Yogalujah Yoga Retreats

02/09/2022

Booked till next year, folks. We'll keep you updated on our green vision for 2023.

10/02/2022

For some, opinions have become facts, and years of study and research are no longer needed to back up substantial claims. This is more evident than ever in the holistic wellness industry.

At first glance, these trends may seem harmless, but it is those who stand to capitalise from them, who push the envelope, leading to serious ethical issues: the downplaying of scientific research and the spread of misinformation.
Let's take a deeper look at some of these pseudoscientific claims and extreme beliefs.

Taking a deeper look into the internet health gurus cashing in on alternative medicine and spiritual wellness trends.

09/02/2022

NAY-New Age Yoga.
How an Eastern religion became pseudo-spirituality for westerners.

"Imagine treating Baptism and Communion as an Underwater Therapy and Wine Tasting business! Envision a Fitness Rabbi, Diet Pope and Gaming Imam! Picture Hot Baptism (at your local gym), Power Mass and Gentle Genuflecting! How about a 200 hour Certified Communion Teacher greeting students with Hallelujah and denying any Christian connection? How about marketing Baptism pants to display one’s physical accomplishments! As ridiculous as this seems, this is exactly how callous, absurd and insulting is the NAY crusade."

Swami Param, President of the Classical Yoga Hindu Academy in Barnegat, N.J.

https://thecoastnews.com/new-age-yoga-old-age-theft-and-surrender/

08/02/2022

02/02/2022

"If you haven't cried deeply a number of times, your meditation hasn't really begun" Ajahn Chan

Wise spiritual practice requires that we actively address the pain and conflict of our life in order to come to inner harmony. Without including the essential step of healing, students will find that they are blocked from deeper levels of meditation.

31/01/2022

Spiritual Narcissism, a scientific look at it.

“Walking the spiritual path properly is a very subtle process: it is not something to jump into naively. There are numerous sidetracks which lead to a distorted, ego-centered version of spirituality; we can deceive ourselves into thinking we are developing spirituality when instead we are strengthening our egocentricity through spiritual techniques.

The self-enhancement motive is powerful and deeply ingrained so that it can hijack methods intended to transcend the ego and instead, adopt them to its own service. The road to spiritual enlightenment may yield the exact same mundane distortions that are all too familiar in social psychology, such as self-enhancement, illusory superiority, closed-mindedness, and hedonism (clinging to positive experiences) under the guise of alleged ‘higher’ values".

Self-enhancement through spiritual practices can fool some of us into thinking we’re evolving and growing when all we’re growing is our ego

30/01/2022

"Looking for yoga center with good people and good vibes".
How many times have you read or written something similar? The narrative commonly and largely used among "spiritually oriented" individuals seem to reinforce the paradox that there are " them" and there is "us"- the elected- and that rising above human nature is actually possible.

The consistent focus on positivity, niceness and goodness and the denial of all the other human qualities and emotions is ontologically a contradiction with most of the teachings that those same communities base their life on.
Duality and the ability to embrace both aspects of reality, therefore darkness as well as light, are at the very chore of the majority of the philosophy systems increasingly popular in the West. Yet, there is also a thirst for escape from reality, a growing illusion that as long as l preach or obey to prechers of Love and Light, everything will be okay.

This blind belief in a narrative which excludes anything outside of itself and its own partial interpretation of reality can easily lead to a sort of emotional dissociation as well to brewing the perfect conditions for abusive dynamics.

Being convinced that there's a special master or group that holds the secret to permanent bliss and to enlightenment and identifying completely with them without questioning the logics or the principles behind their claims is dangerous. The question to ask ourselves is if by chasing the perfect world, the perfect community, the perfect teacher and our own perfection we are actually running away from what we are afraid to feel in the first place.

Looking for good vibes and good people only equals setting the foundations for disillusion, since life itself is made of ups and downs, of good and bad, of challenges and obstacles, victories and losses. Until people navigating in the "Spiritual Industry" don't start changing narrative and choose to become fully human with honesty, integrity and real self awareness, very little healing can take place.

28/01/2022

How Wellness turns into a Cult: the power of language

Language is the primary means by which any group, and not just a cult, establishes a sense of shared purpose and identity. Specialized terminology allows adherents to feel they have unique access to something, it is a way to get members of a community on the same ideological page. To help them feel like they belong to something big.

Most cults do not start off as such. Their respective paths to the dark side though often begin with increased levels of esoteric terminology and choice epithets for outsiders.

Capitalism has made people uniquely susceptible to cults and cultish organizations. In the absence of robust social welfare programs, many turn to tightly knit groups that seem to provide an alternative space that can save them.

Some cults, on the other hand, try to convince followers that they can beat capitalism at its own game, as long as they possess a billionaire mentality and sell enough essential oils and diet supplements to their followers. It's the multilevel marketing dream.

As Amanda Montell says in her book- CULTISH, The language of fanatism- "They’re in the business of selling the transcendent promise of something that doesn’t actually exist. Their real product isn’t merchandise, it’s rhetoric.”

"The glue that keeps this trust intact is members’ belief that their leaders have a rare access to transcendent wisdom, which allows them to exercise control over their systems of rewards and punishments.”

