An ashram, by definition, is a sacred place where a guru lives with their chelas, disciples who commit their lives to practice, service, and the cultivation of a shared ethos. It is not merely a physical location, but a living field. A frequency sustained through daily discipline, silence, devotion, and care. Within an ashram, life itself becomes practice. The smallest actions, sweeping the floor, preparing food, chanting, tending the land, are not separate from the spiritual path. They arethe path.
This is why the ashram represents the union of all yogas. Karma Yoga lives in selfless service, offered without personal claim. Jappa Yoga unfolds through repetitive spiritual practices that steady the mind and refine perception. Bhakti Yoga breathes through devotion, not only toward personal awakening, but toward life itself, toward the unseen good that is silently nourished through consistency and faith. And Hatha Yoga is present as the deep inner marriage of sun and moon, effort and surrender, will and receptivity, aligning the subjective self with an objective devotion to the world.
I lived this teaching intimately during my time in an ashram in Venezuela, accompanying my guru as he activated and nourished different ashrams throughout South America. What impressed me most was not the outer structure, but the inner coherence. The understanding that these spaces were not retreats from life, but engines of transmission, silent contributors to the land, the surrounding homes, the city itself. Places where spiritual labor was offered not loudly, not visibly, but faithfully, day after day, so that something finer could be sustained in the collective field.
The deepest teaching I received was simple and radical: we are not meant to escape into ashrams, we are meant to become them. Our homes, too, can be consecrated. Not through perfection or austerity in the moral sense, but through intentional alignment. A home can become an ashram when it supports silence, genuine connection, and healthy relational dynamics. When it is arranged not only for efficiency or aesthetics, but for life to move through it well.
This is where tools like Feng Shui reveal their wisdom, not as superstition, but as spatial intelligence. We know through epigenetics that our environment directly influences which genes are expressed. The spaces we inhabit either support vitality or suppress it. An ashram-home is one where the environment works in favor of life: light is welcomed, air circulates, objects are respected, nature is invited in. Nothing is excessive, nothing is neglected. Energy is allowed to spiral, not stagnate.
But the ashram is not only physical. It is relational. It lives in how we speak to one another, how we manage conflict, how we honor rhythms of rest and activity. It is cultivated through the daily, often unseen choices that generate trust, safety, and belonging. Over time, this creates a spiral, where joy feeds connection, connection feeds presence, and presence feeds meaning.
Austerity, in this context, is often misunderstood. It is not about denying beauty, comfort, or abundance. True austerity is symbolic. It is the discipline of guardianship. The recognition that nothing is truly “ours,” but entrusted to us through dharma. We are not owners, we are caretakers. This is the deeper teaching behind practices like Brahmacharya. Abstinence is not repression; it is conscious management of life force. The question beneath all spiritual restraint is the same: Can I truly sustain what I have been entrusted to guard? Can I remain faithful to what I am building?
Whenever these questions arise in me, they often translate, in my Sagittarius heart, into a crisis of vision and faith. And because it is a crisis of vision, I return to vision. I see my guru seated at the altar in the temple of Santo Antônio do Descoberto in Brasil. I see him simply doing what he came here to do, fulfilling his mission without hesitation or doubt. I see the sacred fire held steady, the temple kept clean, not only physically, but energetically and devotionally, so that it may welcome whichever soul is ready to gather, to receive, to remember. In this vision, there is no drama, no urgency, only continuity. Presence. Service. And in remembering him, I remember myself. I remember that guardianship is not about certainty, but about showing up again and again with integrity. The fire does not ask to be explained, it asks to be tended.
As we stand at the threshold of the solstice, entering Capricorn in the Northern Hemisphere, this teaching becomes especially potent. The solstice marks the longest night, the reign of silence, introspection, and inner listening. Night is not absence; it is gestation. Capricorn receives this darkness not as loss, but as raw material. It asks: What will you build with what you have integrated?
Ashrams, whether physical, domestic, or internal, exist because someone believed in the unseen long enough to tend it daily. They exist because faith was practiced, not preached. Because silence was honored as fertile. Because devotion was lived as responsibility.
To create an ashram at home is not to imitate tradition, but to embody its essence. To support the places that have supported our awakening. To become quiet contributors to a future humanity, one rooted in coherence, stewardship, and reverence for life. Perhaps the golden age does not arrive suddenly. Perhaps it is built room by room, relationship by relationship, home by home, through those who remember that spirituality was never meant to be separate from how we live. And perhaps, this longest night is simply asking us: What kind of space am I tending, and what does it allow to be born?
Personal Note
I want to offer my deepest gratitude to siendo, as a space, as a living body, and as a teacher. It has allowed me to truly practice the teachings my guru passed down to me, and to weave into daily life the wisdom I received while living in ashrams and while returning, again and again, to temples. Each of these experiences nourishes a living memory within me, a memory that reminds me how to care, how to tend, how to become a guardian of space rather than an owner of it.
I am profoundly thankful to every person who has given me the strength to keep believing in my path, and to all those who have walked through siendo. Each presence has left an imprint, of gratitude, belonging, joy, faith, and hope, quietly shaping the field and reminding me that a space becomes sacred through the sincerity of those who inhabit it.
I also wish to thank all the collaborators who have passed through these doors, who, even if only for a short time, have shared their knowledge, their dedication, and their care. Through them, I have learned again and again how to attend to this urban ashram with humility, responsibility, and devotion.
And finally, my deepest gratitude to Cauhe, my life partner, for being the ultimate guardian of my sacred fire, holding, protecting, and honoring the flame so that it may continue to serve, illuminate, and remain true.
