EPISODE 001 | SASCHA KAUS - WELCOME TO RETREAT AFFAIRS
“Retreat Affairs will be a journey of exploration. It’s inspired and born out of my own curiosity and aim to bring people together. Because that is what drives me. The wish to grow in my ability to live every moment as a conscious human being that is capable of living a meaningful life with love and respect for each other and all forms of life.”
- Sascha Kaus
Podcast 001 | SASCHA KAUS - WELCOME TO RETREAT AFFAIRS
Welcome to Retreat Affairs.
In the first episode of the podcast your host Sascha Kaus talks about his journey that let him create Retreat Affairs. Retreat Affairs is a weekly podcast with stories, insights, and inspiration from leading retreat experts, teachers, and mind shifters.
In the podcast host Sascha Kaus talks to some of the most inspiring people in the retreat world so you can have a little taste of retreat and go on a journey with your host and his guests.
We will travel together around the world and meet people that create life-changing experiences. We will explore what motivates them to hold space for us, so we can go out of our daily routine and embark on a trip that often enables deep transformation.
Sascha will interview teachers and we will learn about what they have to share and offer in and beyond retreat. We will learn from experts in the field what it takes to manage and run successful retreats. We will travel to exotic and stunning locations that could become the destination for your next retreat.
Retreat Affairs is recorded and hosted by Sascha Kaus.
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PLEASE NOTE THE FOLLOWING LEGAL CONDITIONS:
Sascha Kaus owns the copyright in and to all content of the Retreat Affairs podcast as well as in all transcripts of the Retreat Affairs podcast, with all rights reserved, as well as his right of publicity.
No one is authorized to copy, share or multiply any part of the podcast, this transcript or any other content on this website without written permission from Sascha Kaus.
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Welcome to the Retreat Affairs Podcast
I’m your host Sascha Kaus. You might guess that I am pretty thrilled that you are listening to me right now. This is my first podcast and I hope that over time you’ll become a regular listener and that with your support I will be able to invite many guests to the show and have interesting and meaningful conversations.
Let me tell you this: Sometimes I am a little bit too perfectionist and too many times I had great ideas and didn’t bring them into life. And now we are here. Something is different this time. Retreat Affairs is born.
I am recording this shortly before the release of Retreat Affairs. The first interviews are recorded, the website is up and running and the only think missing is this first episode. The last weeks were full of planning, preparation and production for the launch of the podcast. I spent many days in a kind of retreat from the outside world to do research, work on the design, find the the best tools and techniques for recording, reach out and invite the first guest and set the foundation to be able to record and deliver a new episode to you each week.
Somehow I had to take myself out of the daily life and find my own routine to be able to bring this project to life. Isn’t that something that we also do when we go on retreat? Take our selves out of the day to day life and establish a routine and an environment that enables to bring something more valuable, more meaningful into our life. To practice with a teacher that we only see once a year. To dive deeper into a topic that really interests us. To work on our selves to become more aligned with our true nature.
Retreat can be spiritual journey. Sometimes in the from of a pilgrimage, sometimes it’s an inner journey. It can be a time in solitude or it can be a time in community. There are places where we can go on a retreat. Monasteries, Cloisters or maybe that powerful spot somewhere in the wilderness. We go on a retreat to meditate, to pray or to reflect on whatever might be the theme for that time.
There are many forms of retreat and this is what we will explore in the podcast. Let me give you a little tour before we go into the personal stuff where I will tell you a more about myself.
Retreat Affairs is a weekly podcast with stories, insights, and inspiration from leading retreat experts, teachers, and mind shifters.
In this podcast, I get to talk to some of the most inspiring people in the retreat world so you can have a little taste of retreat and go on a journey with me and my guests.
We will travel together around the world and meet people that create life-changing experiences. We will explore what motivates them to hold space for us, so we can go out of our daily routine and embark on a trip that often enables deep transformation.
I will interview teachers and we will learn about what they have to share and offer in and beyond retreat. We will learn from experts in the field what it takes to manage and run successful retreats. We will travel to exotic and stunning locations that could become the destination for your next retreat .
And we will explore what retreat in itself means for the people that I interview or for myself.
And maybe you will redefine your idea of retreat.
I hope that I can offer you something with Retreat Affairs no matter what your interest in retreats might be.
