At Anandmaya Retreat, we are honored to host a daily one-day self-defense workshop guided by Guru Suraj, a teacher whose practice is rooted in ancestral memory, lived experience, and decades of disciplined martial training.
This is not a performance-based martial arts class. It is a practical, embodied exploration of how the body moves, perceives space, and responds with clarity.
Meet the Teacher: Guru Suraj
Guru Suraj brings 35 years of martial arts experience, shaped across cultures and continents. His journey spans Las Vegas, Thailand, and Cambodia, where he trained and refined applied combat systems grounded in reality rather than display.
His background includes pre-classical Kalaripayattu applied from ancestral memory, Indo-Chinese martial arts, and a deep study of ancient yoga practices and functional movement exercises. Together, these streams form a teaching that is precise, grounded, and experiential.
For Guru Suraj, martial arts are not about aggression or dominance. They are about awareness, direction, and understanding one’s own structure in relation to space and others.
What You Receive in One Day
This one-day foundational workshop, conducted daily, is designed to create immediate shifts in awareness and movement.
Mobility and Stability
The session begins with intelligent mobility work that restores natural movement while building structural stability. The emphasis is on efficiency, balance, and ease rather than force.
Body Awareness and Personal Measurement
A key aspect of the training is learning the measurements of your own body. From fingertips to toes, extremity to extremity, you begin to understand reach, balance, and proportion.
As Guru Suraj teaches, knowing yourself is knowing others. When you know your own dimensions, your responses become instinctive and accurate.
Spatial and Directional Awareness
Participants experience a clear improvement in directional and spatial awareness in the very first session. You learn how to orient yourself, read space, and move with intention rather than reaction.
This awareness naturally changes how you walk, turn, stand, and respond in everyday life.
Understanding Angles
Angles are central to movement, safety, and self-defense. Through simple and practical exploration, you learn how angles affect balance, reach, and escape, allowing you to move out of the way instead of meeting force directly.
Practical Self-Defense Foundations
The workshop includes basic, realistic self-defense movements designed to help you disengage, create space, and protect yourself. These movements are adaptable, intuitive, and aligned with your natural body mechanics.
From Foundation to Personal Practice
As participants move through the workshop, clarity naturally arises about what interests them most, whether movement, awareness, self-defense, or deeper body intelligence.
Based on this, customized classes are offered to address individual goals and needs, allowing the practice to deepen organically.
Why This Work Belongs in Rishikesh
Known globally as a center for yoga and inner inquiry, Rishikesh offers the perfect ground for this work. This workshop brings awareness into motion, bridging contemplative traditions with practical embodiment.
Here, self-defense becomes an expression of presence, alignment, and intelligence, not fear.
Daily One-Day Self-Defense Workshop
📍 Anandmaya Retreat, Rishikesh
🕒 Format: One-day foundational session (daily)
🧭 Focus: Mobility, spatial awareness, angles, and practical self-defense
Come with curiosity. Leave with clarity, direction, and a deeper understanding of your body in space.
