About this Retreat
Graham M. Schweig, Ph.D. (ERYT500 | YACEP) has been a practitioner of meditational and heart-centered Yoga for over 50 years. He holds a doctorate from Harvard University in comparative religion, with a specialization in sacred Sanskrit literature focusing on Yoga and Bhakti.
Graham is presently Professor of Philosophy and Religion, and Director of Studies in Religion, at Christopher Newport University. He is also Distinguished Teaching and Research Faculty at the Mira and Ajay Shingal Center for Dharma Studies at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley.
Graham has been conducting yoga workshops and offering seminars and lectures around the US and Europe for over 20 years. He has been invited by the Smithsonian Institution to deliver over three dozen lectures on religion and yoga at its museums in Washington, DC, and has been an invited speaker several times at the Yoga Journal Conferences.
Among his more than 100 publications, his translation of the Bhagavad Gita (Harper Collins, 2010) has been used in Yoga teacher trainings nationwide. His translation and commentary on Patanjali’s Yoga Sūtra is forthcoming from Yale University Press.
Details of this retreat
This program explores the human condition and the inner turmoil of the heart through the lens of key yogic texts, including the Upanishads, Bhagavad Gītā, Bhāgavata Purāṇa, and Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtra.
Sessions will focus on the purification and awakening of the heart, the divine call to transcendence through sacred love, and the role of yoga in sustaining higher consciousness in everyday life. Themes such as the capacity to "move deeply into the space within the heart" (praṇidhāna) and how to enter into the state of "total ecstatic absorption" (samādhi) in which one experiences the "all-embracing divine reality" (kaivalya) will be examined.
Together we will explore how the heart serves as the true seat of inner transformation and spiritual realization. Graham will be drawing from his new book, The Yoga of Love: Krishna and the Rāsa Līlā from the Bhāgavata Purāṇa (Oxford University Press, 2025). Each session will open and close with several minutes of tranquil meditational sounds of the voice and harmonium as well as group connecting and sharing throughout.
All levels of yoga practitioners most welcomed.
Description of each Session:
The human condition and the troubled heart: What are the things that trouble the heart? In this introductory session, we will explore this theme by drawing from specially illuminating passages in key Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gītā, and the Bhāgavata Purāṇa. It is commonly known that Yoga is about controlling the mind. But we will learn here that the mind is controlled only within the heart, according to the Gītā.
An awakening and purification of the heart: In this session, we will contemplate specific, very beautiful passages from Bhagavad Gītā and Patañjali's Yoga Sūtra for illuminating this session's theme. Here we will explore what Patañjali calls īśvara praṇidhāna, or how "the divine source of all reality is reached by moving deeply into the space within the heart," and learn about all that is contained therein.
When divinity calls our souls to dance: In this session, we will read from the Bhāgavata Purāṇa's five chapters on the "dance of divine love," in which the example of the supreme female yoginīs is offered. A reading of my translation of one of the most exquisite Sanskrit poetic works of the world reveal the highest meditation of what Patañjali calls kaivalya samādhi will take place in this session.
Yoga as the return embrace of the divine: In this final session, we will explore how we can return to our everyday lives and all the while also retain a transcendent state of consciousness. From the various sacred texts of Yoga, we will explore ways of sustaining higher consciousness in a very mixed and troubled world while allowing the energy of the heart to flow toward all persons and all beings.
Book Signing at Yogaville
Graham’s book titled, The Yoga of Love: Krishna and the Rāsa Līlā from the Bhāgavata Purāṇa (Oxford University Press, 2025), will be released in time for his program. The heart of this book is a dramatic love poem, the Rasa Lila, which is the ultimate focal point of one of the most treasured Sanskrit texts of India, the Bhāgavata Purāṇa. Judged a literary masterpiece by Indian and Western scholars alike, this work of poetic genius and soaring religious vision is one of the world's greatest sacred love stories and, as Graham M. Schweig demonstrates, should be regarded as India's Song of Songs. The story presents the supreme deity as the youthful and amorous cowherd, Krishna, who sends out a love call to souls, inviting them to an enchanting and celebratory dance of divine love. And, as Graham states in his introduction, “the sacred story in poetry presented herein reveals a dramatization of the inner workings of the heart.”
This newly published book will be available for purchase at a discount during a book signing with Graham at Yogaville.
Tentative Schedule
FRIDAY
3–5 pm
Registration
5-6:30
Mixed Level Hatha
5-5:45
Yoga Nidra
6-6:30
Meditation
6:30–7:15
Dinner
7:30–9
The human condition and the troubled heart
SATURDAY
6-7 am
Integral Yoga Meditation
7:10-8:40
Integral Yoga Hatha – Level 1
Integral Yoga Hatha – Level 2
Joint Freeing Series with Hope Mell
8–9:30
Breakfast
10-11:30
An awakening and purification of the heart
11:45
Van to
12–12:30 pm
Meditation at
12:45–1:30
Lunch
3–5
When divinity calls our souls to dance
5:30–6:15
Dinner
7:30-9
Satsang (gathering of the seekers of Truth)
Kirtan (Music & Chanting), Video of Swami Satchidananda
Speaker
SUNDAY
6-7 am
Integral Yoga Meditation
7:10–8:40
Integral Yoga Hatha – Level 1
Integral Yoga Hatha – Level 2
8–9:30
Breakfast
10–11:30
Yoga as the return embrace of the divine
12-12:30 pm
Meditation
12:45–1:30
Lunch