Pilgrimage to India
Sep
29
to Oct 13

Pilgrimage to India

Sacred India Pilgrimage

An Intentional Journey to the Heart of Devotion

September 29th - October 13th, 2024

with Alexandra Moga & Ira Ruiz


GOA • JAIPUR • VRINDAVAN • RISHIKESH


Kirtan • Temple Visits • Daily Yoga • Pranayama • Marma Acupressure Therapy • Prema Breathwork


Welcome to India! Alexandra and Ira have been through her mystical nooks and crannies a total of 8 times combined and are over the moon to share some of her most precious treasures with you!

The mood of our journey is that of a pilgrimage. We are moving into the heart space with the intention of honoring the culture and traditions of India and its devotional and spiritual lineages. Both Alexandra and Ira have studied and practiced Bhakti Yoga for over 13 years. The prayer in our hearts is to share what we have learned and been given from our teachers, and the personal ways these teachings have impacted us, while offering you a chance to consider how these new perspectives might impact your life and relationships. The core principle is relationship: the exchange of love, listening and holding one another in consideration of our temporary and true identities, the sharing of song and joy, the invitation of God and Goddess into the container of humanness and practical daily life.  

If you are reading this, we are hopeful that our intentions resonate with you and that you say yes to this life-changing journey. May it nourish the deepest and truest parts of you!

OFFERINGS


Yoga Classes (Kundalini, Yin, Vinyasa)

Kundalini yoga is a powerful yogic technology which brings deep focus and clarity to the mind, uplifts the spirit, balances and aligns the chakras, cleanses the organs, and regulates the nervous and glandular systems. Comprised of breath work, dynamic movement, mantra, and meditation, the practice restores deep calm and reinvigorates your entire being for your full-spectrum health and wellness. When practiced regularly, you will gain the strength, courage, and self-knowledge to break through subconscious blocks and act from your higher self, in harmony with intuition, universal wisdom, and compassion.  

Yin yoga will be offered as a chance to slow down, receive gentleness as we move through many new and potentially overwhelming things, and open into the spaciousness of breathing ease into the body. It is a practice with longer holds, deeper stretching, and slower pacing.

Vinyasa yoga is a dynamic movement-based practice that is effective at awakening and conditioning the body and calming and focusing the mind while inviting balance to the nervous system.

Pranayama and Meditation

Offered as a compliment to our morning practices and as a part of the essential journey through the limbs of yoga.

Bhakti Stories and Practices 

From the stories in the Mahabharata to the beautiful wisdom in the Srimad Bhagavatam and Bhagavad Gita, the spiritual literature of India is timeless, potent, and filled with relevant wisdom to apply to our lives. The daily practices and prayers the Bhakti tradition offers is another layer in supporting a relationship with divinity and with the tenderness of your own heart. These two elements are present in the culture of India, and as doorways into greater understanding of its universality.

Kirtan (call and response chanting)

The simplest way to activate the joy body and evoke connection and devotion shared in community. 

Sacred Breathwork

Breathwork is an active meditation technique that uses the breath to purge the body and nervous system of emotional debris. It is part catharsis, part socially-sanctioned adult temper tantrum, and part consciousness altering. The experience moves stagnant emotional energy and facilitates release of strong emotions like anger and sadness.

It can help you to find a home in your body and your heart and help you learn to trust yourself. It leaves you feeling softer, open and less burdened.

We tune into the power that is already alive in our sacred bodies and allow it to grow, finding grace and ground in returning home with every breath, and sending our prayers out into the field with every exhale.


Marma Acupressure Bodywork

Marma Therapy is a dynamic and powerful Vedic method of bodywork stemming from India’s ancient healing science - Ayurveda.

Its focus is the manipulation of subtle energy in the body through the ‘portals’ of acupressure points for the purpose of supporting the natural healing processes that your body already carries. A variety of techniques are used to awaken prana — our body’s vital energy — and invite life back into areas where stagnation or imbalance may be present.

