Order your copy of The Hridaya Cookbook! Explore this collection of plant-based recipes from our centers, and bring presence and intention to every meal.
Order your copy of The Hridaya Cookbook! Explore this collection of plant-based recipes from our centers, and bring presence and intention to every meal.
Visit our centers, where a supportive environment for meditation welcomes you, and you’ll be gently guided on your journey inward. Here, you’ll connect with your heart, cultivate inner peace, and open to the deepest parts of yourself—held in a safe, nourishing space for profound spiritual growth.
Available in
EN, ES, FR
Discover the joy of being quiet. Remove yourself from everyday distractions, peel away layers of the ego, and reveal the eternal peace within.
Available in
EN, ES, FR
Infuse your life with love in this Heart-centered voyage of Self-Inquiry.
Available in
EN, ES, FR
Ask “Who am I?” and discover the Truth within yourself, cultivating a greater sense of love, wholeness, and open-heartedness.
Available in
EN
A unique opportunity for an extended silent retreat, deepening the teachings of the Spiritual Heart.
Available in
EN
Celebrate this sacred time by exploring your heart through Jesus' life and teachings.
Available in
EN
Designed especially for experienced practitioners, this intensive retreat offers a space to rest more deeply in Self-Inquiry and surrender.
At Hridaya, silent meditation retreats offer a sacred opportunity to step away from daily distractions and rest in the Stillness of the Heart. This inner turning is not a retreat from life, but a return to its essence—a space where the noise of the mind settles and the radiance of Pure Being is revealed. We open to a deeper truth, where silence itself becomes the greatest teacher and transformation arises naturally from within.
Hridaya Meditation, the cornerstone of our silent meditation retreats, invites you to rest in the still, luminous space of the Heart. Rather than focusing on fleeting thoughts or emotional states, this practice guides awareness to the background of all experience—Pure Presence. In the silence of retreat, the surface mind settles, revealing a natural clarity and peace untouched by circumstance. Life is no longer a chain of reactions but a sacred unfolding, where each moment is infused with reverence and love.
What arises is not a passive state, but a vibrant aliveness—the Heart awakens as the center of Being. As taught in our 10-day silent meditation retreats, this shift is more than an insight—it’s a transformation in how we experience ourselves and the world, grounded in awareness and inner freedom.
A silent meditation retreat is not only a spiritual journey—it can also support physical and emotional healing. As the body relaxes in deep stillness, tension and stress begin to dissolve, activating the body’s innate intelligence. Many students report remarkable improvements in chronic conditions, stress-related illness, and overall well-being. This is not due to effort, but to a simple return to our natural state—resting in the Heart.
Combined with the deep embodiment offered in our 3-week classical Hatha Yoga immersions, this process supports profound healing at every level. As the mind quiets and the heart opens, energy flows more freely, and the body responds with vitality, balance, and ease.
One of the most profound experiences in a silent meditation retreat is the deep recognition of Oneness. As we turn inward, the illusion of separation begins to dissolve. The question “Who am I?”—a central inquiry in Hridaya Meditation—is not answered with the mind, but with the silent recognition that all is One. In this space, compassion and love flow effortlessly, no longer bound to personal stories but rooted in the shared essence of all beings.
This inner revelation also brings stability. As awareness rests in the Heart, a natural balance arises. The chaos of life softens, and we begin to move from a place of quiet confidence and grace. This centeredness becomes a new foundation—a way of living that is grounded, joyful, and deeply free.
The gifts of a 10-day silent meditation retreat extend far beyond the cushion. At Hridaya, we emphasize integration—bringing the depth of your inner experience into every aspect of daily life. The insights revealed in silence are not fleeting—they are seeds planted in the Heart, ready to blossom into conscious living. With continued practice, the qualities of stillness, presence, and love become natural expressions in relationships, work, and daily moments.
Living from the Heart means walking through the world with openness and authenticity. It is the art of seeing the sacred in the ordinary and responding to life not from habit, but from presence. Each retreat is a doorway into this deeper way of being—a return to what has always been here, quietly waiting within.
While our on-site group retreats offer a nurturing space for profound insight, you may sometimes long for even greater solitude. Our individual retreats provide that sacred quiet. We take care of all the details so you can rest fully in expansive aloneness, deepen in Self-awareness, and open to the mystery of who you really are.
Experience the spaciousness of 7 weeks in solitude and Self-Inquiry, supported by Sahajananda.
Dive deep within yourself, guided by silence, meditation, and the timeless wisdom of sacred texts.
An ancient practice from the Ayurvedic and Tantric traditions, in the Dark Room, darkness becomes your greatest teacher.
We do a silent meditation retreat especially when we feel an intense calling towards the depths of our being. Or, we do a retreat when we feel the need to stop our ordinary activities for a while in order to objectify the nature of our impulses and see the reasons behind our decisions and actions with more clarity and detachment.
In this way, we purify our subconscious mind and start to see more clearly what is false in our lives. We also get closer to the real meaning of existence.
Even though there may be difficult times during retreat, we have the feeling that we are going deeper down a path of truthfulness, clarity, love, and detachment from old patterns.
Often, this process may appear completely new to us. To follow its call, we feel the need for discipline and dedication.
In every Hridaya Meditation, we are invited to let go of our ego. We have the feeling of entering a path on which we cannot move forward other than in sacred solitude. It is as if we decide to leave behind our personal world of fears, worries, traumas, thoughts, impulses, and reactions to explore a new dimension—a world of awareness, peace, joy, and freedom. Thus, we begin an inner journey into our Real Nature, feeling that we step forward on a path we may have never taken before.
