Our Team at BaGua Flow is pleased to become established at Samasati for the Winter of 2012.It will be an exciting Season starting January and continuing through March.

We’d like to share the Samasati Story:

Samasati started with four people passionate about creating a spiritual oasis — an environmentally protected area, a loving, friendly haven where people of all origins and walks of life could come to rest, rejuvenate, and reestablish a healthy connection with nature. The vision started to become reality in December 1994, when 270 acres of the Caribbean rainforest heartland were purchased.

The four founders of Samasati and of its parent company Zorba el Budha S.A originate from Italy and Argentina. Their combined visionary acumen; administrative, marketing and construction skills; depth of experience in yoga, holistic therapies and meditation’s practices; and intense desire to create an energy-filled, protected place for solace and reconnection created a formidable team – a group of people fervently committed to seeing the project to completion.

Samasati quickly became an organism, as opposed to an organization. It started as an idea, a “project,” and from the very beginning Samasati took on a life of its own. It became a living entity growing at its own pace, defining its own rules and creating its own very unique character. We, the initiators, builders, owners and promoters of this wonderful creation, found ourselves as instruments of a power greater than our own capabilities, tools of what wanted to manifest in this remote piece of Caribbean rainforest.

Samasati is a place where ecological awareness has been translated into beauty and sustainability. Samasati lives in balance with nature, sensitive to its cycles and its timing. It is a place where the respect of indigenous cultures and the cooperation with the local community spring from sincere interest and appreciation of human diversity, efforts and evolution.

Samasati right now includes a hotel/resort, the Samasati Nature Retreat, a 150 acre nature reserve, the Samasati Biological Reserve and a land development project, the Samasati Gated Community.

The Sanskrit word “Samasati” was the last word pronounced by the Indian mystic Gautam, The Buddha. It means “Remember you are a Buddha, that you are Godly.”It is an invitation for every man to remember that he has the capacity to attain the highest state of consciousness and to live in harmony with existence.

In 1994 the sum of Samasati was a great idea and 270 acres of raw, unexplored jungle with a stunning ocean view. There were no buildings, electricity, running water or roads.

The first order of business after the land purchase in 1994 was to set up an official headquarters in the capital of Costa Rica, San José, to handle the administrative, financial and legal details. On site at Samasati, construction began soon afterwards. An oxen team carried the timbers of fallen trees out of the property’s forest to build the first structure – the Leela House. No new wood was cut from the forest for the entire construction of this whole place. This is how the construction of Samasati Nature Retreat began. All the buildings that followed the Leela house, the restaurant, the yoga room and the bungalows, were built with wood from the local reforestation programs or from fallen trees. These materials are known as ‘’green wood.’’

The water that supplies Samasati Nature Retreat comes from the property’s sweet water springs. A dam was built on one of the five streams in the property. A generator was the only power’s source until electricity was installed in 1997 (in the nearby village of Puerto Viejo electricity was installed only 8 years earlier). Hiking trails were opened in the forest, and later an entrance office was built (the retreat buildings are located one mile uphill from the entrance) as well as a second yoga studio and a large Jacuzzi overlooking the ocean.

In August 1997, Samasati Nature Retreat’s first guests arrived. Since that time, the hotel/resort/retreat has been operating successfully. It has become well-known in the eco tourism sector and awarded in the sustainability and conservation’s worlds for its consistent environmental effort and for its support of the local community. It has been recognized in the Yoga world as a unique destination for yoga groups and yoga lovers.

A few of our clients really fell in love with the place and wanted to own small parcels of land inside the Samasati’s project.The Samasati Gated Community was recently created.

A few interesting facts about the mission, conceptualization, building, and continued running of Samasati:

* The original name of Samasati was Eco-project Samasati.

* For six months, 52 workers camped on the property and worked to build the entire place. No heavy machinery was used. There was no electricity. We used only generators.

* Gray and black waters are treated with septic tanks – 2 for each building, placed at two different levels. The tanks contain live bacteria so that only cleaned “black water” goes into the ground.

* With a vegetarian restaurant, the bulk of the trash is vegetables and fruits. For about 10 years, we composted all trash using banana leaves. Now, Samasati gives the scrap vegetables and fruits to the neighboring animal farm to help feed the animals.

* The Samasati Team built a 50,000 liter tank to collect rain water from the restaurant roof.

* They created dams in 2 creeks on the property and they pump the water to tanks up the hill. Water comes to the facilities by gravity.

* While they were building the retreat, a team from the Nature Conservancy of Washington DC came to Samasati to conduct a study on the Samasati birds. Every week for 8 months, they came on Thursday and Friday at 3:30 in the morning and stayed until noon. They found 423 different bird species in the forest.

* Samasati did not cut any large trees in construction. They built the Retreat in areas which had been cleared by the previous owner who was living on the land in the 1960s and 1970s. They had grown bananas trees, corn and beans. The Samasati Team cleared the new vegetation and built on these already cleared areas.

* Samasati uses only biological detergents for dishes/laundry/ cleaning/personal cleaning. They never use anything with bleaching agents or harmful chemicals.

* Samasati prohibited hunting in the whole area. In the past 5 years, the forest on the property has filled with animals escaping hunters on other properties. At Samasati they find refuge.

Come experience BaGua Flow at Samasati – - the perfect refuge for mind – body and reinvention.