Come celebrate the call of the heart at Shanti Retreat, Wolfe Island for an unforgettable, heart-centered May Long Weekend 2016. A 4 day celebration dedicated to music, chanting, yoga, dancing, meditation, inspiring workshops, delicious vegetarian meals, community, devotion, friends, laughter and Love! Spend free time immersing yourself in nature, lounging with a book, enjoying an infrared sauna session, connecting with kindred spirits or simply relaxing waterside.  Each year, over 50 souls gather to celebrate and raise consciousness! Experience Spring’s aliveness: the birds are singing, the grass and leaves are a vibrant green, and the bay is full of wildlife.  Choose from 3 or 4 day retreat packages, offsite accommodation or Day Passes. Please see below for rates, accommodation options, schedule, artist bios and more.

All Inclusive 4 day Retreat Rates (Friday – Monday)

Semi-private accommodation (2/room)             $625

Shared accommodation (3-4/room)                    $600

Shanti Tenting/yurt                                                 $575

includes yurt style tent with 4 inch foam mattress, pillow, towel and washroom/shower facilities

Personal tent                                                             $550

Bring your own tent and towel. Washroom/shower facilities provided.

Rates are per person and include 3 night accommodation, 6 delicious buffet style meals, 2 afternoon snacks, daily morning meditation & yoga with Darin and Wendy, over 12 hours of kirtan with Brenda McMorrow, Adam Bauer, Lana Sugarman, + inspiring workshop with Brenda, Saturday afternoon movement class, an infrared sauna session, and use of Shanti’s amenities. Please add hst to all rates.

Interested in the 3 day package (Friday-Sunday)?

The 3 day package includes everything listed above from 2pm arrival on Friday until 2 pm departure on Sunday. Please deduct $150+ hst per person from above rate.

Saturday Day Pass                               $125

Day pass is valid from 10 am – 10pm Saturday and includes meals, afternoon kirtan with Lana Sugarman, movement class, plus evening kirtan with Brenda McMorrow, and use of Shanti’s amenities. Afternoon Yoga is not included, unless space is available. Class is $15 + hst. Rate is indicated per person; please add hst.

 Sunday Day Pass                                  $125

Day Pass is valid from 10am – 10pm Sunday and includes meals, 2 hour workshop with Brenda Mcmorrow, afternoon kirtan with Lana Sugarman, evening kirtan with Adam Bauer, and use of Shanti’s amenities. Yoga is not included. Rate is indicated per person; please add hst.

Shanti’s amenities include use of infrared sauna, canoes, kayaks, water trampoline, swimming dock, labyrinth, meditation garden, slack line, hula hoops, wellness tea bar & wifi.

Off site Accommodation

4 day Retreat (Friday – Monday)    $505

3 day Retreat (Friday – Sunday)      $395

Rate is indicated per person and includes meals, morning meditation, afternoon and evening kirtan with Adam Bauer, Brenda McMorrow, Lana Sugarman, Saturday afternoon movement class, and use of Shanti’s amenities. Yoga is not included in this rate, but may be added based on space and availability for $15/class.

Here is a list of our preferred locations for offsite bookings.

Blue Horizon B&B (waterside farmhouse, 15 minute drive from Shanti) http://www.bbcanada.com/3549.html

Dreamcatcher’s Inn (Marysville, 5 minute drive from Shanti) http://www.dreamcatchers-inn.com/

General Wolfe hotel (Marysville, 5 minute drive from Shanti) http://www.generalwolfehotel.com/

SCHEDULE

Friday

Arrival after 2 pm… Ensure to line up early for the ferry during this holiday weekend!

4:30 pm Yoga with Darin (yurt)

6:30 pm Buffet Dinner

8:00 pm Kirtan with Adam Bauer

Saturday

 Morning snack available upon rising (tea, fruit, oatmeal, trail mix)

8:00 am   Meditation at the Timor hut with Darin (30 minutes)

8:45 am Yoga with Wendy (yurt – 90 minutes)

10:30 am Shanti’s Signature Brunch

12 – 2:00 pm Kirtan with Lana Sugarman

2:30 pm Afternoon Snack & Free Time for enjoying the outdoors, reading in the lounge, taking an infra red sauna, using the yurt for personal practice, connecting with kindred spirits or just relaxing!

4:30-6:00 pm Movement Medicine with Andrew

6:30 pm Delicious Dinner

8:00 pm Kirtan with Brenda McMorrow

10 pm Bhakti Bon Fire

Bring out your personal instrument fireside and take your turn leading a chant.