Are you looking for inspiration on where to go on your next retreat, or do you want to get to know a teacher more deeply. Are you interested in running retreats yourself and look for advice and tips from those who already successfully host retreats?
We will explore everything about retreats. You might already have your experience and maybe you will hear something that gives you new insights and ideas. Maybe you’ll be inspired to go to a special place, maybe you’ll find out that you want to go deeper in a certain teaching. Maybe listening to my guests will encourage you to get started with organising and hosting retreats yourself.
Retreat Affairs will be a journey of exploration. It’s inspired and born out of my own curiosity and aim to bring people together. Because that is what drives me. The wish to grow in my ability to live every moment as a conscious human being that is capable of living a meaningful life with love and respect for each other and all forms of life.
What’s the best way to do this? I am not sure but I feel that one step into the right direction is to listen more to each other. To give each other room and space and respect and honour our unique gifts and talents. I know that there are many people out there that feel the same and I want to talk to them and share their ideas and insights with you in this podcast.
Now you are listening to this first episode I am amazed that I made it so far. and I am very grateful that you offer your time and energy to listen.
This has been a very deep and emotional process for me and it’s the culmination of so many events and episodes in my life.
I had not planned this for very long, although the first ideas for the podcast reach back about two years ago when it was still a little side note to another idea. Like so many others the original idea didn’t fully come through. What wanted to be born was the podcast.
Within the next episodes, I will share more of what motivates me to put my time and effort into Retreat Affairs, but also what drives me to go on retreats, organise and host them myself and most of all where I wish to take this in the future.
But before we go into what might come someday let me tell you a little bit about my own retreat experience. You will get to hear a lot of stories in the podcast and I certainly have my own that I don’t want to hide.
The first time I experienced a retreat was probably when I went to India to go on an Ayurvedic cleanse. The year before that trip was a pretty rough one. After a successful career in music television and some years of working on my own production company I felt I wasn’t going anywhere meaningful. Nothing seemed to make sense. My relationship was suffering and work wasn’t fulfilling. Then everything hit hard. The relationship fell apart and a project at work though financially successful was just giving me pain and headaches. Nothing made sense anymore.
I am that guy who will always tell you all is good. Not in a superficial sense. No. For all of my life, I had that deep underlying feeling that everything made sense and that I was somehow taken care of by the universe.
This feeling was often established trough synchronicity. Many times in my life I experienced situations that felt like little miracles. And should you have no idea what synchronicity means? Let me give you an example. And maybe you get an idea what it means to me.
I grew up in a small town in the countryside where we had a little record store. It wasn't truly a record store, it was a shop selling only CDs.
One day I discovered a beautiful and unusually packed CD from a band that I had never heard of. I listen to it in the shop and was blown away by the music. It was something different and new for me. So I bought the Album and it became my favourite for quite some time. I even copied it to a cassette so I could listen to it on my Walkman. Remember that? The Band was Sieg über die Sonne - Victory over the sun and I will put a link into the Show Notes where you will also find everything else that I mention here.
A few years later after dropping out of university I started working as an intern for VIVA. It was 1997 and the high time of Music Television and Viva just started two years earlier and was at the time the biggest music television station in Germany rivalling the competitor MTV.
It was a dream come true. I started working on a weekly show called Club Rotation. It was all about dance music and we filmed in Clubs and on electronic music festivals throughout Germany and sometimes from all around the world. This is how the small-town boy made his first trips to exotic places around the world. My first trip abroad as an intern was going to Kenia and Sansibar on a luxurious cruise-ship with DJs and parties on paradise beaches.
This job also brought me to Ibiza. Home to some world-famous clubs and a famous party scene. The little island in the Mediterranean has always been a place for an eclectic mix of people. Now more than 20 years later I call it my home and it doesn’t stop to surprise me and I can still feel the very special energy it has.
In my early years coming to the island two of the people I got to know where my dear friends Ricardo Villalobos and Luciano Nicolette. Both are absolutely gifted talents and musicians and both are half Chilean. In 1999 we and a group of friends travelled together to Chile to celebrate into the new millennium. One of the people that we met in Chile was one of the closest friends of Ricardo and Luciano. Martin Schopf. When I met Martin everything came together. We spend many days at the place where Martin grew up. In the garden of his mother's house was a little cottage. We hung out with friends, had barbecues and listened to music.
