I Spent a Weekend at a Kundalini Yoga Retreat — Here’s What Happened

Three days, ten bodies, and one biohacker slightly out of his element..

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There’s a version of me that would’ve talked myself out of this.

The version that defaults to data, optimizes everything, and quietly wonders if three days without a training session is going to show up on the Renpho scale Monday morning.

That version didn’t win this weekend.

Friday morning I packed a bag, pointed toward Wimberley, Texas, and drove out to Lotus Ranch in the Texas Hill Country for the inaugural Embodied Radiance Retreat — a three-day Kundalini yoga immersion hosted by Natalia Fernandez and led in part by my favorite teacher and personal friend, Gurudahn.

What followed was one of the more genuinely interesting weekends I’ve had in a while.

Here’s the full breakdown — for the curious, the skeptical, and my fellow yoganinis who already know exactly what I’m talking about. 🙏

The Framework: What Were We Actually Doing Here?

Before I walk through the schedule, it helps to understand the lens through which the entire retreat was designed.

The organizing framework was the 10 Bodies — a concept central to Kundalini yoga that views the human being not just as a physical body, but as a layered system of ten distinct energetic and spiritual bodies.

Here they are:

1. Soul Body — The seat of your infinite self. Your connection to the divine, beyond ego and identity.

2. Negative Mind — Not negative in the pejorative sense. This is the protective mind — the one that assesses risk and keeps you safe. When balanced, it’s discernment. When overdeveloped, it’s fear.

3. Positive Mind — The expansive, possibility-oriented mind. Optimism, opportunity, forward momentum. Needs to be balanced with the Negative Mind or it becomes reckless.

4. Neutral Mind — The mediator. Sits between the Negative and Positive minds and synthesizes input without bias. The most difficult to develop — and arguably the most valuable.

5. Physical Body — The actual, literal body. The temple. The vehicle.

6. Arcline — Sometimes called the halo. A field of energy that projects from your forehead and is considered the link between the finite and infinite. Said to hold patterns and projections.

7. Aura — Your electromagnetic field. The energy you broadcast. Some people walk into a room and you feel them before they speak — that’s the Aura.

8. Pranic Body — The breath body. Life force. Prana is the energy carried in the breath and distributed through the body. Directly addressed through pranayama (breathwork).

9. Subtle Body — The layer that exists beyond the physical and perceives subtlety — nuance, intuition, the unseen. Often associated with mastery and grace.

10. Radiant Body — The body of courage, nobility, and radiance. The one that shows up fully — without apology, without shrinking. When fully developed, it’s described as a kind of magnetic, undeniable presence.

And the Radiant Body was the focus of this retreat.

Which, honestly, is a concept I find deeply compelling — regardless of the spiritual framework around it. The idea that presence, courage, and authenticity are cultivatable qualities? That tracks with everything I know about intentional self-development.

Different vocabulary. Same pursuit.

Friday, May 22 — Arrival & Opening

Arrival & Settle

I pulled into Lotus Ranch early in the afternoon to Welcome Tea and that immediate deceleration that only happens when you physically remove yourself from your regular environment. No screens demanding attention. No optimizations to be made. Just tea, a beautiful Hill Country setting, and a group of people who’d all made the same intentional choice to show up.

My fellow yoganinis — and I use that term with full affection — are a particular kind of people. Thoughtful. Oriented inward. Less interested in PRs, more interested in the internal landscape. I find this community genuinely energizing, even as someone who tends toward solitude.

Opening Circle

Natalia opened the container for the weekend with intention and care. This is where the why gets established — what we’re here for, how we’ll hold space for each other, and an implicit agreement to leave the outside world outside.

There’s a reason every well-designed retreat starts this way. Setting intention isn’t ceremonial fluff — it’s actually a form of priming. You’re telling your nervous system: this time is different. Pay attention.

Dinner

All meals across the weekend were fully vegan — thoughtfully prepared and genuinely tasty.

Honest take though? Vegan food doesn’t stick the way protein does. If you’re someone who tracks macros and times protein intake carefully — and you know I am — a retreat like this is a useful reminder that the fundamentals don’t just pause because the setting is beautiful. I wasn’t hitting my protein targets and I felt it. Not terribly, but noticeably.

Something to think about if you’re metabolically dialed-in and considering a retreat format like this. You may have to BYOP.

