Sivananda Yoga Retreat Weeks & Weekend Stays at the Laurentians Ashram

The Sivananda Yoga Camp sits in the Laurentians north of Montreal. It's one of the Sivananda centres running under the umbrella of the international Sivananda Yoga Vedanta organisation, and it follows the same daily structure you'll find across their ashrams worldwide. Mornings start early with the first yoga class at 8am; the second class is at 4pm. In between, there's meditation, chanting, and the standard ashram practice of karma yoga — helping out with a small task around the property as part of the day.

The setting is the main draw. When the weather cooperates, the morning and afternoon asana sessions take place on a pond platform overlooking the water. When it doesn't, they move inside. The property has the Mataji Hall for classes and the Annapoorna Building for dining and activities, plus a Subramanya Ayyappa Temple on site. Meals are vegetarian and taken communally; you eat with the other guests and the residents.

What distinguishes this from a resort yoga week is that it's a proper ashram, not a retreat centre with yoga added on. The daily schedule is fixed and shared — you join the chanting whether or not you came for the chanting. Regular daily yoga classes are also open to people living locally, so the room isn't only guests, and drop-in students from the area sit alongside retreat participants.

The themed weeks change month to month. Recent and upcoming programmes include a Power of Mantras week retreat with a weekend version, Ayurveda programmes focused on body and mind, Aging Gracefully (a week retreat plus weekend), Adapted Yoga, Meditation: The Path of Inner Freedom, a Thanksgiving Special Retreat, a Halloween Retreat, Chair Yoga, and a Reflexo-Nidra massage training course led by Pierre Montpetit.

For people who want to teach rather than just practise, there's a four-week Yoga Teachers Training course. It's built on classical yoga tradition, and the curriculum is meant to leave you with a solid grounding in asana and enough discipline and confidence to teach. It runs as a residential course at the camp as far as the programme describes, though interested students should ask the office to confirm details and dates.

Between the weekend retreats (usually Friday to Sunday, roughly two nights) and the week retreats (roughly four nights), there's a format for most schedules. The shortest options are single courses, like the two-day Chair Yoga programme or the two-day Adapted Yoga course, and the longest are the teachers training and the multi-week sadhana commitments.

What's included

- Accommodation for the duration of the retreat (2 nights for weekend retreats, 4–5 nights for week retreats) - Three vegetarian meals daily in the Annapoorna Building dining hall - Two yoga asana classes a day — 8am and 4pm — on the pond platform when weather permits - Morning and evening satsang: meditation, Sanskrit chanting and a talk - Daily karma yoga (a short work period around the ashram) - Themed workshops and lectures included in the specific retreat programme (e.g. mantras, Ayurveda, meditation) - Access to the ashram grounds, temple and pond platform - Use of the Mataji Hall and other on-site facilities

What's not included

- Travel to and from the ashram - Airport or train station transfers unless pre-arranged - Travel insurance - Personal expenses - Books, mala beads, incense or other items from the ashram shop - Personal treatments or massages outside the programmes listed - Any additional nights beyond your booked retreat