Sunday

Light morning snack available upon rising

8:00 am Meditation at the hut with Wendy

8:45 am Yoga with Darin (yurt – 90 minutes)

10:30 am Shanti’s Signature Brunch

12- 2pm Kirtan with Lana Sugarman

12pm Room Check Out for 3 day guests. Please enjoy the property and program until 2pm.

 2:30 pm Afternoon Snack & Free Time

4-6 pm Workshop with Brenda McMorrow (Green Tara Room)

6:30 pm Local, Seasonal Dinner

8pm Kirtan with Adam Bauer

10 pm Bhakti Bon Fire

Bring out your personal instrument fireside and take your turn leading a chant.

Monday

Light morning snack available upon rising

 8:15 – 9:15 Morning yoga with Wendy

9:30 – 10:30 am Closing kirtan with all artists

10:45 am Final Brunch

12 pm Check Out of Rooms. Please feel free to enjoy the property until 2pm.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Brenda McMorrow

Devotional Chant Artist Brenda McMorrow travels worldwide sharing her deep devotion to the celebration of our true beings through the joyous Bhakti Yoga practice of Kirtan. Brenda is invited to share her music at events across North America, Europe, Latin America and Asia. With 3 celebrated devotional chant albums, Brenda is a featured artist on the White Swan Records roster, a Colorado label well known for it’s high-profile yoga-inspired artists like Deva Premal. She has accompanied Grammy award winning cellist David Darling and esteemed Kirtan musicians Jai Uttal, Wah!, David Newman, Dave Stringer and more.  www.brendamcmorrow.com

 “Brenda McMorrow has a gift. When she sings, Maharaji (Neem Karoli Baba) is there” – Ram Dass

 “…Brenda McMorrow has forged her own unique and welcoming style of mantra music, blending elements of acoustic folk, world rhythms, with a sweetly introspective singer-songwriter’s sensibility.  Her new album, Igniting the Beauty, blends inspired reinterpretations of some of her best repertoire material with meditative new compositions that explore gorgeous vistas of dreamlike melodies” – Yoga Journal

Adam Bauer 

Adam played bass for years supporting artists like Krishna Das and Shyamdas, among many others. Now accompanying himself on harmonium singing his own original kirtan compositions, he is emerging as a compelling and deeply soulful kirtan wala in his own right. His critically-acclaimed first solo record, Shyam Lila, debuted on Mantralogy Records in April 2014, and is available at http://merchnow.com/products/175204/  and http://iamadambauer.com/shyam-lila/

Additionally, Adam has a unique online store, Dharma Boutique, filled with sacred and sensual treasures collected on his travels in India. www.dharmaboutique.com

Lana Sugarman

 Lana merges her love for Sanskrit and song with the practice of kirtan (call and response chanting). You can find her creating good vibrations at studios throughout Toronto, sharing the magic of mantras. She has had the opportunity to sing and play with David Newman, Brenda McMorrow, Mike Cohen, Swaha, Jim Gelcer, Lea Longo, and John William Bauld. In August, 2013, Lana released her first album of mantra/kirtan music, Invocation. http://lanayoga.ca/

To reserve your space, please contact us at 613-777-0247 or [email protected]

What a magical full moon weekend retreat here at Shanti. After the recent fullness of Mother Moon, guests this weekend of Cobourg’s Fusion Wellness for sure feel the gentle afterglow. This weekend’s offering was truly a tour and journey through the chakras. Last night’s yoga practice in the yurt, lit mystically, we explored the upper chakras through inversions to the body, promoting a fine tuned mind body soul connection.

It was beautiful to witness how open everyone was this weekend, especially since only 1 of the guests this weekend had been here before – Tera, one of the facilitators, who was at Maria Carr’s weekend last year, who will be here this coming weekend hosting her annual Shanti offering. All guests, of all ages and walks of life, had this sense of curiosity and willingness to be open to the gifts of the offerings. Contentment and satisfaction; everyone departing with a smile, a sweetness in their eyes.

Chefs Landon and Mike graced the Shanti kitchen with their presence yet again this weekend with some delicious eats and treats. Last night they presented us with our infamous Shanti Cheesy Nut Loaf (in our cookbook!), alongside honey roasted carrots and pickled beets, both from Okee’s Farm on Wolfe Island, roasted green beans and slivered almonds, and a delicious mixed green salad with our favourite Shanti house dressing – everybody’s true love. Dessert? Sweet and citrus bliss balls last night, and before that, our second round of chocolate and sea salted almonds. We’re slowly working these into perfection, let me tell you.