Marma Therapy allows the clearing of any blockages restoring communication of these channels, and as a result, the receiver experiences a sense of ease, vitality, increased focus, clarity, and strong immunity.

Temple Visits, Sacred Sangha (association with dedicated holy persons)
The gift of India’s culture lives in the communities and practitioners serving in holy places as potent vortexes for spiritual advancement. These physical places are brought alive through ritual, gathering, and celebration. A flavor of devoted living like nothing else on earth! (Alexandra’s experience in certain temples is “like being welcomed into God’s living room after dinner”).


DAILY SCHEDULE


Each day is a new adventure. The beauty of India, in our experience, is the powerful current of energy that is constantly flowing, and slightly differently paced than the USA or Europe. Cities can be quite frenetic with a greater concentration of people, animals, cars, bicycles, tuk tuks, and motorbikes. Traffic flows according to alternate, intuitive laws. The country and oceanside are rustic, gorgeous, primitive with random bursts of activity. Mid-day siesta times are common. Early morning (4am) bustle is also common... You can find yourself driving down the highway at 3am and there will be people awake and active all around. 

That said – our first few days are tailored to bring you back down to earth after lengthy travels, to acclimate you to this new time and space in which you’ve landed. The ocean and sun are the most magnificent tools to reset the electro (mind) - magnetic (body) field and nervous system, and so our focus will be on body-mind care. Sunning, bathing, eating grounding foods, meditating with the sunrise and sunset, practicing yoga to open and unwind the body, petting cows on the beach, learning one another, setting intention together. Simple. Easy. Sweet.

Then we take off into a little more activity. Exploring a historic center of handicrafts, Bhakti yoga (devotion), and royal culture and architecture. Our days in Jaipur will offer outings into these places of deep history, yoga to bring us back to center, some early mornings in temple meditations, song and dance. Preparing us for…

Further deepening devotion and prayer. The heart of our journey. Vrindavan is a place where people come to retire in the rapture and intensity of Big Love. 24/7. The 108+ temples in this small city are all focused on celebrating Krishna and Radha. The divine couple. And all their various manifestations. There is a considerable amount of variation on the theme. Each one more beautiful than the last. There are wonderful shops in a bustling market center. Mementos of a journey you won’t soon forget. Tokens of ritual to keep you connected. Incredible forest groves of quiet sunlight filtering against soft and grace-infused sand. A long walk around a sacred hill. This is where we sing and pray together. This is where you bring your heart’s deepest truth to offer up. This is the place that changed our lives. And likely, yours too. We will practice yoga off the mat. Like you maybe never have. It is glorious. Sometimes intense. Some very empowered teachers will guide us here. We are in good hands.



Finally, to cap it all off, a ride into the Himalayas. Along the Ganges. To the mountains where yogis took shelter, cut the fat, got clear with themselves and the big questions. This is where we will wash any heaviness off. This is where you may want to offer a token of the past, or of a dream. A rushing, otherworldly wishing well of a river will greet us daily. On her banks we will share stories, prepare to return home — in all the ways that rings true for you. 



 

A rough schedule

(note that travel days and excursion days may be different)

6am - Sunrise meditation, prayers, puja, journaling

7am - Movement & Pranayama (Kundalini yoga, Vinyasa, Yin, hiking/walking)

8am - Breakfast

10am - Day’s outing

1pm - Lunch

3pm - Afternoon workshop, outing, or relaxation 

6pm - Dinner

7:30pm - Evening gathering, storytelling, kirtan, quiet time

YOUR RETREAT GUIDES

ALEXANDRA

Alexandra Moga is an artist at heart, dedicated to the path of devotion through writing (poetry, song), taking care, and yoga, all of which she can remember moving her from her earliest memories. During summer breaks in Romania she would meditate alongside her aunt who taught her practices in forgiveness, focused breathing, and energetic visualization. In her teens, she attended culinary arts high school and took her first yoga asana class. Both provided stability and vital expression, finding yoga to perfectly suit her passion for movement and dedication to spirituality. After four years of studying art history in Paris, she returned to New York where she immersed herself in the yogic path with over 1,000 hours of training in the various limbs of yogic teachings (Ashtanga, Kundalini, Restorative, Bhakti, Breathwork, Ayurveda) and teaching since 2010.