Cacao Ceremony, Meditation & Sound Bath

Friday evening offered something I hadn’t anticipated — and honestly one of the more memorable experiences of the weekend. Natalia and Kelly led the group through a Cacao Ceremony, a practice rooted in Mesoamerican tradition that uses ceremonial-grade cacao — not the processed chocolate you’d find in a grocery store — as a heart-opening plant medicine.

Ceremonial cacao contains theobromine, a gentle vasodilator and mood elevator that increases blood flow, creates a soft warmth in the chest, and promotes a sense of emotional openness without any hallucinogenic effect. Think of it as a subtle but genuinely felt shift in receptivity — your edges soften a little, your heart feels slightly more available. The ceremony opened with intention-setting and the sharing of the cacao drink, followed by a guided meditation that allowed the cacao’s effects to deepen quietly.

From there, Natalia and Kelly moved the group into a sound bath — crystal bowls and resonant instruments washing over a room full of people who were already, by that point, beautifully open. As a first session on the first night, the sequencing was masterful.

Saturday, May 23 — Deepening

Morning Kundalini Yoga

Day 2 opened with kriya before breakfast —well before the analytical mind gets busy and starts narrating everything. Working with the body in a fasted, pre-cognitive state definately hits differently.

Breakfast

After practice, the group came together to eat and share. Not so much a group circle — but definately a time for sharing, open reflection, being witnessed, offering and receiving. This where the community dimension of a retreat comes alive.

This is, candidly, sometimes where I’m slightly outside my comfort zone. I think that I’m more wired for solitude and self-direction. Being in a circle, sharing openly, being seen — that’s the edge for me.

Which almost certainly means it’s exactly where I need to be. 🤷🏼

Also, gotta say, the Vegan sausage patties and the ‘simulated egg’ mini-frittatas were muy delicioso! Add the coffee. OMG! Delicioso!

Kundalini Kriya & A Ten Bodies Overview

Prehaps I should have defined this before. Kriya in Kundalini yoga refers to a precise, intentional sequence of postures, breathwork, movement, and sometimes sound — each combination is designed to produce a specific effect on the nervous system and energetic body.

This isn’t flow yoga. There’s no choreography to follow, no aesthetic to achieve. It’s functional and deliberate in a way that resonates with how I think about training. You’re doing a specific thing for a specific reason.

After the kriya, we took an assessment of where we each were at with progressing in our own development of each of the Ten Bodies. Based on scoring that the assessment, we were able to see some where we were strong and some that could use some improvement.

Next we covered material that fleshed-out what the Ten Bodies actually are and how they show-up in our identities and lives. Very eye-opening, especially for the uniniated.

While I covered the Ten Bodies earlier in the article, I’ll do it here as well for clarity’s sake. The Ten Bodies are:

1. Soul Body — The seat of your infinite self. Your connection to the divine, beyond ego and identity.

2. Negative Mind — Not negative in the pejorative sense. This is the protective mind — the one that assesses risk and keeps you safe. When balanced, it’s discernment. When overdeveloped, it’s fear.

3. Positive Mind — The expansive, possibility-oriented mind. Optimism, opportunity, forward momentum. Needs to be balanced with the Negative Mind or it becomes reckless.

4. Neutral Mind — The mediator. Sits between the Negative and Positive minds and synthesizes input without bias. The most difficult to develop — and arguably the most valuable.

5. Physical Body — The actual, literal body. The temple. The vehicle.

6. Arcline — Sometimes called the halo. A field of energy that projects from your forehead and is considered the link between the finite and infinite. Said to hold patterns and projections.

7. Aura — Your electromagnetic field. The energy you broadcast. Some people walk into a room and you feel them before they speak — that’s the Aura.

8. Pranic Body — The breath body. Life force. Prana is the energy carried in the breath and distributed through the body. Directly addressed through pranayama (breathwork).

9. Subtle Body — The layer that exists beyond the physical and perceives subtlety — nuance, intuition, the unseen. Often associated with mastery and grace.

10. Radiant Body — The body of courage, nobility, and radiance. The one that shows up fully — without apology, without shrinking. When fully developed, it’s described as a kind of magnetic, undeniable presence.

We were scored on a scale of 0 to 24pts, the higher being the stronger in a particular body. The questions were interesting as they assessed us from both a positive and a negative side for a more accurate rating.