This is where Martin had produced the Album that I mentioned earlier. He was one member of Sieg über die Sonne and now we are friends.
This is how I define synchronicity. I strongly believe that the moment I saw that album in my home town CD store I opened a window into my future. Everything from there unfolded as it was meant to happen.
It wasn’t really what you might call a retreat. But traveling to a far away country being immersed in a different culture and getting to know more about my friends and where they came from, being a guest in their home and meeting their family and friends is invaluable. Understanding a culture, learning about what matters to people in a different place at the other end of the world and spending time together as friends it’s one of the achievements that I am most grateful for in my lifetime and I wish that everybody can enjoy that freedom and hospitality at some point in their life.
This is one more reason why I created Retreat Affairs. Because I think that we need to find another form of travel. There is good reason to rethink our current form of living and the way we travel. But I don’t want to loose that freedom to get to know my friends and my enemies in their surroundings so I can learn about them and understand them better. There are many things that we can change and that need our attention but I believe that the freedom to travel, the freedom that I experienced as a german citizen and the open hearts and arms that I met all over the world is something that all should be able to experience should they wish so.
It’s a wide ranging topic and it certainly will come up again and again in the podcast. I feel that retreats can be one way of creasing a more responsible and sustainable from of travel that supports local communities and enables a deeper connection with the places we visit. I am looking forward to hearing from my guests and you my listeners how we can make that happen.
But for now let me tell you a little bit more about my own retreat experience.
Even though synchronicity helped me to see the wonders of life. Life didn’t spare me with some hard and uncomfortable lessons. One of them was that I am here in this human experience to lose myself and to find back to myself.
Although I had this deep underlying feeling about the laws of the universe and how I am the creator of my own experience I had to learn how Maya / Illusion can create suffering and how it almost took away that inate connection to my true self.
So back to my trip to India. In the weeks and months before that trip, nothing seemed to make sense anymore. I couldn’t see or feel the synchronicity at that time. It all felt dull and numb.
And still. Looking back now I see how everything unfolded.
About nine months before going to India I started to notice a high pitched sound in my ears. Tinnitus. As much as I knew that it was stress-related I wouldn’t take myself out of the drama that I had set myself up for.
There where obligations and projects and I felt I needed to direct all my efforts towards them before taking care of myself. I had to go through even bigger pain and stress to finally be ready to go on the retreat to India.
Nevertheless, I new already a month ahead that this is what I needed to do. No-one told me about Ayurveda or what might be good for me. I just had the intuition that I wanted to go somewhere where someone else would take care of me.
I didn’t want to go on the usual holiday trip that mostly consisted of going to a nice beach like Ibiza or Thailand, smoking lots of marijuana and enjoying good food and company of friends and hanging out having an easy life.
No. I needed to put myself in a situation that was different from everything that I had experienced so far and that gave me a chance to reconnect with myself. And so I started to move towards something that I wanted to bring into my life.
One day I met Frank Lugt an old colleague who I knew from my days at music television. He had become a naturopath and I knew that he had some kind of link to India. i had already looked for an Ayurvedic Center but could’t find the one that was just right for me. I felt that he might be able to point me into the right direction. A few months later I went to see him and he told me about his teacher and his place in Kerala / India: the Treatment
I knew that this was the place that I needed to visit.
In January 2011 I embarked a flight to India without knowing that this would become the start of my journey to find my Self again. The weeks in the Treatment House and the care and work that I received from my healer Vijai and his team transformed my life.
It wasn’t planned - it was just meant to happen. The treatments that I received in those three weeks were sometimes painful and there where many moments when I wished I had booked a small bungalow at a beach in some exotic place.
Nevertheless, what I received was so much more than I had asked for.
I had my first conscious experience of a daily Yoga and started a regular practice when I returned home. I stopped eating sugar for some years and the efetct it had on my mood and my mind was mind-blowing. I shifted from being a happy meat eater to a completely plant-based diet and there wasn’t a day where I wanted to go back.
Two years later I attended the Jivamukti Yoga Teacher training in New York. I took courses with Krishnataki in Thai Yoga massage. I went on a 10-day Vipassana retreat and I became a breathwork facilitator with Alchemy of Breath.
