Nature Yoga Retreat in Nepal

The 3-day Nature Yoga Retreat at Bodhidham, in Ghachowk near Pokhara, is a short and simple retreat for anyone who wants a brief reset in a natural setting. Over three days and two nights, it combines daily Hatha yoga, guided meditation, and satsang with rest and good food, in a quiet spot above the Pokhara valley.

The yoga is classical Hatha, covering warm-ups, asana, breathing, and relaxation, and is suitable for any level. Guided meditation gives a calm close to the day, and satsang offers an open, informal space for spiritual discussion for those who want to take part. Meals are vegetarian and eaten with views over the Annapurna range. Because it is short, this retreat suits a first taste of ashram life, a weekend away, or an addition to a longer trip in Nepal. For a deeper or longer stay, the week-long retreats give more time.

What the retreat includes:

• Hatha yoga. Daily classical yoga sessions, with warm-ups, asana, breathing, and relaxation, suitable for all levels.
• Guided meditation. Calm, guided sessions to settle the mind.
• Satsang. An informal, open space for spiritual discussion, to take part in as much or as little as you like.
• Vegetarian meals. Simple sattvic food, eaten with views of the mountains, Phewa Lake, and the valley.
• Walking country. Trails from the ashram gate into forest, terraced farmland and neighbouring Gurung villages, with guidance on which walk fits the time you have.
• Outdoor sessions. Practice moves outside whenever the weather allows, onto open ground above the ashram facing the Annapurna range.

Why we call it a nature retreat

The ashram stands where it does on purpose. Ghachowk sits on a shelf of hillside, and the land arranges itself around the buildings in a way that suits practice almost perfectly.

• Terraced farmland drops away below, rice and millet in long curving steps
• Oak and rhododendron forest climbs the ridge above the highest fields
• Machhapuchhre stands directly to the north, with Annapurna South and Hiunchuli beside it
• Water runs somewhere below all year, and you can hear it from the terrace
• The road ends here, and the walking trails begin

So when we call this a nature retreat, we mean the setting is doing part of the teaching. You are not visiting nature for an afternoon and then going back indoors. For three days you sleep in it, practise in it, eat out of it, and walk into it.

Here is what that looks like day to day.

Three words tell the whole story:

What nature means here, specifically

Four things. All of them ordinary rather than dramatic.

1. The practice goes outside

When the sky is clear, the morning session happens on open ground facing the range, not in a hall with a view of it. Sitting on earth rather than on a floor changes the practice in a way that is hard to argue for and easy to feel within a day or two.

2. The food comes from ground you can see

The vegetables in your lunch were picked that morning from the terraces below the building. Sattvic cooking is not only about what is left out. It is also about freshness, and the shortest possible distance between a field and a plate.

3. It is a working landscape, not a protected one

Ghachowk is a farming village. There are buffalo. Somebody is cutting fodder on the terrace below at seven in the morning. Children walk to school past the gate. This is countryside that people live and work in, farmed by the Gurung, who call themselves Tamu, for centuries.

4. The weather gets a say

If the monsoon arrives, practice moves inside. If the sky is clear at five in the morning in November, you are outside, and it is cold. Nothing here is climate-controlled into sameness. Ayurveda calls this ritucharya, arranging your life around the season instead of against it.

Where you will be

The ashram sits at 1,320 metres in Ghachowk, a Gurung farming village in Kaski District, about thirty minutes by road above Pokhara. Below the buildings are terraces of rice and millet cut into the hillside in long curving steps. Above the highest fields, oak and rhododendron forest runs on up the ridge.

The mountain in front of you

Directly north of the village stands Machhapuchhre, which most people know as Fishtail. It rises to 6,993 metres, and the Nepali government has never permitted anyone to climb it

It does not move, which turns out to matter for practice. Drishti, the steady gaze the practice uses, has somewhere to rest that is not asking anything of you.

What you will notice instead in this retreat:

• The air is thinner and much cleaner than what most arriving students have been breathing
• Nadi Shodhana feels more distinct here than at sea level
• The swing between day and night temperature is wider than most visitors expect
• Sleep is usually deeper from the first night

On three days you will notice this rather than work with it. That is honest. Three days is enough to feel the difference, not enough to build on it.

Is three days the right length for you?

Three days is a real retreat, and it is also a short one. Being straight about which one you need saves everybody a wasted trip.

This retreat suits you if

• You are already in Nepal, or already coming, and want to add something to the trip rather than build a trip around it
• You want to know what ashram life is actually like before committing two or three weeks to it
• You are between treks and your legs need a slow day more than another climb
• You have never done yoga and would rather find that out over three days than over three weeks
• You are travelling with someone whose interest in yoga is politer than yours

Book something longer if

• You want to feel a change in the body rather than in the mood. That takes a week at minimum, and the detox retreat or the standard retreat are built for it. You want depth in philosophy or the texts. Three days will open the subject and then end.
• You are coming for Ayurvedic treatment, which needs consultation time; this schedule does not have. The Ayurveda healing retreat is the one
• You want silence. Two or three days is not long enough for silence to do what it does. The noble silence retreat runs six
• You want to teach afterwards, in which case you want the teacher training, not a retreat