We started this because we needed it.
Pragalbha Retreat Co. was founded by Padmashree C Jain and Abhilash S — two people who each arrived here through yoga and through creative work, and who share a conviction that the world needs more quiet, more depth, and more spaces to simply be.
Two founders, a shared conviction.
One came to this through teaching, the other through travel and film. Both arrived at the same idea about how a week should feel.
Padmashree C Jain
A fashion designer, an actor and a model who found her way to yoga — and has never kept any of it in separate rooms.
She trained in Rishikesh, with people who had given their whole lives to the practice. She moves between a film set, a studio and a yoga mat, and is the same person in all three.
Abhilash S
An actor, an artist and a practitioner of yoga who has spent a lot of his life travelling and paying attention while doing it.
For him yoga is not a discipline you keep in one room — it goes onto film sets and mountain trails with him. That eye is what shapes how a retreat feels to be inside of.
Live with awareness.
Most of what gets called wellness is a louder version of the same thing. More content. More stimulation. More optimisation of an already overstimulated body.
We are betting on the opposite. We are betting on quiet, on long meals, on long walks, on the strange uneventfulness of three days with nothing to scroll. We are betting that this — done well, with care — is one of the most important things a person can give themselves in 2026.
Pragalbhā (प्रगल्भा) is Sanskrit for bold, self-assured, fully at ease with yourself — from pra, forward, and galbh, to dare. One who steps forward. That is what we hope you leave with. Not blissed-out, not transformed in any cinematic way. Just — sure of yourself.
How we got here.
Four years, four chapters, no pivots. Just a slow widening of who we hold and where.
Padmashree C Jain and Abhilash S deepen their teaching at their Sahakar Nagar studio in Bengaluru, offering popular general classes and yoga teacher training programs to a loyal following.
Hearing our studio students' need for a true escape, we hosted our first quiet retreat—blending yoga, long meals, and plenty of space to just hang out in nature.
We began taking students out of Bengaluru for short residential stays — the same teaching, given room to breathe over several days rather than an hour.
Our first residential retreats at Xavier's in Anjuna — days built around yoga, breath, meditation, philosophy, sound and rest — while our roots stay firmly in the Bangalore studio.
Six things we keep coming back to — often the only six.
Quiet is a verb
Silence is not the absence of sound. It is something a body learns to do, and unlearns when life gets loud.
The land does the work
We pick places that have been doing this for thousands of years — forests, coastlines, river bends. We add very little.
Cooking matters
We cook on every retreat. From scratch. The kitchen is the second living room. Most insights have happened there.
Small or it doesn't work
Twelve is our ceiling. Past that, the container leaks. Eight is the number we like best.
Boredom is a feature
We protect long, unscheduled afternoons. Boredom is the doorway to almost everything you came here for.
Everyone leaves with a name
By day two, you know everyone's name. By day three, their handwriting. By day five, you've cooked together.
One who steps forward.
From pra — forth, forward — and the root galbh, to dare. Literally, one who steps forward. It means bold, confident, self-assured, and carries with it eloquent, mature, dignified, skilled. As a name today it is usually read simply as confident, or brilliant.
- In poetics
प्रगल्भा नायिका — the pragalbhā nāyikā is the mature, self-possessed heroine, set against the mugdhā, who is naive, and the madhyā, who is somewhere in between.
- In invocation
It is used as an epithet of Durga.
- In practice
It is not a word for someone who has been made quieter. It is a word for someone who has become entirely themselves — and behaves accordingly.
Which is the whole intention. A retreat should not send you home smaller and softer-spoken. It should send you home sure of yourself.
The house in Anjuna.
An open-sided shala, a library to read and sit in, and a garden between them — at Xavier’s in Anjuna, North Goa.
