InnerSpace Retreat: Rooted in Earth and Spirit
InnerSpace Retreat: a weekend to explore and deepen the connection between land and spirit in community
The land is our mother and teacher. She has given us life and all we need to survive. How might we come back into right relationship with her? What might we offer her in return?
On June 13-15, you’re invited to the Salt Spring Centre of Yoga to connect with the wisdom of your body, the healing power of the land, and a loving community of dreamers exploring this relationship. Guided by facilitators, wellness practitioners, musicians and land stewards, you will be invited to explore a variety of modalities - breathwork, yoga, ecstatic dance and sound bath- that celebrate this connection and support its integration. All taking place on a regenerative farm, and surrounded by the protected rainforest of the Salt Spring Conservancy.
We acknowledge our privilege to offer this retreat on the traditional and unceded territories of the SENĆOŦEN & Hul'q'umi'num speaking peoples on Salt Spring Island, BC.
This event is planned and hosted by Days of Lavender, with promotional support from The Flying Sage.
About This Event:
Food: Delicious lacto-vegetarian meals prepared by the karma yogis at the centre, with ingredients right from the Salt Spring Centre farm.
Accommodations: A forested campground with tent pads, outdoor showers with hot water, and clean outhouses, that is a three minute walk from the main house where meals are. Alternate arrangements can be made if you would prefer a room at the centre at an additional cost.
Travel: For those coming from Vancouver, the ferry from Tsawassan will be leaving on Friday at 10:25 and arriving at Long Harbour, Salt Spring Island at 1:20. We recommend taking the early ferry and booking your ferry one month in advance. Please note your ferry ticket is not included in your retreat ticket.
Community: There is availability for 35 people to attend the retreat. Most will be connected through the communities of the Flying Sage and Days of Lavender.
Substances: The focus of the retreat will be connecting with each other, the land and the healing modalities offered. The Centre of Yoga asks that any substances not be used on Centre property. This is also to ensure that our facilitators who are licensed professionals, are not liable. The focus of the retreat is remembering that the land, good food, community, movement etc. is all medicine.
Schedule:
Friday
Registration & Settle In
Welcome Ceremony
Dinner
Intention Setting
Ambient Meditation
Saturday
Breakfast
Regenerative Farming Workshop
Yoga Class
Lunch
Guided Forest Bath / Swim / Sauna
Breathwork with Sound Journey
Dinner
Ecstatic Dance
Sound Bath
Sunday
Breakfast
Closing Ceremony / Reflection
About Your Facilitators:
Navin Sahjpaul
https://innerdiyawellness.com/
Navin is a multidisciplinary practitioner - Counsellor (MC), Music Therapist (BMT)), Yoga Teacher (YTT-250) - and artist (musician, writer). With ancestral roots in India—his parents and grandparents' birthplace—Navin is a second-generation Indo-Canadian, born in Canada and currently residing in Vancouver, BC. His life journey has led him to pursue a path of service in the world.
Navin’s work is informed by his academic training, professional practice within the healthcare system, involvement in community wellness spaces, and his own lived experiences. It is also deeply shaped by the wisdom passed down from loved ones, ancestors, clients, elders, and mentors. He believes that to walk alongside someone in the therapeutic environment is a sacred path—an honour to be part of another’s journey of introspection, healing, growth, self-exploration, and personal development.
As a Music Therapist (BMT), Navin’s practice has included working in the healthcare system in addictions and mental health, and in community-based settings sharing his work at wellness events, workshops, and conferences, focusing on how music can be utilized in therapeutic, healing environments in an effort to improve help individuals improve their quality of life and overcome mental health challenges.
Through his own personal journey, Navin has come to understand what it feels like to be lost in despair, to question the value of existence, and to wonder whether love, connection, wholeness, and healing are truly attainable in this life. By exploring a combination of contemporary and traditional wellness and therapeutic modalities, Navin has experienced firsthand the healing, relief, and transformation that are possible when we commit ourselves to tending to our wounds with care and intention.
He is deeply passionate about well-being, mental health, community building, and healing. Navin believes that our deepest ruptures can become our greatest teachers, and that the more we tend to our pain, the more we expand our capacity for joy, gratitude, and love.
Navin is deeply honoured to walk this path and to give back in this way.