I filmed on Yoga retreats, in courses and on Yoga events in different parts of the world and was able to combine my old life with my new found passion.
And I moved to Ibiza where I started hosting retreats.
So many little stories to tell but there will be another time to go into detail with those.
Except for the one about hosting retreats. Because that is probably the one I should tell here and now in the first episode of the podcast.
So how did I get into hosting retreats? Well, it just needed a few steps to go there. The first was my second trip to India in 2014. On this trip, I got to know Lisa Buddrus. We met on a Jivamukti Yoga immersion with our teachers Lady Ruth and Yogeshwari in Pondychery. Lisa is a fellow Jivamukti Yoga teacher, a great physiotherapist and a wonderful cook.
During that trip to India my passion for cooking became another boost. Wherever I would stay I would go into the kitchen and prepare my won food, talk to my hosts and learn from them what they had to show me.
Even in the Ashram in Munger where I stayed for a little while the karma yoga in the kitchen was one of my favourite things to do.
Sometime after I returned from India I started to cook in the Café of Jivamukti Yoga Berlin where Lisa was already taking care of the whole kitchen team and in January 2015 I helped Lisa to cook for the Jivamukti Yoga detox retreat on the wonderful Baltic island of Rügen.
This was the first time that I cooked on a retreat and for such a big group of almost 40 people. It was so much fun and so rewarding to feed and nourish everybody with delicious plant-based food that I felt I want to do this more often. In some of the retreats and trainings that I have attended over the years, the food was just delicious, nutritious and nourishing. IN some it was not that much aligned with the teachings and the idea of wholeness. I felt that I wanted to be free and offer food my way. With no limitations and the freedom to fully control the ingredients and the variety that I wanted to offer. The idea of hosting retreats myself was planted.
In 2016 almost 20 years after my first visit to Ibiza I decided to spend more time on the island. Already years before I had been talking with my dear brother Ian Szydlowski that it would be cool to open a Jivamukti Yoga school in Ibiza.
We both had attended the teacher training with Jivamukti and although I never really became a yoga teacher and shared what I had learned in that teacher training I was tempted by the idea to create a space in Ibiza where it would be possible to teach yoga and share my passion for plant based food.
I’m not sure if this is ever going to happen. Ian has just opened Jivamukti Yoga Paris and it’s one of the most beautiful Yoga schools I have seen. If you are in Paris go and unroll your mat there and give Ian a big hug.
But in 2016 some years before Ian made plans to open a school in Paris a Yoga retreat seemed to be something that would allow us to feel how it is to invite people and share our love for Yoga and a conscious diet.
I called Ian and he was in. And so we both held our first retreat together.
Satcitanada. Truth Consciousness Bliss
Ian taught the Yoga classes and I cooked delicious plant based food for the group.
From there I decided to create Sveet Retreat - my platform to organise and hold retreats with different friends. It was born out of a passion for coming together with other like-minded people to spend time together, practice and create a space that would allow growth, togetherness, healing, fun and love.
I had experienced so many of the positive aspects of being able to go on retreats, trainings and seminars that I wanted to share this with others.
What followed where Retreats in Ibiza, France and Germany and lots of wonderful days with a bunch of people of whom some have become close friends.
The retreat business wasn’t all sunshine though. It was a lot of work too. Creating the program, programming a website, managing social media, dealing with guests and locations. I faced challenges and learned a lot. Some of the retreats were financially successful with others I lost money.
It’s one thing to have meditations at sunrise in a beautiful spot in nature or Kirtan around the campfire and sing mantras and be in bliss and harmony and another thing to lose thousands and thousands that I paid in deposits for a location just to end up not having enough guest to fill a retreat.
That hurt - but the moments in a retreat where a guest would come up to me and thank me for what we had created outweighed the losses. I learned sometimes the hard way but I was motivated again whenever a guest would return to our next retreat.
That’s what practice is about. I try, I fail, I get up and try again. The more I practice the more I find myself.
So here I am now with the podcast.
I have no idea where I will go with Retreat Affairs. What it has told me so far is that everything that I have done in all those years is coming together in what I do with this work.
So many things make sense now that I didn’t understand when I faced them. That’s what I experienced in many of the teachings that I received over the last few years.