Travels throughout Africa, southeast Asia, Europe and India has made Alexandra a student of the thread that ties together spiritual paths and cultural expressions through the arts; namely food, song, poetry and dance. She is a student of her heart, senses, intuition, listening, and the lessons that come from difficulties. Ever open to the gurus, stars, spirits, and Source to deliver wisdom to and through her, she has learned that the dark nights and wrong turns are often incredible gifts to catapult her into fuller self-realization and massive creative expansion. She is deeply grateful for her many, many teachers: friends, family, devotees of the divine, nature and the dream realm.

IRAIMER

Founder and Director at the Sacred Movement Academy, Iraimer (Ira) is a 500 E-RYT dance-movement artist, certified trauma-informed holistic coach, and a certified facilitator of integrative somatic trauma therapy using the modalities of Yoga, Ayurveda and Transformational Sacred Breathwork based in New York. 

As a Latina woman of color raised in marginalized and oppressed communities, her greatest mission is to create safe and inclusive wellness spaces that offer equitable opportunities to explore holistic and self-integrative tools for all bodies to approach their healing process in a supportive, loving and welcoming environment.

Rooted in Vedic sciences, she uses modern psychology and somatics as a means to empower others through the process of broadening their current state of awareness, reconnecting to the infinite source of wisdom and love within, so that all can succeed in the journey of life by cultivating a sacred relationship with the inner-outer environment, and from there with the Divine Source.

She aims to guide individuals through sacred journeys that ignite their curiosity to rediscover themselves, and offers practices to both balance and integrate the body-mind with the soul’s purpose (dharma), and from here, move through the body of the world embodied.


FINANCIAL EXCHANGE

Total investment: $3,600

Price includes:

  • All meals

  • All workshops

  • Accommodations 

  • Excursions

  • Bus & Train travel

Not included in pricing:

  • Any off-schedule food/drinks/meals

  • Airfare to India

  • One domestic flight from Goa to Jaipur (estimated cost is $80)

PAYMENTS & DEPOSIT

Payments can be made via 3 or 5-month payment plan or in full. 

$500 non refundable deposit.

Refund policy:  

Up to 60 days out: all monies refunded excluding deposit 

Up to 30 days out: 50% refund of payment excluding deposit

Up to 2 weeks out: payments are non-refundable but 75% transferable to a future event with either Alexandra or Ira.


PREPARING FOR THE JOURNEY

If this is your first time coming to the sacred land of India, we encourage you to to read The Journey Home by Radhanath Swami before the trip. If you’ve already read that one, please read his second book,  The Journey Within. These books will really lay a good foundation for a lot of the experiences that we’ll be having in India. The Hidden Glory of India by Steven Rosen is also an amazing book that will demystify a lot of the culture. 

We will gather over zoom on a bi-monthly basis in the months leading up to our trip for meditations, sharing of readings, and questions and answers with Alexandra and Ira.

TRAVEL

If you are not coming from New York, please book your flight to Goa (GOI) to arrive as close to arrival time below (flight 1), and departing from Dehradun (DED) as close to departure time below (flight 3).

Make sure your flight 2 is the exact same as the one below.

  1. Flight to India: *Arrive on Sept 29th in Goa (GOI)

    Suggested Flight: JFK > GOI ( 1 stop)

    Air India Flight: AI 102

    Depart Sat, Sept 28th: 12:30PM ET

    Arrive Sun, Sept 29th: 8:05PM

  2. Internal Flight: (Book exact flight)

    Indigo Flight# 6E 5162 book.goindigo.in

    Depart October 3rd 3:25PM GOI | Goa

    Arrive October 3rd, 9:25PM JAI | Jaipur

    If above flight is sold out & unavailable we are getting pilgrims to book this as a secondary booked on same airline at the same website listed above:

    Indigo 6E 5074 : Depart October 3rd, 4:30pm (BOM) ::: Arrive October 3rd, 9:40pm ( DED)

  3. Departures: *Depart on October 13th (*LATE* night).

REGISTRATION

Ready for the trip of a lifetime? To secure your spot, fill out the form below and send your $500 deposit to Alexandra via Venmo (@alexandra-moga). Alexandra and/or Ira will reach out to make sure you have all the info you need!