Hydrotherapy

This activity exceeded expectations, it’s right in my biohacking lane. The hydrotherapy session followed a specific cadence that I can only describe as a deliberate stress-and-recovery protocol:

🔥 Hot tub soak — vasodilation, muscle relaxation, parasympathetic entry 🌬️ Breathing exercise — intentional breathwork to prepare the nervous system ❄️ Cold plunge — vasoconstriction, sympathetic activation, the thing most people dread and then immediately want to do again 🔥 Dry sauna — heat stress, fluid turnover, deep relaxation

For the biohacker in me — this was the session of the weekend. Hot/cold contrast therapy has solid research behind it for recovery, circulation, and nervous system regulation. The breathwork layer added a dimension that made it feel genuinely intentional rather than just another spa day.

Hydration note: non-negotiable before, during, and after. Don’t wing this one.

Lunch

Vegan. Again. Suprisingly tasty. Still not hitting protein targets. 🥗🤷🏼

Radiance Masterclass

Gurudahn led kriya and the breathwork for this, and this is where I’ll just say — there is something that happens in a room with a skilled Kundalini teacher that doesn’t translate to a recording. A transmission. A quality of attention and energy that changes the room. I’ve experienced it enough times now that I’ve stopped trying to explain it and just appreciate it. This also applies to the other teachers who were present — nods to Kelly and Jessica, who both brought a level of insight and detail into the practices over the weekend.

With the Radiant Body as the focus of the entire retreat, this masterclass was the conceptual centerpiece of the weekend.

The Radiant Body — the 10th body in the Kundalini framework — is described as the body of courage, presence, and nobility. It’s the quality that allows someone to walk into a room and be fully, unapologetically there. Not performing. Not shrinking. Just radiating.

The masterclass explored how we dim that radiance — through fear, through the need for approval, through the slow accumulation of unlived life — and how a Kundalini practice might specifically help address those patterns.

This content lands differently when your nervous system has been opened up by days of kriya, breathwork, and recent cold plunges. You’re not receiving information intellectually. You’re receiving it somatically.

That’s the genius of the retreat format — by the time you get to the teaching, the student is actually ready to receive the download.

Free Time and an Opportunity To Explore The Ranch

Hiking trails. Deeper, personal conversations. Chickens, roosters, and BABY goats! (OMG!) Plus one orange, friendly farm feline that was always on the pursuit of sneaking inside the buildings. Need I say more?!?

Dinner

Same theme as lunch. Also a fine selection of water and organic teas, but nothing to drink that would delight the tastebuds (like maybe some juices). Mini-cheeseish cakes for dessert.

Still minus on the protein targets. Starting to feel it more. Knowing we’re near the end. (Ready to make a run for the nearest HEB.)

Just a friendly thought: There’s a grill on property. We could grill steaks, chicken, or fish — If.. If only we had any. 😱😂 #WishfulThinking

Yoga Nidra & Sound Bath

Closing Saturday with Yoga Nidra was a perfect design.

Yoga Nidra — often called yogic sleep — guides practitioners into the hypnagogic state between waking and sleeping. Consciousness remains, but the body enters a depth of relaxation that research suggests is profoundly restorative. Some practitioners say 45 minutes of Yoga Nidra is neurologically equivalent to several hours of sleep.

The sound bath that followed used crystal singing bowls and other instruments to create subtle, sustained vibration that move through the body. I know that sounds esoteric. What I can tell you experientially is that it’s surprisingly physical. You feel it in your chest, your skull, your sternum. It’s less “ambient music” and more “your cells are being addressed.”

🧠 Biohacker translation: deliberate parasympathetic activation. Structured recovery. This one I didn’t need convincing on.

Sunday, May 24 — Integration & Closing

Aquarian Sadhana

Let me set the scene: 5am. Still dark. The Hill Country quiet in that specific way it gets before sunrise.

Sadhana means daily spiritual practice — and the Aquarian Sadhana is a specific morning practice in the Kundalini tradition. And here’s a detail worth noting: despite the name, this has nothing to do with water. The “Aquarian” refers to the Age of Aquarius — the astrological era we’re said to be moving into, characterized by consciousness, community, and individual sovereignty. (Not to be confused with the loose movement of Sovereign Citizenship. Totally different.)

The Aquarian Sadhana includes a specific sequence of mantras, kriyas, and meditations intended to align the practitioner with the qualities of this emerging era.

