offers a rare opportunity to experience nature, simplicity, and timeless village life in remarkable harmony.
Nestled beside a tranquil lake and surrounded by ancient forests and rice paddies, Ulpotha is one of Sri Lanka's most enchanting retreat sanctuaries.
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Far removed from the noise and distractions of modern life, it offers a rare opportunity to experience nature, simplicity, and timeless village life in remarkable harmony. Practise yoga beneath open-air pavilions, swim in the warm lake, enjoy delicious organic meals harvested from the surrounding land, and restore body and mind with authentic Ayurvedic treatments. With its quiet beauty, abundant wildlife, and deeply peaceful atmosphere, Ulpotha is more than a destination—it is a place that gently invites you to slow down, reconnect, and remember what it feels like to be fully alive.
DAILY SCHEDULE
6.00AM - MEDITATION, PRANAYAMA AND ASANA
8.30AM - BREAKFAST
10.00AM - AYURVEDA TREATMENTS
NOON - YOGA NIDRA
1.00PM - LUNCH
2.00PM - AYURVEDA TREATMENTS AND FREE TIME​
4.30PM - RESTORATIVES, PRANAYAMA, MEDITATION
6.30PM - DINNER
8.00PM - MEDITATION
OUR RETREAT FOCUS
INTIMACY - NOURISHMENT - BELONGING
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This is the central theme of our time in Sri Lanka.
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our 8 day retreat includes 5 days of individually tailored ayurvedic treatments.
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our focus will be on intimacy, nourishment and the regenerative encounters with being.
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It will be a relaxed and spacious retreat with morning yoga and pranyama. our daily ayurvedic treatments and evening restoratives, pranayama, meditation and Dharma talks.
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This retreat will focus on the rich and subtle dynamics of pranayama, offering us a deeper insight into how to work with breath and the responsive intelligence of feeling.
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PRANAYAMA IS AN INTIMATE PROCESS OF APPRENTICING OURSELVES
TO THE SUBTLE AND RESPONSIVE INTELLIGENCE OF LIFE
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Cultivating our relationship with Pranayama is cultivating a relationship with the living current of life itself.
It is a profoundly intimate affair.
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Prana is accessed through feeling, and the practice of Pranayama expands and refines our capacity for feeling.
A refined and intelligent sensibility to feeling is a gateway to the rich and subtle terrain of the deeper dimensions of yoga and life.
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There is, of course, technique. But it is the responsiveness of feeling that is the guiding intelligence of Pranayama.
Pranayama, as with all yoga practice, is not a technique we do to ourselves; nor a method of controlling the breath.
It is an intimate relational invitation into to the nourishing intelligence of life.
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Pranayama requires deep listening and a willingness to respond to the moment to moment demands and invitations of life.
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This retreat will be of great benefit to teachers looking to deepen their understanding and practice of Pranayama.
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FOOD
Nourishing vegetarian food provided
ACCOMMODATION
Simple single rooms for everyone
COST
​$850
$750 conc
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INCLUDES
All meals - 2 nights accommodation (single room)
all sessions
Join Us
ABOUT PAUL WOODEN
Paul has been practicing and studying yoga and meditation for 40 years and teaching for 35 years.
He draws from his experience in many different styles and traditions and, through a practical understanding of their underlying unifying principles, weaves together a cohesive and integrated approach to yoga.
Paul is a unique voice in the world of yoga. He has a way of bringing the sometimes abstract teaching of yoga into ordinary language making them accessible and workable in our lives.
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For Paul, yoga is first and foremost a relational process, with technique being a way to serve a deepening and more intimate relationship with ongoing moment to moment reality of our lives.
Working with Paul is an invitation to the deeper dimensions of practice. His particular way of working opens us to the sensitivity and receptivity necessary for the subtler inner practices. He has been running retreats for over 2 decades and finds them fertile ground for real transformation.
He continues to study the inexhaustible richness of the wisdom traditions and complements these studies with a more contemporary understanding of the human condition, including developmental psychology, integral theory and trauma work (somatic experiencing) which seeks to help uncover and release the binding patterns of trauma in the body.
Hit the button below and send me a message, if you would like to secure yourself a place.