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Spring Reset Retreat
Apr
12
to Apr 15

Spring Reset Retreat

Spring Reset Retreat

A clarifying and reinvigorating weekend
in Sewanee, TN

April 12th - 15th, 2024

with Alexandra Moga

Daily Yoga • Healing Foods • Cleanse Menu • Hiking • Ayurveda 101 Cooking Class • Transformational Breathwork • Marma Acupressure Bodywork • Meditation • Digital Detox

Join Alexandra, a private Ayurvedically-trained chef, and an intimate group of friends and community in the beautiful hills of Middle Tennessee for a weekend of spring cleaning the Mind, Body & Spirit.

Have you ever felt like a good detox was in order, but it felt overwhelming? Making the time. Eliminating distractions. Knowing what protocol is right for you. Managing menus. Getting ingredients. Taking care of all the prep. Having support for the unknown. If you’re new to cleansing, the learning curve can be intimidating.

I want to make it super easy and accessible for you to feel all the power that a cleanse can deliver. You will leave feeling empowered and ready to expand into the next season of your life with clarity, energy, and ease.

This retreat is designed to sharpen the tools of your body, mind, and connection to life by giving you the space and time to rest, digest and release through healing, cellular nourishment.

Shed the old and see from a new perspective!

From Ayurveda, to Traditional Chinese Medicine, and countless spiritual and mindful traditions, we are invited into intentional breaks in the usual as part of the journey to self-realization. Fasting and refining our intake (through all the senses) is one of the most effective ways to jumpstart our lives and any areas needing rejuvenation. Over time, the little lifestyle choices we make accumulate. Environmental pollutants accumulate. Emotions, thought loops, limiting beliefs accumulate. We all need a break to clear out these accumulations, to lovingly tend to ourselves. While there are many ways to go about this, simplicity will be our guiding force.

In the midst of a health scare last year, I took a deep look at healing through food, specifically eliminating troublesome, inflammatory foods so that my body could cleanse and heal itself while supported by nutrient-packed, whole and simple ingredients. After hearing rave reviews of the Medical Medium protocol, I did my research and was all in. While his cleanses may seem restrictive, there is surprising power in their simplicity and results. I knew it was a relatively short-term commitment so for nine days, I buckled down and treated each meal as an invitation to connect to the essence of true nourishment. I quickly realized how much we are conditioned to over-consume. How many layers and stimulants are going to make me feel satisfied? And indeed, don’t they just drive hunger to feed a seemingly insatiable craving, fill a bigger and bigger void? Simplifying allowed me to savor, slow down, and soften into the heart of what I was carrying, what rang true, and what I could release.

This confronting yet healing experience inspired me to help others do the same.

This retreat offers a variety of modalities to speak to the many layers that make you up. Thanks to the various tools of yoga, we will not only clarify our physical bodies, but also our subtle bodies:


BODY: Food, Acupressure Massage, Movement

MIND: Meditation, Mantra

PRANIC (energy): Transformational Breathwork

WISDOM: Silent contemplation, Journaling, Storytelling

SPIRIT: Relationship, Community, Connection

 

Offerings & Schedule

  • Ayurvedic meals

  • Celery juice & heavy metal detox smoothies

  • Cooking workshop on spring herbs, spices & practices to help the body gently shed stagnant energy

  • Digital detox

  • Mantra meditation and music

  • Transformational Breathwork

  • Kundalini Yoga, Gentle Flow, Restorative Yoga

  • Marma Acupressure Bodywork

  • Nature walks, hiking

  • Self-care rituals

 