Cults and cultish organizations rely on precarity and social insecurity. They fill in the gaps, offering a sense of community and shared investment in the future.

The us-versus-them binary is reinforced by the promise of the spiritual and ethical rejuvenation that joining a certain centre, buying a certain skincare product or following an eating or training program comes with. People are sold a full ideology not simply a membership or a product: the feeling of being better human beings, truth seekers, environmentally conscious and therefore more evolved. They don't question in depth if by doing so they are actually buying into the capitalist system they think they are going against.

Critical thinking is not very welcome in cultish groups. Questioning the sources, the leaders, the scientific evidence of whatever we should believe in firmly is seen as sovversive and destructive, a side effect of our limited self and limited beliefs.

Language rituals such as chanting certain mantras in groups are seen as the best way to get rid of our ego and cultivate a broader sense of belonging but what often does is reinforcing the identification with a specific ideology and set of rules which may shut the members off reality and therefore prevent them from engaging actively within the rest of society.

As a result the spiritual and wellness practices become an escape from reality if not a way to expand your sense of self with grandiosity, totally absorbed in reaching enlightenment and develop super powers, either through a new pose or a green juice or a crystal bathed in moonlight.

According to Amanda Montell’s new book, “Cultish,” the jargon and technical language of fanaticism is surprisingly common.

27/01/2022

Is the wellness market making you unwell?

The need for connection is interwoven with being human and since loneliness is gradually turning into a kind of social epidemy, people often respond to it by looking for bonds and tribal identity in other places, such as virtual communities seldom offering a common purpose and narrative. One of the most popular is that if you are fit and healthy, you are a good person, as if your lifestyle equals morality, therefore turning an eating regime, a training program and other cleansing/ detoxing protocols into a navigation map to identify good from evil, being lovable from unworthy of love and appreciation.

Grasping for approval by ticking all the right boxes, depending emotionally on how much of a good individual you are based on your food restrictions and healthy choices is just another way to allow the Wellness Industry and their charismatic leaders to take advantage of your vulnerability. Sadly it often pushes people to become food obsessed if not to develop or worsen eating disorders, although masked by the perfect health mission.

Studies are more and more showing that normalising food hysteria as it is happening, especially on social media, does more damage than good. It is the perfect excuse to hide eating disorders, nourish obsessive behaviours and justify cult like communities. The void resulting from becoming a secular society with few or no solid spiritual referents left, is filled by food and healthy lifestyle gurus who seem to provide you with all the answers and guarantee your salvation.

Don't underestimate how much your daily intake of exposure to idealised lifestyles, heath trends and food mania is affecting your mental well-being and digging into your sense of guilt or shame. Keep being very aware that no matter how amazing it looks and sounds, there is an Industry behind it and as such it's probably playing with your fragility to achieve their only interest: selling more and feeding your insecurities.

Try using discernment when it comes to choosing some new habit or joining a new community. Ask yourself whether you are bypassing something when asking for approval outside rather than within or if your "wellness call" is more of a red flag, an authentic need to start healing unsolved issues which cannot be fixed by another wonderful obsession.

26/01/2022

Lifting the veil of Wellness Industry.

Ask yourself: are you trying to fix and compensate your emotional discomfort by micromanaging every aspect of your physical body? Your quest for the holy grail of health is not going to be found in more practice, more dieting, more control on every aspect of your physical existence. Feeling comfortable with feeling uncomfortable is. Meaning, accepting that you are human and will always be. Toxic wellness culture invalidates trauma and keeps trauma survivors on a constant carousel, going around and around, trying supplements and restrictive diets, seeing little, if any, improvements. Sitting with pain, listening with loving compassion to what our discomfort is telling us and realising that not everything can have a fix, especially a quick one, is already a step forward towards liberation. It takes time,it takes patience, it takes the courage to feel vulnerable and still appreciate who we are today. Try to keep in mind that you are not supposed to be PERFECT and chasing perfection is not getting you anywhere in terms of well-being, but most likely making you obsessed with yourself and what else is wrong with you. Next time you feel the urge to fix yourself and everyone around you, try to stop, breath deeply and ask yourself if you are simply bypassing something deeper by engaging in another toxic behaviour which can only create more suffering.

Listen to this episode from Holistic Trauma Healing on Spotify. You've tried numerous dietary restrictions, have spent thousands on supplements, and have hopped from one natural practitioner to the next... and you're still chronically ill. Sound familiar? Did you know it never actually ends? The hea...

25/01/2022

Becoming emotionally available for yourself with loving compassion and awareness is the first step to show up mindfully in a relationship. Bonding from a deep place of understanding presumes that we have done and keep doing the work of embracing ourselves fully. It also helps us to detect the presence of true love and avoid creating toxic relationships, whether romantically or at work or with friends and colleagues.
Every drop of awareness you collect in your path is going to be the water you will water your garden with. Each relation is a seed and it's really up to us to help it grow.
The love you cultivate individually is the stepping stone to loving communion with the other. Start right where you are and see how it ripples out.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/5aRgcs5VuVHWzqBxQ3qG94?si=2quW6KF6SE2gPzlqXTjqGQ&utm_source=copy-link