Spaces Left
18 October - 25 October 2024 | D’alijo Retreat Centre, Portugal
Coming Home To Yourself Retreat with Esther Ekhart & James Reeves
Come home to yourself and rediscover inner peace through meditation, self-inquiry, and deep rest in the serene D’Alijo Retreat Center. Join us for a transformative 7-day experience. Ready to embrace inner ease?
Inner Peace, Stillness & Transformation
We live in a world that promotes moving faster, being better, and doing more. Life can feel like an unending to-do list and relentless self-improvement project where time feels squeezed and life pressures lead to contraction, stress, and reactivity. This isn’t a failing, it is simply what it is to be alive at this time. Yet, might there be a way to uncover and recover our natural, felt-sense of ease and a quality of timelessness and spaciousness amidst life?
There is a longing within each of us that is asking us to return to the stillness and wholeness we’ve always known. This ease comes and goes in our lives, yet having known it, we long to return to it and often look in the wrong places. We mistakenly believe by doing something different or changing in some way, we’ll find peace. Whilst we can find temporary relief, the real and lasting freedom we are looking for is rarely found by reorganising ourselves or our lives.
Retreat offers an opportunity to uplug, unwind and unravel, by providing a forum for stopping and resting. These 7 days offer the opportunity to rediscover the shared humanity of our underlying stillness. The quietness that lies beneath our worldly identities is easily accessed when we take away distraction, preoccupation, and identification with the various roles and responsibilities we hold as caregivers, workers, and partners. It allows for a slow stripping away of all the layers of who we believe we are. As we remember that at our core, we are still, full, content, and at ease, we recover our innate sense of wellbeing. Carrying this ease back into life reignites our love for the world and our ability to maintain and sustain all those roles with less friction and tension.
More About this Retreat
What To Expect
The approach we’ll take will be both direct, through simply resting in stillness as a series of ‘non-doing’ meditations, and progressive, through self-enquiry, movement, breath practices, yoga nidra and deep rest.
James & Esther hold a wealth of experience and a depth and breadth of skills for working with individuals and groups. You will be supported by both teachers as you explore moving through and beyond any challenges and perceived barriers to the simplicity of stopping. Be it psychological content, trauma, beliefs, and patterns of conditioning, we will work together to meet, greet, and move through the content that surfaces during your time on retreat, allowing you to rest deeply in wholeness.
The mid-part of this retreat will be held in silence, allowing for a profound inner experience. However, there will be opportunities to ask questions during the scheduled class times, providing a balanced approach to introspection. Whilst elective, we recommend that during this phase of retreat you surrender your mobile phone and/or laptop, allowing you to be truly untethered from external distraction. Contact with the retreat centre will endure, allowing for any external emergencies.
We recommend that you have some previous retreat experience or have experience in practices that move beyond physical yoga, e.g. a meditation practice or Yoga Nidra practice.
The Schedule
08:00 – 09:00 Meditation and Pranayama
09:00 – 11:00 Breakfast and break – in silence
11:00 – 13:00 Yoga practice
13:00 – 17:00 Lunch and free time
17:00 – 18:30 / 19:00 Talks, Awareness practices/ Inquiries, Yin and/or Restorative yoga leading into Yoga Nidra
19:00 – 20:00 Dinner and free time
20:15 – Optional extra meditation or restorative yoga/yoga nidra for sleep
Arrival & Departure
Arrival is on Friday, October 18th. You can check in from 15.00 onwards. We will come together for a grounding practice in the evening to help everyone settle in. Departure is on Friday October 25th, after a short practice and breakfast.
Pricing Per Person
The cost includes seven nights of accommodation, great vegetarian meals served three times daily, plus the complete yoga, meditation and awareness program.
• Shared/twin accommodation with en-suite facilities (2 people sharing) | €1525
• Single with shared bathroom facilities | €1695
• Single with en-suite facilities | €1820
• Single luxury cabin | €1920 - FULLY BOOKED
To secure your spot a non-refundable deposit of €350 is required. The remainder of the fee is due on or before the 26th July 2024.
Book & Pay Online Today
You can secure your spot immediately be selecting to pay your deposit or full amount. Accepted payments include credit/debit cards, iDeal and Klarna (online bank transfer for specific countries)
Book and Pay by Bank Transfer
You can also choose to pay via bank transfer. If you want to book via this option please fill out our registration form.
We Are Proud Tree Sisters
By booking an in-person training with us, you are actively contributing to the global tree-planting efforts led by Tree Sisters. For every individual attending our retreats and trainings, we make a donation on your behalf.
Your Teachers
Esther Ekhart
Esther, the founder of EkhartYoga.com, is a down to earth well-loved spiritual teacher and a renowned global authority on yoga, meditation, and mindfulness. Esther has a reputation for providing exceptional guidance both online and offline and has captivated countless students over 25 years. Esther's teachings incorporate diverse influences, making her online classes, “live” workshops, and trainings a fusion of wisdom. Her practice has evolved from dynamic styles like Hatha and Vinyasa flow to include slower practices such as Yin Yoga and Meditation & Mindfulness. Continually expanding her knowledge, she remains open-minded and integrates new insights into her work all the time.
James Reeves
James is Author of The Book Of Rest, a world-renowned teacher of Yoga Nidra and founder of DeepRest.com, an organisation that specialises in helping people find ease and wellbeing amidst life. He’s been teaching Yoga for 20 years with a warm, invitational and open-hearted approach that invites a broad-sweeping embrace of our humanity as a pathway to being still and whole.
More Information
How To Get There
D’Alijo centre is around 70 minutes by car from Porto airport (the closest airport). There are no public transport options to the centre. We can arrange shared airport transfers to and from Porto airport at € 110 per car one way, a maximum of three persons. Transfers to and from the D'Alijo centre are not included in the prices.
You can find cheap car rental options via https://www.rentalcars.com or Transavia and RyanAir. Please make sure you travel with valid travel insurance.
About D’Alijo Retreat Center
D’Alijo Retreat Center in North Portugal is an exclusive retreat centre located in the village of Cabeceiras de Basto in the province of Minho, with its beautiful city of Porto. Porto offers an international airport just one hour away from our retreat centre. The area is well known for its Vinho Verde vineyards, olive fields and beautiful national parks. Their studio and accommodations are cohesively blended with nature and are sure to awaken the mind, body and spirit.
D'Alijo has a vast knowledge of hospitality and is capable of tailoring your needs as you desire. D’Alijo’s intention is to nurture its guests by providing a space to learn, develop and grow, coupled with outstanding client communication and customer service.
Since they do have mild winters and can heat all buildings, bookings are accepted year around. D’Alijo boasts an inspiring studio space, along with stylish accommodations, and a gorgeous terrace surrounded restaurant set amongst vibrant lush gardens. Those who come to this centre will feel empowered to reconnect with nature, in a truly spectacular location.