Guests were gifted a variety of different beads through the weekend, each colour bead corresponding to each chakra’s colour, and this morning before our blueberry hot cake brunch, everyone got to create a mala bead bracelet, arranging their beads in unique ways as a take home, a reminder, of this weekend’s blessings. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, white….

Thank you, Fusion, and we will see you this time next year!

Namaste,
Shanti Retreat

We are so blessed to have such beautiful souls crossing the Shanti grounds. This weekend we warmly welcomed back the lovely Lana Sugarman of Toronto for her offering of yin, flow and chant.

Through the weekend, we got to restore and relax by candlelight in the yurt with her yin yoga classes. Yin yoga is a rejuvenating, slower paced yoga with asanas, or poses, that are held for longer periods of time, thus targeting the connective tissues, the ligaments and bones and joints of the body, that are usually not exercised in a more active asana yoga practice. Lana also guided us through invigorating morning Jivamukti-inspired classes. Jivamukti is a physical and spiritual practice combining vigorous hatha and vinyasa based yoga, with adherence to the 5 central tenets: scripture, devotion, ahimsa or non-violence, meditation, and music.

On the final evening of her retreat, she lead one of her infamous kirtan gatherings in our Green Tara room, and was accompanied by our very own chef and drummer extraordinaire, Landon Chatterton. For some guests, this was their first experience with kirtan. Kirtan is a call-and-response style of chanting performed in the Bhakti, or devotional, tradition. It is meant to allow us to get out of the mind and rest back in the heart, losing ourselves in the feeling of the music flowing through, as we sing meditative mantras to deities like Ganesh and Kali. In between “songs,” you are encouraged to close your eyes and go within, to feel the resonance and the vibrations of the mantras sung out, instead of externalizing and clapping your hands. A musical meditation, this practice is.

Luckily, Lana will be back next month alongside Brenda McMorrow and Adam Bauer for our annual Bhakti and Yoga May Long Weekend Celebration running May 20-23. Have a look at our Retreat Lineup to learn more, and be sure to share the Facebook Event with your friends and family too!

Chefs Landon and Mike are back at it again in our Shanti kitchen, about to serve batches upon batches of the fluffiest French toasts ever, alongside our sweet Maple Pecan granola, and plates of sliced watermelons for all. The weather has been incredible all weekend, considering it was snowing when we first arrived. I think Spring is officially here. Ahhh….

Namaste,
Shanti Retreat

It has been a truly beautiful, flowing first retreat of our 2016 season. This year’s Shanti family returned to the Island on Sunday, and since Monday morning at 10:00am, after a meeting and a consecration of the day and the season, we have been back at it and in harmony working together to get things up and running for the year to come.

We began with Darin’s Friday evening yoga offering in the yurt, warmed like a nest, and then our infamous Shanti Energy Bowls from our Shanti at Home cookbook, featuring an abundance of oven roasted sweet potatoes,  beets and carrots from Okee’s Farm on Wolfe Island, and a delicious lemon tahini sauce. Our head chef Landon graces the Shanti kitchen again this season, and presented us with a creamy carrot soup and Shanti “Summer” Beet Dip for lunch on Saturday, followed by a gluten free lasagna for dinner featuring spinach and ricotta, alongside an antipasto bar – olives, artichoke hearts and roasted red pepper slices – and a fresh green salad. He and our new sous chef from Ottawa, Mike, are back at it now in the kitchen preparing for our Sunday brunch offering – feta, tomato and pepper frittata, fruit salad, toast, and our scrumptious Maple Pecan Granola. We are truly blessed with this gift of sharing such nutritious food with this community of yogis that come, and keep coming, to Shanti from all over Ontario, and sometimes even beyond – far beyond, sometimes as far as Japan!

Head Chef Landon and Sous Chef Mike about to put out our first Friday Dinner of 2016…

Guests are now in their final morning yoga program with Wendy, who continues to offer beautifully the gift of gentle energy based hatha yoga, bringing guests softly back into the heart space, back into the witness, and back into love. Wendy and Darin shared their restorative yoga offering last night followed by a yoga nidra, right before slipping into bed for a warm night’s rest.

A blessing, it is, to be back here on Wolfe Island, watching all of this beauty unfold before us. Be sure to take some time during these seasonal changes to listen for the birds, to feel the crisp breeze on your skin, to reach out and continue to love your loved ones.

Warmly,
Shanti Retreat