DAILY SCHEDULE

6am - Sunrise / Silent contemplation

7am - Movement & Pranayama

8am - Breakfast

10am - Morning workshop, outing, or relaxation

1pm - Lunch

3pm - Afternoon workshop, outing, or relaxation

6pm - Dinner

7:30pm - Evening gathering, storytelling, kirtan, quiet time

 

Your Guide

Alexandra Moga is an artist at heart, dedicated to the path of devotion through writing (poetry, song), taking care, and yoga, all of which she can remember moving her from her earliest memories. During summer breaks in Romania she would meditate alongside her aunt who taught her practices in forgiveness, focused breathing, and energetic visualization. In her teens, she attended culinary arts high school and took her first yoga asana class. Both provided stability and vital expression, finding yoga to perfectly suit her passion for movement and dedication to spirituality. After four years of studying art history in Paris, she returned to New York where she immersed herself in the yogic path with over 1,000 hours of training in the various limbs of yogic teachings (Ashtanga, Kundalini, Restorative, Bhakti, Breathwork, Ayurveda) and teaching since 2010.

Travels throughout Africa, southeast Asia, Europe and India has made Alexandra a student of the thread that ties together spiritual paths and cultural expressions through the arts; namely food, song, poetry and dance. She is a student of her heart, senses, intuition, listening, and the lessons that come from difficulties. Ever open to the gurus, stars, spirits, and Source to deliver wisdom to and through her, she has learned that the dark nights and wrong turns are often incredible gifts to catapult her into fuller self-realization and massive creative expansion.  She is deeply grateful for her many, many teachers: friends, family, devotees of the divine, nature and the dream realm. 

 

FINANCIAL EXCHANGE

TOTAL INVESTMENT:

Sliding Scale $495 - $750

This retreat is open to a small group, for sliding scale pricing. If you are financially able to contribute more, this will help cover costs for participants needing financial assistance.

Price includes:

  • All meals, teas, juices, smoothies

  • All classes & workshops

  • Accommodations

Not included in pricing:

  • Transportation to Sewanee (carpooling available)

PAYMENTS & DEPOSIT

Payments can be made via a 3-month payment plan or in full.

$100 non refundable deposit.

Refund policy:

  • Up to 60 days out: all monies refunded excluding deposit

  • Up to 30 days out: 50% refund of payment excluding deposit

  • Up to 2 weeks out: payments are non-refundable but 75% transferable to a future event with Alexandra.

Sign Up

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Grand Rising Retreat in Joshua Tree
Mar
4
to Mar 8

Grand Rising Retreat in Joshua Tree

GRAND RISING DESERT RETREAT

an Ayurvedic Cooking & Kundalini Yoga Retreat

THE DAWNING OF A RENEWED YOU

Tend to the essentials of well-rooted, conscious daily habits and rise into your next chapter. Join Alexandra and Om and an intimate group of like-hearted souls for a magical 5 day retreat at a stunning private residence in the Joshua Tree desert.


Are you ready to up-level your life with ancient, native-to-you technologies?

Do your daily habits need a refresh?

Are your spiritual roots needing tending?

As we journey through the seasons of life, we are better able to serve and grow when we take the time to re-invest in connection, commitment to all-around health, and calling in our personal evolution.

In this sacred retreat container, Alexandra and Om invite you to receive the time-tested wisdom and healing practices found across the traditions of Ayurveda, Bhakti yoga, Kundalini, and Qi Gong.

Our time together will consist of:

  • Ayurvedic cooking workshops: revisiting food as meditation; delicious, healing, colorful, and dosha-balancing tips and recipes from Chef Om

  • Evening fires and sacred song and story

  • Morning movement and pranayama

  • Daily meditation

  • What’s My Dosha? workshop

  • Kitchen beauty workshop

  • Hiking & Shamanic Meditation in Joshua Tree National Park 

  • The Art of Ritual & Ceremony

  • Marma acupressure release

  • You^2: Calling in Your Quantum Leap

Does dedicated time to dream up your next chapter sound like just what the doctor ordered?

