Deep down, we all know life is much more than paying bills or having a big house, yet we often get lost in everyday life and end up losing touch with our inner self and the divine. At some point, something snaps. Maybe we lose a loved one, we get diagnosed with a serious illness, or we simply feel we don’t fit in our old life anymore. And we feel lost.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!That’s absolutely normal—but that’s also when Hariharalaya steps in. It doesn’t matter where you are in your life journey; Hariharalaya is not just a place. It’s a dimension. Nestled among lush Cambodian nature, a mere few kilometers from the world‑famous Angkor complex, Hariharalaya is a safe space in which you can unlearn, accept that you can’t know everything, and be ready to be transformed.
From the moment you step inside this realm, you leave something of the old version of yourself outside. You remove your shoes, and you won’t wear them again as long as you are on the grounds. That’s when you start walking barefoot, feeling the softness of the land after a downpour and the ease of the grass brushing your ankles. Every step grounds you and every moment is a discovery. As you wander around Hariharalaya’s grounds, you uncover hidden spots, places to rest, play, engage with others, or go inward, and you slowly feel lighter.
When you signed up for one of the retreats at Hariharalaya you didn’t know what to expect, but the journey starts from there, with activities thought to gently guide you inside yourself so you can set your intentions for the rest of the journey. From the various daily activities—yoga, meditations, massages, acupuncture and more—to the healthy, nutritious food, everything at Hariharalaya is meant to help you reach whatever goals you have for your self‑development.
Because what really sets this place apart is that it doesn’t show you the easiest road. It doesn’t sell you promises or a universal formula for a happy life, whatever that means. At Hariharalaya you find incredible teachers with years of experience and an energy that speaks more than their words. Even if you are a complete novice to yoga and the like, there is no need to feel nervous or scared because, as Lokta Joēl (the founder and one of the teachers) says, “Yoga is not about performing or competing with others or with yourself. Yoga is a journey inward.”
Another crucial point of your stay at Hariharalaya is the digital detox. Shortly after your arrival, a member of the staff will collect your phone and any other device and you will be able to enjoy six days of total pause from the constant call of the screen. Of course, for safety reasons, your loved ones can get in touch with the staff, should they need to pass on important news. Other than that, I guarantee you that, when they give you your devices back, you’ll look at them wondering, “What do I do with these now?”
Because Hariharalaya doesn’t give you more, it brings you to the beauty of less. Through silence, constant practice, a supportive community and the freedom to be whoever you are, you’ll slowly let go of all the things that weigh you down. Maybe you overthink, maybe you live in the past or in the future, you’re often anxious or your body is ever sick, trying to tell you that something’s off inside. Whatever it is you are experiencing, chances are that your daily life sucked you in a reality that couldn’t be more different from what I call “real life.”
Real life is not about having a good job, expensive clothes, a million followers on Instagram or pleasing other people. It’s not about wearing so many masks we don’t know how to remove them from our faces anymore, and maybe we’re even scared to do so, because we’re so used to identify ourselves with our bodies, minds, names, roles and so on, that if we didn’t wear masks, we wouldn’t even know who we really are. This is not something we can find out in a week, because that’s a never‑ending journey, but your stay at Hariharalaya will be an important piece of the puzzle.
Slow down. Breathe in the clear air. Smell the flowers. Enjoy the company of the lovely pets (cats and a cow!), bond with a stranger, retreat to your own inner sanctuary, journal, play an instrument, draw, read, sleep, eat and be in the moment. That’s the true gift of Hariharalaya.
Most of us are never really present. We think about our past, over and over, replaying the images of a time that’s real only in our mind, or we’re projected into the future, worrying about losing our money or our job, and living through catastrophic scenarios that may never happen. In the meantime, we’re not here. We’re not in the present. But that’s the only way to really be alive. Being alive doesn’t just mean eating and breathing—things that we do on autopilot, anyway—but it means being enlightened from within, like we have a whole Christmas tree inside of us, lit up 365 days per year. This doesn’t mean we won’t face challenges and we won’t have to deal with problems and annoyances, but we’ll be able to face them and we’ll be able to really understand that our real self has nothing to do with our name, our title, our gender and all the things we usually identify with.
At Hariharalaya you will be stripped off of your biases, limitations and dysfunctional convictions. You’ll appreciate what you have and your journey so far. At the center, gratitude is embedded in every single moment, in the beauty of sharing a meal with others, in the honor of spending time alongside nature. Experience a Cambodian downpour and smell the air wet with rain. Enjoy tropical sunshine. Walk with no direction among the grounds. Sit. Stay still. Pause. Breathe.
We often think we’re valuable just when we’re productive, as if money is the only currency to our self‑worth, but at Hariharalaya you’ll discover the beauty of being. Cambodia itself is a country where locals indulge in pleasure, they rest and take it easy during parts of the day in which Westerners are always going, working and doing. Slow down. Find your inner value. Let go of the need of pleasing others, of always being on top of the game. That’s tiring, and can even make you physically sick, but you know that already.
