And so up until about the beginning of the coronavirus, we're 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 are specialists.

Hart house is the sister building to the yoga retreat.

Found further up the mountain, it serves as the base of operation for satis family's efforts to bring kundalini yoga to Nara Japan, nestled along the seemingly endless steps to Lausanne Ji 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 nine 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 cuts, the 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 passed each other except on the next level.

It gets even cuter and it's like a princess car.

Amazing six.

Uh huh.

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 cobra area and 6000 people died and we were living right in the middle of that area and we spent a few months they're trying to do save a health service in the area and uh helping out doing this serving food.

And then we didn't have a very good place to live because it was so dirty and dusty everywhere, you know, and the trucks were rebuilding and you see a building like a five story building just there's only two stories, you know, it's like, oh that's where I used to teach.

After about three months, we were invited to come over to e coma to live in this retreat center for a period of time.

And it just happened during that period time.

My wife got pregnant and stayed longer and the people were very kind and said, you know, we don't use it much head and stay here longer.

And eventually it turned out that we, we bought it from them over a period of a number of years, owner financed contract as a place of healing.

Sata 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 sata, it runs even deeper with the home in its way helping his daughter, Emerita come into this world where she was born, December 25 interaction started just after the last cable car.

There was no possibility to walk down that path and go to the hospital.

So We end up being here in 33 hours, but basically because it was in the path, she was very relaxed and comfortable and it just took a long time and then she can interesting story was it?

I looked at my legends for 17 in the morning, the second night for 17.

That's my birthday here for seven.

I don't like that mean numerology specialist.

It's just cute.

You know, something that we have to share.

And I said, wow, that's great present for me.

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 Sata 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 8 - 10 years to pay the place off.

And then we started really working on it.

Our goal was to make it a really active retreat center.

There's absolutely nothing like it around or you can 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 sloping metal roof.

Before you know, it was very hard to use.

So this is our yoga yoga house 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 florida walls, the ceiling.

They made it really different.

I think about 26 years, a long time.

So get stuff done.

But I think about this place, the work you've got, that.

I said how did it happen, where the money coming?

Who did it just, it's really hard to imagine.

You know, we had, 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 and bamboo coming through the walls.

And then we put, We got some free to Tommy from Someplace, went out of business.

So he carried all of the Tommy up here like 15 times, mostly on the cable car.

But And then we, you know, still quite a journey and there was a time 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 Saleh'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 he brought some nice vegetables from the local vegetable shops and saturday owner, give 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 different colors.

We're going to put them together, make some nice dishes for for tonight for us to enjoy.

And in the evening, just outside of this kitchen, just outside the window, there's a fire pit, will build a bonfire, will grill some vegetables over there as well.

We're looking forward to it.

I'm really excited going to put some nice spices and stuff.

It's gonna be epic.

Yeah, 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 Sandra's life left out of this video is so many, it is clear within moments of hearing them speak that his experience has found him an active participant in some of humanity's most pivotal moments in modern history.

If sata 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.

Mhm.

Mhm.