Vipassana isn’t glamorous and sitting down for 12 hours a day and meditate can feel painful at times but it also brought me bliss and the understanding that suffering is optional and pain is an experience like pleasure and joy. Yoga has given me dislocated discs and many days of physical pain but it also gave me a community of like minded people that share the same values and passions. In Breathwork it can be so hard to reach that point where the magic happens but it showed me that the magic doesn’t need to come in the from of mushrooms and it only takes a few deep breaths to feel one with all of existence.
Life is not easy. But there are moments again and again where I feel it. Where there is no doubt. All is good, everything makes sense and I am taken care of by the universe.
Thank you! That’s my mantra. Thank you for all that is.
So where do we go from here? I don’t know. I have no idea what the podcast will bring into my life. Even starting a podcast about retreats in these strange times might seem like a wired idea. We all don’t know what the future will bring and how we will be able to come together in the future.
And what all this means for the ability to travel and visit far away palaces has never been more uncertain.
What will retreats look like from now on.
Many retreat businesses have suspended their activities and struggle in the current situation. I am not sure myself when I will be able to organise the next retreat with Sveet Retreat.
These are topics that could fill whole episodes of the podcast and I am sure we will explore some of them as we go on and face whatever is present in that moment. I don’t have the answers to those questions right now but I feel more deeply what I am looking for.
What I am looking for is a place and a space to come together with likeminded people to share the wisdom and love that is universally present and can be felt by all.
I am dedicated to create more retreats in the future because I have felt and experienced how powerful it can be to come together and learn from each other.
Especially now I feel that there are many people looking for real connection in the physical world. That is what retreat can offer. That is what I want to bring into my life and into the life of others.
As long as I am looking for that place in the physical realm I will connect here with those who are looking for the same, those who have found it already and those who are willing to share their teachings and wisdom with me, with others and with you my listeners.
I am deeply grateful that you are still here and I welcome you to embark with me on this journey.
But before I leave you for this episode I want to take a moment to thank all the wonderful souls that have supported me over the last few weeks and that have contributed in some way to making Retreat Affairs happen.
The idea was in my head for quite some time but I was able to give it space and bring it into life during lockdown between May 31st and August 16th of 2020.
I was locked out from my home and stayed with friends and family that gave me a home and supported me with their ideas, practical help and countless sessions of feedback during those strange times.
First of all, I want to thank Alex Balsells - you have put the match on the haystack. You were that initial spark that got me going and here I am. Without that first push, I might not be here. Thank you!
Imme Kock - without your help and constant support I wouldn’t have made it through the last weeks. How much you believed in me and trusted in the process is without words. You helped me to see that my dedication is stronger than my doubts. Thank you!
Laura Bull, Jano Ben Chabane and Marlene, you have hosted me in times of homelessness and lockdown. The incredible space and room you gave me are still present in this work. Thank you!
Yasmine Orth, Luca Orth and Marcus Roßknecht. You helped me to get off the ground, gave me valuable feedback to make the first steps and the first recordings. But most of all you gave me a home away from home, you are family and I felt welcome when I didn’t have a home. Thank you!
Alex Knörck. You have opened your space and you have been a mentor so I was able to create the design for Retreat Affairs. I know you could have done better but I am happy that you supported me to stand on my own feet. Thank you.
Volker Pannes. It sounds too good to be true. I’m in love with the music you created and my heart jumps every time I get to play with the music in the Podcast. Thank you.
My parents. Gabi and Rolf. I’m not sure if you have an idea what a podcast is. But whatever I have done in my life you have never judged me or tried to talk me out of my decisions. That’s the greatest gift you could have given me. The freedom to explore my own capabilities and make my now choices. That you.
My first guest on the show for saying yes to something that you didn’t know. For trusting me and coming on the show without having heard anything. Offering your time and support just because I asked. I am deeply grateful and honoured. Thank you.
Thank you to all of you who I haven’t mentioned personally but who listened to me during those last few weeks and who believed in me and encouraged me to keep the project going and bring it into life.
And my listeners. For being curious and opening your ears and minds to others and their ideas. Thank you.
Thank you
Thank you all. Thank you Life.
Until next time.
Your host
Sascha Kaus
