Living Yoga: Ashtanga Yoga meets Non Violent Communication
March 1 - 15, 2025
Get ready for this one-off opportunity to immerse yourself in a unique retreat intensive in the beautiful coastal town of Ahangama in Sri Lanka. This won’t be your average retreat experience! Join Luke Jordan and Anniken Poulsson Beer for a two-week retreat where the discipline of Ashtanga Yoga meets the transformative techniques of Nonviolent Communication (NVC).
The Location
Flowground Ahangama, Sri Lanka
Flowground is a minimalistic retreat house & home, nestled amongst paddy fields, just a stretch away from the vibrant beach town Ahangama, on the South Coast of Sri Lanka. The bedrooms at flowground are simple and light. You can choose between sharing a room with one or two other people (twin or triple bedroom), or having a single room (double bed) for a higher rate. All Rooms have A/C, hot water shower, en-suite bathrooms, except our standard twin room – it has a private bathroom direct next door.
The Practise
Grounded in Practice
Each morning begins with Mysore-style Ashtanga Yoga under the expert guidance of Luke. This practice is designed to build strength, flexibility, and concentration while tuning into the body’s innate wisdom. Suitable for all levels, it supports personal growth through physical discipline.
Core Principles of Yoga
Daily inspirations will be drawn from yoga’s rich philosophical traditions, including mantras, sutras, and texts, guiding us on how to embody yoga more fully in our lives.
The Applied Yoga of NVC
While traditional yoga techniques foster deep inner listening and a healthy relationship with oneself, effectively applying these principles to everyday interactions requires additional skills. This retreat bridges that gap with practical tools to enhance your communication and relationships.
Grounded in Practice
Each afternoon, engage in focused sessions that integrate Yoga with NVC.
1. Understanding NVC: Explore how NVC embodies Ahimsa (non-violence) and provides tools for a communication and understanding that contrast with more common ways based in judgement and notions of desert.
2. It’s Not What You Think!: Shift from intellectual processing to connecting with what is alive within you—your feelings and needs.
3. From Social Hell to Social Heaven: Discover key questions that empower you to create the reality you desire.
4. Art of Expression: Learn to express yourself without criticism and take responsibility for your reactions.
5. The Jackal Cafe: Transform judgments into understanding by appreciating underlying needs.
6. Triggered Choices: Develop strategies for constructive responses when triggered.
7. Dyad Meditation: Deepen your empathetic connection and understanding through this profound partner meditation.
8.Unconscious Contracts: Release the hidden (unconscious) agreements with life that limit you, freeing your energy for positive change.
The Teachers
Luke Jordan is a Certified Teacher in the Ashtanga Yoga tradition and holds a Masters degree in Indian Religions. He is a writer, story-teller, vedic-chanter, sanskritist and consummate student of yogic and spiritual culture.
Always feeling that there was something more to life, Luke first began formal study of Eastern mysticism in the 1990s while at University and plunged headlong into the practice of Ashtanga Yoga in the year 2000. This began an on-going journey that would take him around the world seeking out experts, gurus and teachers in the field of Yoga and spirituality.
Luke first made his way to Mysore, India in 2001 to study with Sri Pattabhi Jois and his grandson Sharath and is one of a very small number of teachers worldwide to have been granted the honour of Certification within the Ashtanga tradition.
Drawn to the deeper philosophical dimensions of Yoga, Luke loves to share the inquiry that springs from the chants, myths and conceptual underpinnings which form Yoga’s wider tradition.
Anniken Poulsson Beer shares Nonviolent Communication with people in workplaces, organizations, open workshops, schools, and kindergartens. She works in Norway and abroad. One of her favorite tools are the No-Fault Zone game. She also works with Dyads as a guide to inner wisdom, and supports healing old patterns that no longer serves us.
Anniken was the first Certified Trainer in Norway. Her background is as a preschool and drama teacher and she has worked in education since the mid-’80s. She has leadership and coach experience over a period of 20 years. Anniken teaches NVC all over the world. She is passionate about bringing out empathic communication, connection, and understanding in all kinds of relationships, in particular relationships between adults and children.
She is inspired by Robert Gonzales and Sarah Peyton, and shares several exercises she has learned from them. Anniken is the Executive Director of NVC Norway, since March 2020 and works as a full time trainer.