During a silent meditation retreat, the tendency to look outside for fulfillment shifts to exploring ourselves from within. This shift of awareness makes us discover the space of Stillness in which all thoughts arise and dissipate. It is what we name “the awareness of awareness itself.”
Awareness also brings more sensitivity to the mind, emotions, and body. In this openness, old, painful memories and patterns emerge, are embraced without judgment and with awareness and love, and, thus, are released. The abandonment of what we were identified with (stories, dramas, fears, etc.) brings the happiness of pure existence, the freedom of awareness. Meditation becomes an always-new, conscious surrender into the unlimited, unknown “land” of our inner universe, into the secret infinity that dwells in us.
This inner path can be compared with facing death. The letting go of attachments has the same significance as evoking death in any genuine initiating ritual. In initiations, death (which is a death of the ego) symbolizes the fundamental spiritual path that starts from the individual, limited consciousness and ends in the Consciousness of Oneness.
Most often, it can be a long process with different stages. But the fundamental and fascinating phase is the conscious step from personal to transpersonal, from limitation to absolute freedom, from manifestation to transcendence.
The program and the guidelines of the Hridaya Silent Meditation Retreat are meant to create the proper conditions to experience the calming of the mind and the blossoming of the Heart—the inner organ of direct Spiritual Knowledge.
It gives us the taste of the essential “dimension” of our being—Stillness.
In a silent retreat, it is much easier to free ourselves from the countless distractions of daily life. The mind becomes calmer, and we rediscover the beauty of simplicity, of nature, of pure presence. The retreat offers us the space and time to stop and meet ourselves in a deeper way.
Silence and solitude open us to the Stillness that is our Real Nature. The genuine touch of Stillness brings regeneration, clarity, strength, rest, and trust.
Stillness exists beyond the layers of words, thoughts, and emotions. Stillness is the ocean in which all sounds and movements appear as waves. Sound and silence, movement and immobility are inseparable in the embrace of awareness and Stillness. Thoughts depend on the Stillness of pure awareness, exactly as waves depend on the ocean.
Through the power of time, everything returns to Stillness. Being settled in this center—Stillness—brings significance, vigor, and enthusiasm to any aspect of life. When we lose our connection with Stillness, we become inefficient and weak.
When agitation ceases in our being, we can know this directly, in an intimate and obvious way. Through Hridaya Meditation, the awareness of the difference between thinking and just Being emerges in a natural way.
If thoughts and activity are formative for the personality, Stillness is trans-formative in the sense that it reveals to us the uniqueness and beauty that it is, that we are.
“In silence, the lines of the mouth are like the closed wings of a butterfly. When the word starts moving, the wings open, and the butterfly flies away. […]
Silence reveals itself in a thousand inexpressible forms: in the quiet of dawn, in the noiseless aspiration of trees towards the sky, in the stealthy descent of night, in the silent changing of the seasons, in the falling moonlight, trickling down into the night like a rain of silence, but above all in the silence of the inward soul,—all these forms of silence are nameless: all the clearer and surer is the word that arises out of and in contrast to the nameless silence.”
–Max Picard
“It is in the sanctuary of nature’s silent places, with mindful attention, that the true liberation of the heart can be obtained.”
–Buddha
Hridaya Silent Meditation Retreats are designed for everyone, from those who have never tried meditation to advanced meditators.
The daily schedule starts gently, with meditation sessions broken into short, one-hour (or less) segments, increasing to longer sessions by the end of the retreat. In addition to meditation sessions, each day’s schedule includes a morning Hatha Yoga class, lectures, and time for questions and answers (with written questions).
In meditation, there should be no effort or difficulty, because all that we have “to do” is to remain in the center of our being, and each time we observe that we are taken away by thoughts, sensations, emotions, etc. we simply come back, again and again and again, without reaction, frustration, or tension, but with serenity and patience.
The great Jnana Yogi Nisargadatta Maharaj speaks about the naturalness and simplicity of meditation, which is essentially a Self-awareness.
“Q: … there must be a way for all to tread—with no conditions attached.
M: There is such a way, open to all, on every level, in every walk of life. Everybody is aware of himself. The deepening and broadening of Self-awareness is the royal way. Call it mindfulness, or witnessing, or just attention — it is for all. None is unripe for it and none can fail.”
Retreats are led by Sahajananda and other experienced Hridaya Meditation teachers. Please refer to our Calendar to see a list of upcoming dates and presenters. If no teacher is listed for the date you are interested in joining us, you may Contact Us for more information.
There is an orientation session held the day prior to the start of the retreat, in which we go over all guidelines. Retreat participants must attend; registration is not possible after this session. For more information, please read the Hridaya Silent Meditation Retreat Guidelines.
At Hridaya, we speak about the integration of daily life into spirituality, since a real spiritual practice should change the old, selfish paradigms associated with daily life. Thus, yoga and meditation are not just a means to be more efficient in our daily tasks while we maintain old patterns. Rather, they encourage us to create coherence between our spiritual intuitions, aspirations, and daily lives.
During our modules and retreats, we speak about this topic and offer practical advice. If inspired, we encourage you to participate in a 10-Day Hridaya Silent Meditation Retreat followed by From Retreat to Daily Life, our integration course.
For information on how to reach Hridaya Yoga France by bus, air, train, or car, please visit Getting to Longeval.
For information on how to reach Hridaya Yoga France by bus, air, train, or car, please visit Getting to Longeval.
For information on how to reach Hridaya Yoga France by bus, air, train, or car, please visit Getting to Longeval.
For information on how to reach Hridaya Yoga France by bus, air, train, or car, please visit Getting to Longeval.
Whatever you call it, it’s that which calls you to look within.
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