Sometimes life pulls you, and sometimes you call out to life: “I’m ready for an upgrade!” Use this time with reverent intention to feel into your next phase of action from that quiet place of knowing within. What projects, bucket-list items, or wild dreams have you put on the back burner? Through meditation, inviting cosmic guidance, excavating the subconscious, and intentional writing sessions, you will guide yourself back towards the “Hell yes!” in your life.

DAILY SCHEDULE

Striking an easeful balance between structure and flow, our days will consist of hands-on workshops and time in stillness, rest, and recreation:

6am - Sunrise meditation, prayers, puja, journaling

8am - Movement & Pranayama (Kundalini yoga, Qi Gong, Vinyasa, Yin, hiking)

9am - Breakfast

11am - Ayurvedic cooking class

1pm - Lunch

3pm - Afternoon workshop, outing, or relaxation

6pm - Dinner

7:30pm - Evening fire, storytelling, kirtan

 

YOUR RETREAT GUIDES

Om Rishikesh is a former monk, a meditation mentor, and founder of Cooking With Om, an Ayurvedic plant-based meal delivery service in Los Angeles.

At the age of 15, Om embarked on his spiritual quest — an adventure that led him into a life of monk-hood in the Bhakti tradition for the next 7 years of his life. It was through this uplifting journey that he learned the art of meditation and devotional cooking.

His passion for cooking and the healing powers of plants transformed his way of seeing the world and now, Om teaches his students how to connect with the powerful medicines Mother nature gives us through plant medicines, the ancient science of Ayurveda, and meditative intentional cooking.

Om believes in the inner healer each one of us possesses when we are able to reconnect to the subconscious through deep relaxation using meditation and Qi-gong as tools to reach our highest potential.

 

Alexandra Moga’s yoga journey began in her childhood, when during summer breaks in Romania she would meditate alongside her aunt who taught her practices in forgiveness, focused breathing, and energetic visualization. In her teens, she took her first yoga asana class and was hooked–finding the practice perfectly suited her passion for movement and dedication to spirituality. After four years of university in Paris, she returned to New York where she immersed herself in the yogic path with over 1,000 hours of training and teaching various communities since 2010.

Alexandra’s classes are dynamic and uplifting, weaving together creative sequencing, intuitive alignment, mind-balancing breath-work, the science of Kundalini, and poetic prompts informed by the Bhakti path to remember our inherent connection to the divine.

 

INVESTMENT

*total includes all meals, workshops, activities and lodging

KING SUITE
$3,400 per room / $1,700 per person

QUEEN SUITE
$3,100 per room / $1,550 per person

SHARED LOFT
$1,550 per person

DAY RATE
$1,350 per person

 

THE DIGS

Featured in Vogue, Sight Unseen, and Architectural Digest Russia, we’ll be staying at a spacious and peaceful private retreat in the heart of Yucca Valley. Sun by the pool and soak in the hot tub under the stars and by the fire after a long day of hiking and exploring beautiful Joshua Tree National Park.

The expansive and beautiful kitchen will be home-base for our daytime cooking classes and long, leisurely dinners packed with incredible food and drink made to gently detox, re-invigorate your senses, and leave you energized, clear, and nourished.

 

To amplify your integration, we have designed an additional day for a guided medicinal mushroom journey. Please select this option when registering and we will be in touch with more information.

Questions? We invite you to schedule a call with Alexandra or Om to discuss further.


TRANSPORTATION & LOGISTICS

The closest airport is Palm Springs International (PSP) or for cheaper flights, Los Angeles International Airport (LAX).

Plan your arrival to the house in Yucca Valley from 5pm on March 4th. Our final event will be morning yoga and breakfast on the 8th. If you are adding the optional extra day, plan to leave the morning of March 9th.

We will be happy to facilitate carpooling among retreat goers.

PAYMENTS & DEPOSIT

To secure your spot, a $500 non-refundable deposit will be made at the time of sign up. If you are unable to attend and you/we are able to fill your spot, you will receive the deposit back. Payment is due in full before the start of the retreat.

Payment plans are available on a case-by-case basis.

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