This was a 14-day meditation-retreat-style workaway I did this from 2026-09-09 to 2026-09-23 at Ananda Palli in Stanthorpe, Queensland, Australia. They run retreats like this around five times a year. We did yoga, kirtan and meditation twice a day for a total of about 3 hours. We followed a sattvic diet which is supposed to make meditation easier, meaning no caffeine, mushrooms, animal products and a few other restrictions.

• 12 work days of:
  • 06:00 yoga
  • 06:40 philosophy/theory class
  • 07:00 kirtan
  • 07:30 meditation
  • 08:00 breakfast
  • 09:00 work
  • 13:00 lunch
  • 14:00 chill time
  • 17:00 yoga
  • 17:40 philosophy/theory class
  • 18:00 kirtan
  • 18:30 meditation
  • 19:00 dinner
• 2 excursion days, where we went on a hike or kayaking instead of the work

Ananda Margha (AM) is a spiritual organisation with a complicated political history, but at its core is a set of practical guidelines for how to structure spiritual practice in your life as well as how to reform society from capitalism

The yoga

At this retreat, I was given a very practical summary of Patanjali's eight limbs of yoga. It's perhaps the most accessible form, even better than the one I was given in my hatha yoga teacher training in India.

The asanas we practiced are a subset of hatha poses. They recommend different flows depending on your sex. The male set was:

• 3x sets of
  • shoulderstand (eg 60 seconds)
  • fish (eg 30 seconds, or half the time in shoulderstand)
• 8x dhanurasana for 8 seconds, holding the breath in during the pose
• 8x sets of
  • shavasana for a preparation breath
  • seated forward fold with the chin tucked, holding the breath out during the pose
• 2x other asanas
  Interestingly, they advise against practicing headstand because of the injury risks it poses, instead advocating for spending longer in shoulderstand to get the same benefits. I think this is a very sensible recommendation on making yoga more accessible.

They also have two "dances" which we did before asana practice.

• tandava, a male-only intense dance (kinda like the can-can) that supposedly increases testosterone among other things
• kaushiki

Meditation and secrecy

AM has a set of meditation lessons which they require you to take an oath of secrecy to learn. There are six you can do without dedicating your life to the organisation (becoming a "dada" (man) or "didi" (woman)). I was given the first lesson, which was basically a three-stage withdrawal technique (involving a body scan and visualisation) followed by focus on a mantra alongside a visualisation.

Interestingly, the justification I was given for the secrecy is that we have "internal flows" and "external flows" of consciousness; internal flows occur only in your mind or meditation, and external flows occur when you externalise something by speaking or writing it. Apparently, taking something that is only internal and making it external can reduce its potency. I wonder if this is the same concept as taking insecure thoughts and voicing them in order to diminish their power over you.

This doesn't sound dissimilar from the approach used by gurus and acaryas for the majority of yogic history.

Diet and fasting

We ate a vegan sattvic diet. This left me feeling really good! On the first few days, I needed a nap in the afternoons, but towards the end of the course, I started feeling like I'd had coffee in the mornings despite not having any caffeine.

I'm curious to see whether mushrooms will disturb my meditations, before testing the same with onion and garlic (though I suspect I won't be able to eat sattvic again until I'm living with a kitchen).

Social and economic theory

So, it turns out that the organisation has a complicated political history (see the Sydney Hilton Hotel bombing) in part because it advocates for a more tightly regulated form of capitalism called PROUT.

Mondragon is an autonomous region in Spain that isn't explicitly PROUT but is a huge economy based on cooperatives.

Lingering questions

• what is the theory of tandava and kaushiki? how do they work?
  • kaushiki incorporates benefits from many asanas. doing it dynamically is very beneficial for health. you can do it with ideation, ie as you go to the right you think "i know how to call your name", as you go to the left "i will do your work", going forward is "i surrender" (ie i have no resistance to limitless consciousness), coming up is "i will cut through every obstacle", the one-two is repeating the universal rhythm (a reset, consolidating yourself in all the ideations you just did).
  • tandava. women get 100% of the benefit of kaushiki, men only get 70%. kaushiki is incomplete for men because an essential element of male psychology is testosterone, and tandava stimulates testosterone. if you do it for 30 secs, you only get physical benefits; if you go for 1 min, you get some psychic benefits; if you go for 90 secs, you get many psychic benefits. the dagger symbolises neutral discrimination (rationality based on principles, ethics rather than baser instincts), the skull represents death (or entropy), and tandava invigorates the struggle against death
• what is behind the selection of the male asanas (beyond physical strength/flexibility), and asana practice in general? endocrine?
• does tandava/the male asanas really upset things for females? ie i've heard for many women, more testosterone can be helpful (ie for reduced period pain)
• use of bandha (ie why no moola bandha so far) and mudra