Ṛta Van is TodoForest's first regenerative forest campus — a place where ecological restoration, yoga education, community, and culture grow together.
What Is Ṛta Van
Ṛta Van is being restored into a thriving native forest ecosystem using the Miyawaki method — planting 30,000 to 50,000 native seedlings per hectare, then stepping back and letting the land decide what it becomes.
Within this living forest campus:
How It Works
TodoForest stewards Ṛta Van. Within it, three living systems grow together — each distinct, each essential.
Dakshinamurti
Philosophy · Practice · Education
TodoForest
Steward · Curator · Community
Ṛta Van
The Living Forest Campus
Yoga School
Learning in direct relationship with land, seasons, and practice.
Forest Ecology
Miyawaki reforestation. Native species. Biodiversity. Restoration.
Community Café
Where village meets culture. Slow food, local ingredients, open tables.
The Land
Why Forests
Forests are more than collections of trees. They are the oldest living system on earth — and the most misunderstood.
Ṛta Van exists to explore what becomes possible when ecological regeneration and human development evolve together — not as separate pursuits, but as the same one.
What Forests Do
Regulate waterA healthy forest holds rain in the soil, slows runoff, and replenishes groundwater. The land becomes a sponge.
Build soilDecaying leaf litter creates topsoil. The forest feeds itself. No inputs, no irrigation after year two.
Support biodiversity30 times denser than a conventional plantation. Native species create habitat for insects, birds, and mammals.
Shape human cultureEvery civilisation grew near a forest. Ṛta Van is an act of remembering that relationship.
Located within Ṛta Van
"Yoga as reorientation, not accumulation."
Dakshinamurti Yoga School
The Dakshinamurti approach views yoga as a process of reorientation rather than accumulation. Not more techniques, more certifications, more knowledge — but a fundamental shift in how one inhabits the body, the breath, and the present.
Located within Ṛta Van, the school allows learning to happen in direct relationship with land, seasons, community, and practice. The forest is not the backdrop. It is the classroom.
Explore the School →Gaonfornia
Gaonfornia Café brings together local ingredients, community conversations, slow living, and creative exchange.
More than a café. It is the social heart of Ṛta Van — the place where the forest meets the table, and strangers become part of the same thing.
The Meaning of Ṛta Van
In the Rigveda — composed before civilisations had names — Ṛta appears 390 times.
Not as a deity. Not as a prayer. As a fact.
The silent order beneath the visible world.
The principle by which the sun rises, seasons turn, rivers run, and forests negotiate their own canopy — without instruction.
A Ṛtavan is one who lives in alignment with that order.
The forest is named not for what it is today —
but for what it is becoming.
The Miyawaki Connection
Dr. Akira Miyawaki spent fifty years observing what happens when humans stop interfering with nature. His method: plant native species densely, tend for two years, then step away entirely. The forest negotiates its own hierarchy from there.
He called it ecological restoration. The Rigveda called it Ṛta. They were describing the same thing — three thousand years apart.
Miyawaki gave us the technique. Ṛta gave us the reason.
The Journey
2025
Land secured in South Goa. The riverfront site becomes Ṛta Van. TodoForest established as the steward.
2026
Ṛta Van begins. Miyawaki forest restoration launched — 30,000+ native seedlings planted. Dakshinamurti Yoga School relocates to the land. Gaonfornia Café opens. The first members arrive.
Future
Expansion of biodiversity corridors. Research and education initiatives. Additional forest campuses — each shaped by its own ecology, culture, and community.
Become a Member
Membership at Ṛta Van is not a subscription or a booking. It is a sustained relationship with a living place — and with the people who are building it.
Founding Member
Founding members are present at the beginning — when the trees are still young, the café just opened, and Ṛta Van is still becoming what it will be. There is something irreplaceable about that.
Who This Is For
Not looking for a retreat. Not looking for a resort. Looking for a place that is real, growing, and asks something of them in return.
"The forest does not need your approval to begin. But it would be better with you in it."
Membership begins with a conversation, not a transaction.
Entry is considered carefully. Not everyone will be right for this — and that is fine.
Ṛta Van is the first living forest campus created by TodoForest. As the model evolves, future landscapes may emerge elsewhere — each shaped by its own ecology, culture, and community.
Ṛta Van · South Goa · Est. 2026