Options for Staying
You are welcome to come and stay at Shankar Prasad as a guest to develop your sadhana (spiritual practice).
All visitors are welcome to participate fully in the ashram activities, including meal time (three vegetarian meals a day, tea, coffee and herbal drinks).
Please contact us regarding the rates for each type of stay (volunteer, partial volunteer, or guest), and find descriptions below.
Volunteers: The ashram welcomes sincere, hard-working, and committed volunteers who love ashram life or would like to try it out. As a volunteer, you are asked to stay a minimum of 1 month, preferably 3 months if possible. There are opportunities for all kinds of volunteer work such as attending to the farm, helping with animals, maintaining the ashram, online and office work, marketing, and fundraising. As a full volunteer, you would be asked to commit to 6 hours of karma yoga a day. If you cannot commit to a minimum of 1 month but are still interested, please contact us as we would still love to host you, and can discuss an arrangement.
Partial Volunteers: We also have an option for partial volunteers who will be required to do only 4 hours of karma yoga, as listed above.
Guest in Ashram: You will stay at the ashram, have more time for sadhana, and will be required to do only 1 hour of karma yoga (service to the ashram as mindful action) per day.
Working Stay: You continue working online and pursuing your own career while contributing to the ashram as a guest or as a partial volunteer.
Guest in Homestay: We also have a separate guesthouse residence, so you can also come to the retreat center as a guest. Guests are welcome to stay and participate in the ashram activities. All guests are required to help with the daily cleaning (1/2 hour per day) and especially cleaning up after meals. Room and board are all-inclusive.
Retreats: We have had several retreats here at Shankar Prasad, and open our space to short and long-term retreat packages for groups interested in expanding their knowledge of yoga meditation techniques. We can tailor-make course offerings based on your personal or group needs and interests.
“Soft Landing in India” stay: We offer first-timers to India a “Soft Landing in India” program in which we will give an introduction to getting around safely and local culture and norms and suggest the best places to visit and stay. You will receive a bit of extra looking after to ensure you adjust quite well to the buzzing Indian culture.
Long-term stays: We are a small community living and progressing together in our spiritual pursuits. We are open to people who are interested in staying at the ashram long-term (all ages), serving wherever needed, or as general office/homestay manager, or organic farm manager and to head community projects (dog sterilization, waste management, women empowerment etc). Minimum stay 3 months.
“Since ancient times the aim of an ashram was not just to provide a place of retreat and relaxation, but also to create a place where people live and work together. Sometimes it is believed that spiritual growth takes place only through meditation, but this is not correct. When you practice meditation together with karma yoga, growth is very fast. In the ashram, you do not meditate all day, but you work all day. You learn to see divine grace while caring for the cows, working as a carpenter, in the kitchen cooking or cutting the vegetables, while checking the bank statement or caring for the sick. By the time the sun rises the ashram is bustling with activity and when the sun sets, still it is active. The residents of the ashram live a very simple life and visitors and guests have to learn to adapt to this simplicity.” – Swami Satyananda
Please email us for further details: shankarprasad.gokarna@gmail.com.