Chandni Sidhpura
https://www.thetherapeuticcentre.com/
Chandni is passionate about expanding consciousness and transcendence through altered states using traditional Eastern healing modalities, plant journeys, and energy work. Chandni comes from a family lineage of Yogi's and healers, and uses pranayama (breathwork) teachings as part of her Indian heritage and culture. She will guide you into breathwork through teachings enriched with a deep understanding of her cultural and spiritual roots. She is an embodiment of her practice, and works in honour and acknowledgement of the teachings from her heritage, with an added skill set of clinical practice in Psychology.
Chandni is a Kundalini Energy & Chakra Healer, supporting clients to access their body's innate healing intelligence to process emotions and find energetic alignment through the rising of Kundalini Energy in its traditional use. She utilizes teachings passed down from her maternal family lineage. She is trained in Spinal Energetics, and also completed her yoga teacher training in 2012, and has been practicing in a professional capacity since.
By profession Chandni is a registered Clinical Psychotherapist, and has been working in healthcare since 2014 within Primary Care Psychology for the National Health Service (NHS). She specializes in the treatment of anxiety and depressive disorders, as well as PTSD/trauma. She is the founder of @TheTherapeuticCentre and also facilitates Conscious Women's Groups @WoMoonCircles. She is a TheraPsil certified Psychedelic Assisted Psychotherapist, and also works in the capacity of harm-reduction, preparation and integration.
Days of Lavender
https://www.daysoflavender.com/
Days of Lavender is the meditative electronic pop project of Stephen Clarke (producer, bass, Ableton PUSH), and Daniela Mae (vocals, co-producer). Since releasing their EP 'Mary's Garden' in May 2023, they have showcased at Vancouver's Fox Cabaret with Noble Oak, Devours, Des Hume and Forrest Mortifee and have performed across Canada with SoFar Sounds. The duo are also wellness practitioners who have combined their music with yoga, meditation, and breathwork to offer a monthly Ambient Meditation at The Beaumont. They are deeply motivated to create music that heals and connects people to themselves, each other and our earth home. They are releasing their full length album "Already Everywhere" in Fall of 2025.
Dr. Tahia Devisscher
https://forestry.ubc.ca/faculty-profile/tahia-devisscher/
Tahia Devisscher is a holistic yoga teacher, animal flow instructor, and forest therapy guide with roots in classical ballet, contemporary dance, and a PhD in ecosystem science. For her classes and retreats, she crafts inclusive spaces where partakers are invited to explore, release, and connect with nature, community and themselves. Her offerings blend playful discovery, intuitive movement, and gentle flow, empowering participants to trust themselves and co-create (with nature) pathways for healing and personal growth. Tahia is deeply invested in helping people find home within their own body and through connection with nature. Her grounded approach integrates experience-based learning, life coaching, and scientific evidence she builds through her own research as an Assistant Professor in resilience and innovation.
Naomi Jason
DjNjoy aka Naomi will bring you on a journey through genres and cultures, from deep beats to soulful lyrics, to a peak that is sure to bring out the feral in us all, before landing us in the centre of our hearts! Naomi is the founder of Dance Temple on Salt Spring Island and has been holding space for the union of music, dance and community for over 15 years. She is also a mentor to Womxn Leaders, a Qigong therapist, dancer, choreographer, land steward and organic gardener.
Paz Q Rainville
https://saltspringcentre.com/sscy_team/paz-q-rainville/
Paz is the Farm Coordinator at the Salt Spring Centre of Yoga. His focus in his work and life is to learn how we might live in reciprocity, and pursue regenerative culture locally & bio-regionally. He is guided by questions that relate to our methods of stewarding land for food, fibre, and medicine – and equally curious about our social organization; how we relate, work, and co-exist together to ensure all beings are nourished.
Register
$360 - Regular Ticket
Includes:
Campsite with raised tent pad, outdoor showers, clean outhouses, 2 minute walk to the program house.
Lacto-vegetarian locally harvested meals and teas made by the kitchen staff of the Salt Spring Centre.
All facilitated sessions including yoga, breathwork, sound journey, ecstatic dance, guided meditation, regenerative farm tour, forest bathing, sauna.
Does not include: ferry ticket