Article from Bindu no 11
Getting to know the silence...
Meditation and Yoga from the tantric tradition at Håå Course Center in South Sweden
Why is a group of people silent for 21 or 33 days when they learn Kriya Yoga at Håå - and for three days when they participate in the shorter 10-14 days holiday courses with yoga and meditation?
What kind of silence do you discover when you do not talk, write or read?
“You are the inner silence, the silence on the background of what you experience, that which happens in your mind.” (Swami Janakananda)
Do you recognise the situation, when from a detached position you watch a quarrel between two colleagues, or between children? Impartially you experience the confusion without being part of it.
In the same way you can experience thoughts, emotions and attitudes, rather than letting yourself become immersed in them.
To have this experience, however, you have to create a foundation, and that comes about through the interplay between the different things we learn on the courses.
When I meditate I do not try to stop or change the flow of thoughts. I let it be, and little by little I can experience my personality and all that it involves. During meditation I don’t need to defend or fight anything in myself. On the contrary, I discover that I can accept my habitual pattern of thoughts, emotions and reactions.
When I see through the movements on the surface of my mind, I find a tranquillity, which allows previously unexpressed traits of my nature to unfold.
The teachings at Håå Course Center
When you come to Håå for 10 or 14 days, or for one or for three months, to go exploring with the deep reaching yoga which is taught there - the teaching takes place under ideal conditions.
In Håå it’s the same as being on a holi-day in the country, but without newspapers, TV, Walkman and mobile phone, and away from daily worries and influences. That in itself provides peace. It supports the teaching in the yoga room and helps you make your body supple, sharpen your awareness, see through the habits of the mind and get closer to your own center.
The courses begin with simple tension releasing exer-cises and a cleansing process where you flush out the stomach and the intestines, so you become as clean as a new born baby inside. In order to create a better balance in the brain and strengthen the energy, we use breathing-, concentration- and eye exercises. Step by step you become familiar with the yoga exercises and the different meditations.
Apart from yoga we spend about 1½ hours a day on practical tasks, like digging up carrots, looking after the horses, chop-ping wood, cleaning and cooking. (The food is vegetarian and comes mainly from our ecological gardening.) It is important that you circulate the energy which you generate in the yoga room. In this way the process of going deep and the daily activities enrich each other mutually.
The courses culminate with a period of silence. On the 10 and 14 days courses there are 3 days of silence, where the finer steps of the meditations Antar Mauna (Inner Silence, a seven step Tantric meditation) and Ajapa Jap (a nine step preliminary Kriya Yoga) are taught.
The Three Months Course is a unique initiation into the tradition. After a thorough preparation for 6 weeks, the unabridged Kriya Yoga is taught - maybe the only place in the world where it is offered - during 33 days of silence. On the 4-week long Kriya Yoga Course, which demands that you have previously taken part in a 10 or 14 days course, there are 21 days of silence. (Order the brochure about Håå.)
Free time is also important. You can walk, ski or ride along the surrounding fields and in the forests. The course center has nine horses. Where the brook runs into the lake we have a boat and some canoes. The area has an unusually rich animal and bird life. There are many deer and if you are lucky you may see a moose or an otter. In the Spring and Autumn cranes, geese and swans come by.
The sauna represents an old Nordic way of cleansing, relaxing and acclimatising yourself. In the “Pyramid” you float quietly in salt water. The lack of sensory input allows the mind to come to rest and the body to relax - by itself.
Like spokes joined in the hub of a wheel
All that you participate in - yoga, Yoga Nidra, intestinal cleansing, breathing exercises, the meditations, silence, garden work, free time in the Småland nature, and in the evenings, lectures or song and dance - is part of a process that paradoxically provides both deep tranquillity and extraordinary energy.
Last Christmas a student called it a spiritual survival course. You return home with a greater presence, and an ability to do the tasks that are obvious and need to be done. From this, in daily life as well as during your practice of yoga and your meditation, grows your discovery of a silence in the midst of this teeming modern life.
Read more about Håå International Course Center >>
