YOSSUM Yoga & Meditation Retreat - Andalucia, Spain

Teachers

Ma Prem Kali, Ioana Craciun and Lori Sjollema are the Yossum Retreats facilitators in Spain.

Ma Prem Kali
Yossum Founder

Kali is the founder and creator of Yossum: a powerful and transformative process of personal growth consisting of four pillars — Yoga, Silence, Self-Understanding and Meditation. She has been teaching Yossum for seven years.

Kali was born in Brazil in 1963 and has been practicing yoga since the age of 15.

After a prominent career in the fashion business in São Paulo, she immigrated to Australia, where she became interested in spiritual development, embracing meditation as a natural complement to her practice of yoga.

In 1989, she moved to India and became a disciple of Osho, the enlightened mystic, participating and assisting in many workshops and meditation programs at his international center in Pune.

Her inner exploration then took her to the Himalayas, where for seven years she experienced long periods of silence in meditation retreats under the guidance of her teacher Swami Prem Samdarshi.
She was then fortunate to meet Ramesh Balsekar in Mumbai, the great Advaita sage, and received his teachings for four years.

After 13 years in India, Kali returned to the West. She trained in the Enneagram, a practical and powerful psychological system of self-understanding.

The powerful synthesis of all that she integrated from her spiritual teachers and the Enneagram wisdom, ultimately led her to create Yossum. This unique process is her own approach to self-development. It integrates yogic philosophy with the ordinary challenges of day-to-day life.

Through her work, Kali offers her clients and students the opportunity to experience a deep-rooted sense of harmony, and acceptance of self and others, which she believes to be the foundation of a fulfilling life.

Kali has personally designed the highly structured programs presented in the Yossum Retreats.

She also designs modules of meditation, philosophy and self-understanding for Yoga Teacher Training Schools, including schools that provide certification with the Yoga Alliance of the United States.

Kali now lives in Marbella in the south of Spain. When she is not delivering Yossum Retreats, she works in private practice, assisting people with their personal journeys of self-understanding.

Extra sessions with Kali

Ioana Craciun

Ioana started to practice yoga 17 years ago. Very soon after starting she discovered that deepening her practice and understanding of yoga was her life path. For many years she trained in the Iyengar Method and Meditation with many teachers in a Buddhist Center in Germany, where she lived for 20 years. She travelled to India where she met her Indian Iyengar yoga teacher, Sharat, who developed his own teaching method. During the retreats with him she deepened her knowledge of Iyengar yoga and learned restorative yoga with props and guided relaxation. Ioana is a certified yoga teacher by the International Organization Yoga Alliance. During her training she deepened her experience of Dynamic and Ashtanga Yoga, Yoga Nidra, Pranayama, Meditation, Silence, Philosophy and Self-Understanding. Following the Yossum concept she has since intensified her practice of meditation and silence as well as self-understanding through Enneagram sessions. Ioana developed her own Hatha yoga teaching technique, her classes are based on detailed instructions, focus on alignment and use of props, breathing awareness and meditation. She speaks fluently english, spanish and german.

Ioana writes a weekly well being column on Yoga and all its applications in daily life for the Plus Magazine, Costa del Sol Nachrichten, Spain.

She considers that the ultimate goal of yoga is to connect with our inner space and investigate the functioning of our mind and our personality, in order to reduce suffering and be able to feel love and compassion for ourselves and others.

Lori Sjollema

Born and raised in America, Lori Sjollema began her career 28 years ago in the fitness and dance industry in Chicago U.S.A. Her talent and adventurous spirit led her to Europe where she travelled extensively as a professional dancer and taught fitness side by side. Tired of the rat race, she knew when she walked into her first Dynamic Yoga class several years ago that her search was over. Her style of teaching is perhaps that of a ‘rebel’, integrating elements from various Yoga traditions. Certified as a Jivamukti Yoga Instructor, she is also trained in the methods of Ashtanga, Iyengar Yoga and Raja Yoga especially in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. Foremost Lori teaches from her own experience and intuition as a practitioner of Yoga in its entirety. Yet her teaching is highly influenced by her travels to America working with highly renowned teachers such as David Life and Sharon Gannon, David Swenson, Rodney Yee, Shiva Rea and Sean Corn. Her teaching is also very much influenced by her studies with Jose Maria Vigar in the Iyengar lineage.

Valérie Devillers

In 2006, Valérie joined a Yossum retreat to learn about meditation. She soon recognized that Yoga in its entirety was her path and thus began her journey; since then she has been fully dedicated to her recognition. Soon, after her first retreat, Valérie committed to a nine months Yossum Foundation Level Course. The course was designed especially for her answering her sincere readiness to learn. Her Yossum Training involved Silent Meditation, Self-Understanding through the Enneagram System and the study of Buddhist and Advaita philosophies with Ma Prem Kali as well as the studies of Yoga Asanas, anatomy and pranayama. Since then she also completed the Yoga Arts 200h Teacher Training with Louisa Sear, in India, where she had the opportunity to deepen her knowledge in pranayama, Yoga history and anatomy. She is now a Yoga teacher certified by the Yoga Alliance. Valérie teaches Hatha and Vinyasa classes as well as Restorative Yoga classes in Valencia, Spain where she lives. She incorporates her understanding of Ashtanga and the use of props following the Iyengar method. She has a keen curiosity and seriousness towards developing more understanding of the asanas (postures) and a deep commitment to meditation. She fluently speaks French and English. Valerie believes that practising yoga asanas has an impact on the whole being, mental and physical, and that it is a moving meditation guided by intuition coming from within. Valérie trusts that deeper inner transformation is beyond Yoga classes on its own, it also requires the practise of Meditation combined with on-going self-understanding work on one’s personality structure. She is a valuable presence and assistant in many Yossum retreats. Valérie is the living testimony of the transformative power of the Yossum process. To contact Valérie in Valencia Spain call: 0034 687 526 024

 

Marjan Looije

Marjan is the YOSSUM administrative manager, she is a wizard in organizing all the bookings for the Yossum Retreats. She deals with her work with professionalism and genuine warmth towards our participants. Marjan Looije has been on several YOSSUM Retreats and in consequence of her self-understanding and getting in touch with her deepest wishes, she had the courage to start her own massage business. Marjan's massages are excellent, she has magic fingers! She is available as a masseuse for Private Retreats. She is very grateful for the back-up that Kali and YOSSUM have provided to follow her own path. More details about her therapies can be found on www.marjanmassage.com

Programme - Yossum one-week timetable *

Times		Program		Week days
7:45am - 8:15am		Meditation Practice Guided Nature walk		Tue – Wed - Thu - Sat Mon – Fri
8:30am – 10:15 am		Hatha Yoga Practice		Every day
10:30am		Brunch		Every day
11:30am – 1:30pm		Free time		Every day
1:30pm – 3:30pm		Self-Understanding Practices		Every day except on Wednesday free half day
3:30pm – 4:30pm		Free time		Every day
4:30pm – 6:00pm		Hatha Yoga Practice		Every day
6:00 pm – 7:00 pm		Kundalini Active Meditation		Tue - Thu - Fri
7:30 pm		Dinner		Every day
9:00 pm – 9:45 pm		Meditation Practice  Q & A		Every day except on Wednesday free half day

* Changes may apply according to group level

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