We began around 5am and practiced through sunrise — approximately three hours. The event consisted of 3 main parts:

🎯 Recitation of the Japji Sahub — The Japji Sahub is a 40 stanza Sikh prayer considered sacred in the Sikh tradition. It appears at the very beginning of the Guru Granth Sahib (the Sikh holy scripture), and it was written by Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism. It’s often seen as the essence or foundation of Sikh teachings. 🎯 A Kundalini Kriya followed by Gong Relaxation 🎯 The Aquarian Sadhana: The chanting, or listening to, of (7) morning mantras for their energetic effects.

1. Long Ek Ong Kar (Adi Shakti Mantra) — 7 minutes Ek Ong Kar, Sat Nam, Siri Wahe Guru “The Creator and all creation are one. This is our True Identity. The ecstasy of this wisdom is beyond words.”

This mantra initiates the Kundalini, establishing the relationship between your soul and the Universal Soul. It opens all the chakras. It’s chanted in a specific 2½ breath cycle, pulling up on the root lock — which means it’s physically engaging, not just vocal. This is the ignition sequence. Everything that follows builds on the energetic state this one creates.

2. Wah Yantee — 7 minutes Wah Yantee, Kar Yantee, Jagat Ut Patee, Aadak It Waha, Brahmaday Traysha Guru, It Wahe Guru “Great Macroself, Creative Self. All that is creative through time, all that is the Great One. Three aspects of God: Brahma, Vishnu, Mahesh. That is Wahe Guru.”

This mantra opens intuition. Said to be one of the oldest mantras in existence — attributed to the sage Patanjali. Where the first mantra opens the chakras, this one begins tuning the intuitive mind. Think of it as calibrating your internal compass before the day begins.

3. Mul Mantra — 7 minutes Ek Ong Kar, Sat Nam, Kartaa Purakh, Nirbhao, Nirvair, Akaal Moorat, Ajoonee, Saibhang, Gur Prasaad, Jap, Aad Such, Jugaad Such, Hai Bhee Such, Naanak Hosee Bhee Such “One Creator. Truth is His name. Doer of everything. Fearless. Without hatred. Undying. Unborn. Self-illumined. By Guru’s grace. Meditate! True in the beginning. True throughout the ages. True even now. Nanak says — Truth shall ever be.”

This mantra gives an experience of the depth and consciousness of your soul. It eradicates deep, longstanding pain and sorrow, and expands creativity while projecting you into action aligned with your destiny. It’s considered the root mantra of the entire tradition — the foundational statement of reality from which all other mantras branch.

4. Sat Siri, Siri Akal (Mantra for the Aquarian Age) — 7 minutes Sat Siri, Siri Akaal, Siri Akaal, Mahaa Akaal, Mahaa Akaal, Sat Nam, Akaal Moorat, Wahe Guru “Great Truth, Great Undying, Great Undying, Great Deathless, Great Deathless, Truth is His Name, Deathless Image of God, Ecstasy of God.”

With this mantra we declare that we are timeless, deathless beings, and it promotes victory in all aspects of life. This is the mantra most specifically tied to the Aquarian Age itself — the declaration that consciousness transcends the physical and temporal. By the fourth mantra, the room tends to be in a noticeably altered state. This one deepens it.

5. Rakhe Rakhan Har (Protective Mantra) — 7 minutes Rakhay Rakhanhaar Aap Ubaariun, Gur Kee Pairee Paa-eh Kaaj Savaariun… “God, the Protector, takes care of us. Having placed our feet on the Guru’s path, all affairs are resolved…”

This is a mantra of protection against all negative forces, inner and outer, which are blocking us from moving on our true path. After four mantras of expansion and declaration, this one wraps a protective energetic field around the practice. It’s both shield and anchor.

6. Wahe Guru Wahe Jio — 22 minutes Wha-Hay Guroo, Wha-Hay Guroo, Wha-Hay Guroo, Wha-Hay Jeeo “Ecstasy of God, Ecstasy of God, Ecstasy of God, Ecstasy of my Soul.”

This mantra initiates the state of bliss or ecstasy. It is chanted for 22 minutes in a specific seated posture known as Vir Asan. The 22 minutes is intentional and non-negotiable in the tradition — it takes that long for the mantra to move through its full neurological effect. This is the longest and most intense of the seven, and the one most likely to produce the physical and emotional experiences people describe as transformational.

