Hello everybody,
Can anybody help me to find a good ashram in india and to give me some advices? i read a lot of reviews about ashrams…
What do you think about: Parmath Niketan from Rishikesh, about Tureya Ashram or Ved Niketan Dham?
I am a begginer, i never practice yoga or meditation and i don’t know what’s the best for me. I am intend to go in india in september or october for aprox. 1 month, alone, and will be the first trip for me there…
Thanks.
I was in Rishikesh.
Parmath is the biggest ashram and well organised.
I wasn’t comfortable with it, it felt like a business.
They have a hugely publicised annual yoga festival that caters mainly for US and Europeans.
Other ashrams in Rishikesh don’t have such well organised programs and you are free there to do what you want.
I guess it isn’t really an ashram if you can do what you want, it’s just a cheap hotel. I was happy to be free. I stayed for a month at the Sri Ved Niketan Ashram. There was NO compulsory program. I wouldn’t recommend the “guru” there.
But if you are a beginner, then Parmath may be just what you need. Their instruction is certainly good. You can go there anytime of the year and pay a daily rate that includes accommodation, food and classes. But you won’t get a place there during the spring festival.
Alternatively you can just find a hotel and then attend yoga classes outside. There is a very good Astanga teacher outside the main part of the town (can’t remember his name). But there are also many unscrupulous and unqualified teachers there that it takes experience in practising yoga to spot. Going to Parmath will save you the trouble of choosing.
When you get to the train station you will get a rickshaw to the Ram Jhula foot bridge, you have to cross by foot. Once across, turn right and walk along the river. After a few hundred metres you will see Parmath.
Be careful, so many people in that wild west town will claim to be gurus and yoga teachers. Use your native wits.
Maybe like many sincere inquiring young people, you hope to engage in a spiritual dialogue in Rishikesh but you should be warned that they teach orthodox Hinduism there, not an amalgamation of new age philosophies. They are not open for dialogue, they will simply lecture you and when you challenge what they say they will not modify their statements accordingly, they will merely call you an idiot because you have not understood what they have said. They think they have perfection and they assume that you are there to absorb it. They don’t understood the eclectic questioning spirit, they are very rigid.
But what do I know, maybe that’s what you want!
The Above post Is Greatness.
Hi everyone!
I am new to this site, altough I’ve been on it many times as a visitor and it has helped me navigate through India.
I have now signed up in order to reply to this thread and give a little insight into Tureya Ashram’s workings.
For reference: I am a female yogateacher in her mid-twenties, living in Europe.
And: I have been to Tureya Ashram. In early 2009, I have spent over a month there. And while the landscape is beautiful and Kodaikanal is an incredibly charming little mountain town up in the Tamil mountains, I’m sorry to say that I can’t recommend Tureya Ashram to you or anyone.
But let’s start at the beginning.
I’ve found the ashram online, as so many of you have done, I suppose, and started exchanging emails with the lovely Nandu, who is Rudrammas sister, and lives in the city Madurai, which is where the closest airport to the ashram is located (about a three hour taxi ride).
Nandu is a sweet and genuine person and talking to her has had me convinced to pack my bags and book my flights. Unfortunately, the rest of the ashram wasn’t as genuine as her, I’d even go as far as to say that it was fake.
I don’t use the word “fake” to suggest that it didn’t provide the things they list on their website - full board and accommodation are given, as well as daily or almost daily talks from the Swami or Rudramma.
“Fake” in this text means that in my opinion, there is no integrity behind the business, and yes, it is a business.
Or would you like to listen to a Swami who claims to be enlightened, but goes on and on about sex and asks you extremely intimate questions, even touches you inappropriately, claiming to be healing your chakras?
A Swami who favours those who donate generously to the ashram and basically ignores those who don’t?
It was difficult for me to figure out whether it really wasn’t legitimate, or whether it was just my ego, my mind, resisting further steps towards samadhi, englightenment.
The Swami has a way to mess with your mind, he has studied psychology (as he will daily remind you) and the ashram policy is to follow the orders of him without second-guessing. Any person who wants you to stop thinking critically is not a true leader, at least in my humble opinion.
I knew the ashram wasn’t what it portrays to be, when he drove me and the other girls staying there at the time to a beautiful waterfall on the ashram grounds, about 15 minutes away.
He then told us to get naked, and one after the other, we had to stand in the middle of the river for him to look at us.
Of course, he claimed this was an exercise for us to advance on our spiritual paths. That he, the Swami, was beyond gender, male and female.
I invite you to employ reason, though. I mean, seriously?
Yet: I went with it. I still wasn’t ready to stand up for myself, to utter my concerns.
It was a couple more situations like this and just his general behaviour, the ever self-glorifying lectures, with no body and no real content, the asking for money or presents, the shamelessly picking favourites (mostly blonde, financially secure girls) that ultimately had me deciding to leave two weeks earlier than planned.
I booked a flight to Delhi and went travelling through the whole, big, beautiful mess of India with a fellow ashramite.
Through the course of that journey, I’ve learned much more than the “Swami” and his staff Rudramma and Adam could have ever taught me.
However, I do want to be clear that for me, staying at Tureya was an immense learning and growing experience. It taught me to know what is good for me and what isn’t, what serves me and what isn’t. To be conscious of people exploiting you, purposely misleading you. It taught me to stand up for myself.
And that, I believe, is the most important lesson of all.
It took me three years to speak up about this.
I believe that everyone has to make their own experiences, and who knows, maybe Tureye is good for you, where you stand right now in your life.
I encourage you, though, to make an informed decision.
I am available to answer any questions and I wish you all great travels trough India!
Namaste.
purebeing
I am in India right now, in Rishikesh in fact. There are many sincere religious practitioners here but many bad people too. I see that India is full of naive inexperienced westerners being taken advantage of by cynical fake “gurus” (the Indians are well aware that spirituality is a commodity that can be marketed). If it feels wrong it’s wrong, don’t surrender your common sense to religious hypocrites.
In the end you are responsible for your own spiritual development, it’s your duty to take it into your own hands, people are far too keen to hand over this responsibility to other people and they make themselves victims in the process.
Well said!
I am afraid the bad news is, and as somebody who has spent half a year in India with ashrams, the vast majority of them are businesses. Worse, the other few are highly traditional and rigid in their structure and approach, practicing many dead traditions and you will almost certainly be indoctrinated into Hinduism. In general I did not find a single ashram in India that was free from these criticism, except to a lesser extent Sivananda Ashrams. They are serious in their approach to spirituality, but they have a very strong spirit of devotion and guru-worship going on.
The only ashram for those serious in learning Tantra Kriya Yoga is the Bihar School of Yoga. They are very serious about spirituality, and also have a modern and scientific outlook to Yoga. They have 6 month and 1 year programs. However, there will be costs, but the costs are not ridiculous.
My best advice to you is to stay away from the ashram thing in India and do the best that you can on your own. Let Patanjali and Kapila be your guides, and listen to their counsel, and you will get it.
Thanks for sharing, Surya Deva! I had a similar experience with Sivananda - as long as you yourself remain open and know what to take with you, as long as you can stay soft with these things that don’t resonate with you and let them go, you’ll have a great time there. I’ve spent two months there in summer 2010 and at no point did I feel pressured into something, it’s a lovely place to be, whether you’re going in order to inward-focus or whether you’re looking to be among kindred spirits.