Scandinavian Yoga and Meditation School - Homepage
"Don't expect to arrive at a hotel and be waited upon..." With these thoughts I departed for my first yoga course in Håå many years ago. I had read a few books and was expecting to sleep on primitive straw mats in a cold dormitory, and sit on a wooden floor with a simple bowl of rice for lunch. To my surprise, Håå Course Center did not live up to these ascethic/romantic expectations - our rooms were comfortably furnished, there was a sauna and a dining room with inviting round tables.
Inner knowledge and mystical experiences are not associated with any outer form - I realised that quite quickly.
At Håå, the visitor finds an interplay of many things that make a transformation possible. Firstly, what happens in the yoga room: yoga and breathing exercises and the Tantric meditations Ajapa Japa and Antar Mauna. This is the core around which everything else develops. But not everything happens in the yoga room...
"Something or other feels different here," was the initial comment of a student from Berlin, when he got off the bus at Håå after a long journey, and looked at the surroundings. The silence at the course center could almost be felt physically.
Just being in an ashram has an effect. It allows you to take a pause
from the daily influences and habitual patterns of thoughts and attitudes.
Modern psychology would describe it as
de-automatisation. Clearing out the head and mind to be able to open new
doors.
The purpose of a course, or retreat, is to give you the time and possibility to go deep within yourself and, with the aid of yoga and meditation methods, to ex-plore your own resources. The clarity, energy and creativity discovered during this period can be taken home to daily life. The sequence of a day at the course center is intense and diverse - yoga and breathing exercises in the morning - karma yoga in the kitchen, in the garden or with the horses - relaxation (Yoga Nidra) and meditation (Ajapa Japa) - varied vegetarian food, mostly from the Center's own ecological farm - freetime - yoga and meditation (Antar Mauna) in the late afternoon - lecture, kirtan/music/dance or meditation in the evening.
Freetime in the afternoons in the Swedish nature is an essential part of a residential course at Håå. Indoors there is a sauna and a specially constructed relaxation tank (The Pyramid), in which you - free from all sense impressions - float "weightlessly" in water. The surrounding forests invite long strolls, and there is horseriding in the fields and the forests (for both beginners and experienced riders). The Center has canoes for use on the nearby lake, where it is possible to go swimming in the summer and ice skating in the winter.
The teachers leading the courses each have a minimum of 14 years teaching experience; many have more. As a participant, you can be certain of having a teacher with a genuine personal knowledge of the meditations he/she teaches. (Read also the article on the yoga teacher education.) Those assisting on the course, whether it be in the kitchen, the fields or the stables, are people who live in the ashram and who work with yoga and meditation themselves. They are familiar with what happens in the yoga room, and most of them are also yoga teachers under training.
The courses, which are held all year round, are international. Participants come from Australia, Poland, Germany, USA, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, England, from the whole of Scandinavia, etc., and therefore the teaching is conducted mostly in English. (If necessary, translation of some languages can be provided.) Due to the large number of participants from Germany, there is a 14 days course every year with German as the main language.
There is a wide range of courses: from weekend courses and 10 and 14 days courses, to the 4 weeks Kriya Yoga course and the annual 3 months course, led by Swami Janakananda. The 3 months course is a retreat for people wanting to go further. On this course you are initiated into the original Tantric Kriya Yoga during one month of silence.
Joachim Rodenbeck