7. Guru Ram Das Chant — 5 minutes Guru Guru Wahe Guru, Guru Ram Das Guru “Wise, Wise is the One who serves Infinity. Wise is Guru Ram Das, who serves Infinity.”

With the Guru Ram Das chant, praise is given to Guru Ram Das. It is one of humility, opening the heart to effortlessly radiate universal love. This is the closing mantra — a soft landing after the intensity of what preceded it. Where mantra six is peak intensity, mantra seven is integration and surrender.

The Sadhana traditionally closes with the singing of Long Time Sun — a Scottish folk song that Yogi Bhajan adopted as the closing prayer for all Kundalini gatherings, which is its own delightfully unexpected detail. 🙏

The total active chanting time: approximately 62 minutes — but the full Aquarian Sadhana including the preceding kriya, warm-up, and closing typically runs the full 2.5 to 3 hours.

I’ll be honest: three hours of a pre-dawn practice is not for the faint of heart. But there is something that happens as you witness the gradual sunrise over that duration practice. In all honesty though, I fell asleep sometime between the 5th and 6th mantra and woke during the closing. Gotta say though, the world does look and feel slightly different. And, for me, energetically there were definately after-effects. You’re definately more open and your light is brighter, more radiant than it was before.

Totally worth sleeping overnight in the studio to make sure I made it on time..

Brunch

Mid-morning brunch after Sadhana. Vegan. Genuinely appreciated at that point. And have I mentioned the coffee? Muy delicioso.😄

Tantric Numerology Workshop

Here’s where I put on my “stay curious, stay open” hat.

Tantric Numerology — rooted in the Kundalini tradition — uses your birth date to generate a profile across several of the 10 Bodies, illuminating bodies of strengths, gifts, and challenge. It’s a framework, not a fortune, but it provides a starting point for focus.

I approach this the same way I approach any interpretive system — with calibrated curiosity. I’ve seen enough in this practice to know that dismissing something because it doesn’t fit a PubMed framework is its own kind of intellectual laziness.

Getting your own numbers in hand — seeing yourself mapped against this framework — is a different experience than learning about the system conceptually. It gives you something to actually work with.

I’ll be sitting with mine for a while..

Remember, sometimes the data isn’t in the database yet..

Closing Ceremony & Departure

Here’s where things got personal in a very specific way. We were answering questions like:

🤷🏼 What did I open to this weekend? 🤷🏼 What am I releasing and leaving behind? 🤷🏼 What am I welcoming in?

What opened on Friday with intention closed on Sunday with acknowledgment. The container that Natalia and her team had built for the weekend was held with care from start to finish — and that’s not a small thing. The quality of a retreat is largely a function of the quality of its facilitation.

Embodied Radiance delivered.

What I’m Taking Home

A few things are landing clearly as I think about this on the drive back:

🧘 The Radiant Body concept is going to stick. Not as spiritual vocabulary — as a practical question I’ll keep asking myself: Am I showing up fully here, or am I dimming?

❄️ The hydrotherapy protocol was the surprise of the weekend. Hot/cold contrast with intentional breathwork is something I’m bringing home and building more into my regular practice.

🥩 Protein strategy at retreats is a real consideration. If you’re metabolically intentional, plan for it. Don’t assume the food will support your targets even if you clearly disclose ahead of time.

🌅 Three hours of pre-dawn practice before sunrise is a legitimate experience. I don’t know how else to say it. Put it on the list.

🔢 My Ayurvedic Numerology results gave me something specific to work with. The framework is worth exploring if you’re in this space.

Final Thought

I came out here as a biohacker with a yoga practice.

I’m leaving as someone who’s been reminded — again — that the most interesting optimization isn’t in the stack, or the data, or the protocol.

It’s in the quality of presence you bring to your own life.

The Radiant Body isn’t built in a lab.

It’s built in studios and on yoga mats like the ones we shared this weekend.

Sat Nam 🙏

Embodied Radiance Retreat — Lotus Ranch, Wimberley, Texas. May 22–24, 2026. Hosted by Natalia Fernandez. Breathwork & kriya sessions led by Kelly and Jessica. Special cameo appearance by Gurudahn. 😁

THANK YOU so much for your time; I hope you enjoyed this article!

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