“Are you bored with your normal vacations? Do you feel tired after your holidays? Do you over-excite your nerves during your holidays instead of finding peace and happiness? Do you feel that your holidays are a waste of time and money? Do you think that life is without meaning despite all of your comforts and conveniences, your home, family, friends and bank balance? Think of your tensed nerves, your worried mind with endless family and business problems, unhealthy body with a stiff back bone, rounded shoulders, drooped chest and ill-vented lungs, resulting in unhealthy shallow breathing, an anaemic brain without concentration and willpower due to lack of oxygen and poor blood circulation!! What you need is a different kind of vacation. It is time for you and your family to try a vacation at the Yoga Camp in Val Morin, Quebec, Canada.”
The idea of starting a Yoga Camp came to me one day when I was driving through the beautiful Laurentian Mountains, dotted with hundreds of unpolluted lakes, with fresh cool mountain air cleansed and purified constantly by the green forests. There were many cars, filled with excited children and tired parents, their heads bursting with their problems of life. All were moving in the same direction, towards the charming bosom of the Laurentian Mountains. Well, where do we find peace and happiness except in close contact with Mother Nature, who waits for her tired children to come home and enjoy with her a spell in peace and quietness.
Some want to get out of the city-life of excitement for a while in order to enjoy the peace of nature. Many go to big resorts to find peace and happiness. But the very thing they search for—this peace and happiness—cannot be found in resorts because of the lack of self-control and self-discipline. A real vacation is for the mind; all our worries and problems are transmitted by the mind to its counterpart, the physical body. The purpose of the Yoga Camp is to put you on the road to a new life through yogic discipline—nature’s way to eliminate physical and mental illness. For achieving this goal, yoga prescribes five things: proper exercise, proper breathing, proper relaxation, proper diet, and positive thinking & meditation. No physical or mental health is possible if we omit any of the above five things.
An ordinary person—whether a businessman, professional, housewife or even a millionaire with all the wealth and inevitable millionaire’s million problems—goes on vacation to rest and relax in an atmosphere where they can forget their routine life, filled with worries and anxieties. They try to drown their sorrows and problems with alcohol, music, dance and other excitements in the evening. In the day, they lie on a sun-soaked beach, take leisurely walks or a swim in the warm tropical water of an ocean. So many take to their favourite golf course, others concentrate on a fishing rod. Some sit in fashionable restaurants with all kinds of foods and drinks while their mouths puff like smoking chimneys. At night, they may attend cocktail parties and dancing, lasting until 4 a.m., returning to their rooms semi-conscious, sometimes unconscious.
Did they really enjoy their holiday? Did they really get the peace and happiness for which they took their vacation? It is doubtful. However, if you want a vacation that will rejuvenate body and mind and bring you spiritual upliftment, try a Yoga Vacation at the Yoga Camp. Health is discipline. While the scientists seek to unravel the mysteries in which the causes of many diseases are enmeshed, yoga has the solution that can salvage many lives—but it goes mostly unrecognised. Regardless of the progress made by medical science, the most important health measures needed are both national and individual discipline.
A Yoga Vacation is a disciplined adventure. It brings out the happiness from within yourself which you seek in typical vacations, but fail to find. Early morning meditation will elevate your mind. The breathing exercises will clear your lungs and will recharge every cell of your body. Yoga exercises will unlock tensed muscles, rejuvenate your heart, and restore youthful flexibility to joints and ligaments. Relaxation will give you a greater capacity to deal with stress. Pure food will replace toxins in your body with life-giving nutrients. You will meet people from every walk of life, people brought together by the desire to live in an atmosphere of health, calmness and meaning. If you really want a vacation that will revitalise your body and mind, and give you a spiritual uplift as well, please come join us at the Yoga Camp. You will see for yourself that common-sense discipline and simplicity are indeed the keys to freedom and happiness.”
