Searching for the roots of the spirit quietly in natural surroundings.

The Ashram is frequented by people wishing to avoid the tensions and noise of the consumers' society with its barrage of deceiving mass-media for a while in order to seek out their deeply rooted spirituality and to find a sense of humanity in their life-style. Those who reach this quiet hermitage have chosen solitude and, putting aside worldly habits for the time being, dedicate their time to studying, meditatioti and prayer. The beauty of the landscape and the rediscovered harmony with oneself nourish the desire to live fully and to delve deeper and deeper into the knowledge of Truth, feeling the need for an all-embracing relationship with God and man.

Gathering lavender flowers from the Ashram garden.

Various practical rules

A day in the Ashram includes two all-important moments: dawn and sunset, when all come together to take part in group meditation.The rest of the time is dedicated to individual study, community work and walks in the surrounding woods. There are also meetings held by Sri Satyananda during Sat-sangh and occasionally by important exponents of other religion and culture. Monday is a special retreat day, in which everyone remains alone, fasting and in silence.In order to reunite in harmony and in respect of the place and its animating spirit, certain rules and regulations concerning the activities and community life of the Ashram need to be observed. The food is the same for everyone and simple vegetarian. The use of tobacco, alcohol and other stimulants and intoxicating substances is prohibited, and guests are requested to wear clothes suitable for a center of spiritual research.By statute the Ashram is a non profit-making association; it depends on the contributions of those who frequent it. Each person helps with to daily expenses according to his/her own possibilities.

Integrated Yoga:
Liberation from the ignorance

Yoga is a practical way to the realisation of the Self, a discipline of integrated ascesis, a means of achieving illumination by purifying one's whole being. Yoga can be understood as a method of spiritual progress, disciplining one's body-mind and influencing one's consciousness in order to increase mental concentration and thus experiment higher reality, which would otherwise remain veiled by the illusions of existential life. Yoga is one of the most ancient traditions of Hinduism and is now practiced without discrimination by Hindus, Christians, agnostics and atheists. More than a religion, Yoga is a practice for achieving liberation from the material world, and it is also a science, since it teaches the method to follow.

The form of Yoga most known in the West today is Hatha Yoga, the Yoga concerning body postures but this is only one of the aspects of integrated Yoga, whose various philosophies and teachings for liberation are one of the six traditional systems of Indian thought. The word Yoga is generally understood as ‘union', but its literal translation is ‘yoke': the yogin struggles to yoke his lower consciousness, i.e. the ego, to the supreme consciousness of the absolute.

Nightly devotion in front of the Matri-Mandir.


Self-control, ascesis, meditation, all discipline the body-mind complex, so that it can adapt to the higher reality of the Brahman (Supreme Being). The illumination is not felt, but rather witnessed by a consciousness now reawakened by being yoked to the real nature of the world. The Bhagavad Gita, too, stresses the importance of self-control and the control of the senses as a basic method of a Yoga described in the text as a point of equilibrium between individual consciousness and universal consciousness, making possible for man his gradual detachment from worldly experiences and consequent total projection towards a state of inner consciousness, permanent and not illusory. Yoga derives from a dualistic philosophy, according to which Prakriti (Matter) and Purusha (Spirit) are fundamentally separate entities; the Spirit is linked to Matter and therefore to Maya (illusions), because of the moral implications of individual Karma (past actions).

In order to realize higher truth, the first aim of the yogin is to free himself from the chains of Maya, through an ascetic process of detachment and control over the senses.

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