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Yoga Retreat-Pilgrimage to Italy
Staying in Rome, Assisi, and Tuscany
This journey encourages its pilgrims to perceive a different type of beauty in the sacred, for example by prioritizing quiet time in front of a artistic masterpiece or a holy place. Merely taking photos cannot compare to this level of perception.
The pilgrimage offers a unique break from our ordinary life, perhaps helping the traveler to perceive new horizons in one's spiritual life and in life in general.
As one of the early seats of the Christian religion, Italy is home to many sacred places—places where priests and popes gradually honed institutions that would protect the faith amid an increasingly secularized world, places where the faithful sought reflection and refuge within fresco-covered walls, next to the bones of martyrs and saints. In this trip, we honor the deeply felt commitment of pilgrims of all stripes to honor the roots of one of the world’s foremost religions.
Our pilgrimage will combine visits to holy and historically significant sites within the Christian tradition with practices that help open us to experience them with a fresh perspective. We seek to help modern-day pilgrims prepare themselves mentally, bodily, and spiritually for engagement with the places we visit. This includes:
providing a central text so that we are all “on the same page” with regard to the teachings we are working with; for this trip, we are using Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras
tailored yoga classes that will help us build strength, facilitate heart-opening and intuition, or surrender completely
through dedicated sittings and dharma talks, we will support each pilgrim’s quest to affirm their own intentions.
Patrizia and Hilary will help facilitate an experience of each place with an open mind and heart. Putting aside our opinions about what is right and wrong, good and bad about a particular religion, and focusing instead on the many generations of practitioners who maintained their faith and expressed their spiritual longings in a specific place, we will seek to honor their work and tap into whatever means of expression becomes available to us.
This pilgrimage is open to all, families with children, new yoga practitioners, travelers, and whoever wishes to embark on a sacred journey.
