Music & More Summer Retreat at Kanha Shanti Vanam

2025.12 - Tuesday, 15 April 2025

Dear sisters and brothers,

The spiritual Masters of the Heartfulness tradition have all been aficionados of music. In September of 2024, Beloved Daaji was invited by the legendary flautist, Pandit Shri Hariprasad Chaurasia, to a musical performance by his disciples at his Vrindavan Gurukul in the outskirts of Bhuvaneswar. At the end of this beautiful session, Beloved Daaji applauded the initiative by Hari Ji of establishing a Gurukul to preserve the treasure of his musical style for posterity and also expressed his interest and intent to establish Gurukuls of Music under the auspices of Heartfulness the world over, starting with Kanha Shanti Vanam. Subsequently, Daaji granted permission to start this journey with a summer retreat.

Music & More is an eight-day summer retreat for training in music and dance, between Saturday, May 24, and Sunday, June 1, 2025 at Kanha Shanti Vanam.

This year, the retreat will be supported by our dear brother, flautist, Shashank Subramanyam and seven eminent professional artists and teachers in the styles of Indian Classical Music and Dance. This year, we will focus on training in vocal and flute in the Hindustani and Carnatic style of Indian Classical Music as well as on the Bharatnatyam Dance form. Click below to register.

For each of these styles, there will be two streams – basic and advanced – with clear criteria outlined on the registration page. Participants can choose their style and stream. Participants will receive 3 hours of instruction and classes per day over 2 sessions of 1.5 hours each (meaning 24 hours over the eight days). The classes will be group classes with individualized attention.

The remaining time is for practice and other unique exposures at Kanha Shanti Vanam. These will include introduction to the unique meditative practices of Heartfulness, a tour of Kanha, exposure to the Wellness Centre and so on.

The subsidized professional fees for this program will be Rs. 15,000/-. Travel, board and lodging is to be borne by the participants. Estimated cost for boarding and lodging can range from Rs. 1500/- per day to Rs. 6000/- per day depending on type of lodging chosen.

This is a unique opportunity to be part of the founding batch of the Music & More retreat, which is the first step towards creating a Music Gurukul under the auspices of Heartfulness. The atmosphere at Kanha Shanti Vanam will make this experience unique. The number of slots is limited to 10 students per stream. So, all abhyasis interested in this are encouraged to register soon as this program will be made available to others as well.

We pray and hope this program serves as an inspiring start to a beautiful journey. We invite you to register below and for any queries, please mail musicandmore@heartfulness.org.

Heartful Regards,
Organizing Team