you know most of our students almost all of our students are japanese people
and so up until about the beginning of the coronavirus we were having pretty many courses up there
and i invite teachers from america to come who are more advanced than i am
in certain areas of yoga or specialists
HAR house is the sister building to the yoga retreat found further up the mountain
it serves as the base of operation for Sada's family's efforts to bring kundalini yoga to nara japan
nestled along the seemingly endless steps to hozanji temple
it's accessible by road or cable car unlike further up the mountain where cable car becomes your only option
and where our journey begins for getting to the retreat
all right cool facts about the cable car
it's owned by Kintetsu cable line
and they first made it in 1928 and then they built this theme park up at the top of the hill
and in the year 2000 they then switched out the more orthodox cars to replace them with these super cutesy ones
when i first came i couldn't understand it
but now we understand the link
and it increases as you go up the hill this one's a cat and a dog
and they bark when they pass each other
except on the next level it gets even cuter and it's like a princess car
amazing
but how does someone come into owning such a place as this mountain hideaway
furthermore how do they arrive with the goal to have it become a spiritual retreat and just not another b and b
the answer to that finds SADA living through one of japan's worst natural disasters
the kobe earthquake happened a couple years later
you know there was like a quarter million buildings were destroyed in a KOBE area
and six thousand people were died and we were living right in the middle of that area
and we spent a few months there trying to do save a health service in the area and you know
helping out doing this
serving food and then we didn't have a very good place to live because it was so dirt dirty and dusty everywhere
you know and the trucks were rebuilding and you know you see a building like a five-story building just boop there's only two stories
you know it's like oh that's where i used to teach you know
after about three months we were invited to come over to Icoma to live in this retreat center
for a period of time
and it just happened during that period of time my wife got pregnant and stayed longer and the
people were very kind and said you know we don't use it much you can go ahead and stay here longer
and eventually it turned out that we we bought it from them over a period of
of a number of years
you know owner financed contract
As a place of healing SADA requests that his guests adopt a vegetarian diet while they attend the retreat as well as not drink or smoke
in this way it helps many people recover their health
if that were not a deeply satisfying enough connection to have with the location
for SADA it runs even deeper
with the home in its way helping his daughter Amrita come into this world
this is where she was born
right oh wow right now
it was
december 25th and the contraction started usually just after the last cable car
there was no possibility to walk down that path and go to the hospital
so we ended up being here and it took like 33 hours
wow but basically because it was in the bath she was very relaxed
comfortable and it just took a long time yeah and then she came out
interesting story was it you know i looked at my watch it's 4 17 in the morning the second night
now 4 17 that's my birthday here for seven hours
i don't know what that means a great numerology specialist that's just cute you know something
that we have to share and i said wow that's a great present for me that's amazing
as sada showed us around the property it was striking to see just what great shape
everything was in
moreover shocking to hear just how old the building actually was and what lengths sada and his family had gone through over the years
to not only restore its condition when they took possession
but also to improve upon its design
it took us about eight to ten years to pay the place off
and then we started really working on it
our goal was
to make it a really active uh retreat center
because there's absolutely nothing like it around
so close to osaka and kyoto and nara
this is my first
one of my first goals dreams was to build a deck out here
it was a sloping metal roof before you know it was very hard to use
so this is our our yoga yoga house
our event space you could say
we had some music concerts here and some yoga and some zen meditation groups
and some martial arts groups
and no insulation wall so we put insulation in the floor the walls the ceiling
they made it really different
i think about it mean 26 years a long time you know so get stuff done but
i think about how this place the work you've got then i said how did it happen where did the money come from who did it
i just it's really hard to imagine
you know we had uh we had the first generation was a carpet here
and it was those holes in the floor it was so rotten and
pillows don't step here don't step here you know
and bamboo coming through the walls
and then we put uh we got some free tatami from some place went out of business
so we carried all of the TATAMI up here like 50 TATAMIs mostly on the cable car but and then
we you know still had quite a journey and there was tommy in here for 10 years
after 26 years of ownership it seems there's not an inch of the retreat that hasn't been impacted positively
in some way by sata's family
a truly monumental accomplishment when you consider the difficulty of transferring any kind of materials to such a remote place
the effort shows and i can now say from experience what a wonderful and soothing environment to spend your time
in this retreat is designed to be vegetarian
so we brought some nice vegetables from the local vegetable shops
and SADA the owner gave us some nice fresh potatoes that were picked this morning by his daughter
at an organic farm
i'm really looking forward to putting them in a dish
over here we've got some nice vegetables of like different colors
we're gonna put them together make some nice dishes for tonight
for us to enjoy
and in the evening just outside of this kitchen just outside the window there's a fire pit we'll build up a bonfire
we'll grill some vegetables over there as well
really looking forward to it
i'm really excited i'm gonna put some nice spices and stuff
all right it's gonna be epic
yay
let's do it
seeing jimi hendrix play seven times live surviving polio living in an ashram for 17 years
starting an import export business for cars during japan's bubble period
these are just a few of the incredible details of SADA life left out of this video
he has so many
it is clear within moments of hearing him speak that his experience has found him an active participant in some of humanity's most pivotal moments in modern history
if Sada were to borrow from the wisdom of bruce lee
it would no doubt include do not pray for an easy life pray for the strength to endure a difficult one
but i'd add to that
an awesome one as well
thanks for watching