Signing up for a Hariharalaya retreat means investing in yourself. It means listening to your soul’s calling and not shutting the door in front of new possibilities. You can keep walking along the more trafficked route, where most people are, usually moving on autopilot. You repeat the same words and actions every day and you live in a constant loop in which you play the same scenarios, over and over, until you start to break free. If you don’t, your whole life is going to be an endless repetition of trauma you never worked on and indoctrinations you made yours without even knowing it.
It’s time to set yourself free.
It’s time to look at your life and say, “Okay, I’m ready to change what makes me suffocate.” Just the thought of doing so can be scary but the teachers at Hariharalaya will be there to gently and respectfully guide you along the journey. What makes the retreat center special is also the personal attention given to each student. We’re all different, we’re all unique and marvelous just the way we are. Hariharalaya’s staff knows that, and, even if the lessons and practices are the same for everyone, each person will take something different out of it.
For me, Hariharalaya was a place where I could connect with like‑minded people. Living here in Cambodia and working on my own spiritual journey, I came to certain conclusions about life, death and how most of us live, that often don’t resonate with other people, especially with Westerners. At Hariharalaya I felt understood, I met other people with a similar vision and I realized that being part of a community such as the one I found in Siem Reap is something that felt impossible when I was living in Italy, where I always felt a fish out of water.
Hariharalaya is a sense of belonging. It means being accepted for who you are. Your journey is valuable. You are worthy. Hariharalaya made me feel grateful for the decisions I took, for the chances I created for myself, for the courage the past version of me had, that led me to this amazing life I lead today. As I’m writing this piece a few days after the end of the retreat, I still feel centered and at peace.
As Lokta Joēl often said during the retreat, our inner world is a garden and we must take good care of it. We must plant the right seeds. We must be aware of what we do, because that can destroy our garden, or can make it beautiful. After my experience at Hariharalaya I started indulging in things I love again, just for the joy of doing them. I did that already, on and off, and in the end I always went back to do what I needed to do, which was either for work or to be active and plan for the future.
Now, I enjoy writing not only for my work but for myself. I’m writing short stories I’ll never publish, just because I love the process. I read books whilst drinking a juice. It rains and I don’t complain about it. I just adjust my schedule. Hariharalaya teaches you acceptance. Cambodians accept life for what it is; they don’t get mad when the weather disrupts their plans or when something doesn’t go as planned. We do. In the Western world, we are taught we must be in control and we often feel so entitled we want everything to work according to our own wishes and needs. But we can’t control life.
Life is like a beautiful, constantly moving river. Every moment you look at it, it’s new. At every curve, the water is different than how it was before. And so are we. We’re constantly shifting, always evolving but living in a physical world means also facing the risk of never really growing up spiritually because we’re so entangled in dysfunctional dynamics we learned as young kids and that adhered to our unconscious minds. We identify with them, believing these are our thoughts, our opinions, our ideas and our dreams. But that’s not true.
We must unlearn. We must stop wanting answers and we must start asking ourselves the right questions. We know everything already. We’ve been here before; we lived and we died. We may not remember but sometimes we hear a call. When we stand barefoot in the Meditation Gardens at Hariharalaya and we glimpse something that, for an instant, makes us feel lighter, part of a higher dimension, then we blink and it goes away. Maybe we’re scared, we don’t know how to live at such a high vibrational level, so we go back to the safety of our third/now shifting towards fourth dimension, but we’ve seen a bit of it. We know, we simply know we’re part of the cosmos, we’re not just ourselves. We’re not islands, separated from each other, we’re all interconnected. That’s why, when we really work on our inner selves, we help others and the whole world by default.
It may seem a daunting task and sometimes we feel called to stay put. We rely in comfort and, even if habit makes us feel frustrated, anxious or unhappy, we can deal with that. We’ve been taught we’re here to suffer, sacrifice and endure, but that’s not how life really works.
Life is joy. Life is flowing.
Life is easy.
A journey at Hariharalaya is an inner trip that happens easily, without force or any need to push. You relax, you look inward, you see others differently, taking a glimpse of yourself in their eyes. You share stories, you read behind the words, you see the common mistakes, struggles and goals. You learn to see through others’ eyes and you realize other people are just mirrors for your own soul.
As night gently falls over Hariharalaya’s grounds, and thunder lights up the dark sky, you feel so incredibly alive. The practices you get to experience every day, the teachers’ lessons and wisdom, your fellow participants’ encouragement and share, the beautiful nature all around you… everything is a small piece of a bigger puzzle.
And for a moment, just a moment, you feel eternity. It’s so real it causes a shiver all over your body, and you skip a breath whilst your eyes get wider. You’re alive, so very alive it almost hurts but it doesn’t. It’s like flying, no, it’s even better than spreading your wings. It’s being so light you belong to nowhere and everywhere. You hold on to yourself and you’re part of the whole world, the whole universe.
That’s what Hariharalaya does. It doesn’t sell formulas or washed‑up dreams. It takes your hand and it guides you back home.
There, you can actually be.
