Pitanga is about physical and cultural activities in the light of the yoga of Mother and Sri Aurobindo. Since 1991, its doors are open for Aurovilians and friends, to share their skilled knowledge in this field.

For this reason, Pitanga was built near the centre of Auroville, in Samasti. It counts eight rooms and halls, constructed intimately around a green courtyard.

The centre is for Auroville and its guests. All participants are asked a donation, based on what is needed to keep the non-profit service running. Visitors are advised to check our program from time to time, before they arrive.

Throughout the year, some thirty therapists and teachers offer physical education, as a tool to broaden awareness and openness of the body.

The diversity of courses and workshops is enriched by long term friends of Auroville, from abroad or from India; qualified teachers, who enjoy Pitanga's ambience to work in.

There are also art exhibitions of selected paintings, and performances of music and dance, sometimes by promising artists from India or abroad.
 

Its Brazilian founders named Pitanga after a sweetly flowering bush, said to bring peace and harmony. In Sanskrit, the word means: ‘golden body'. To further illustrate Pitanga's vision, we add the following by Sri Aurobindo and The Mother:

“Perfection is the true aim of all culture, the spiritual and psychic, the mental, the vital - and it must be the aim of our physical culture also. If our seeking is for a total perfection of the being, the physical part of it cannot be left aside; for the body is the material basis, the body is the instrument which we have to use.”

Sri Aurobindo
 

“For this creation to be possible the substance that constitutes man's body must undergo a big change, it must become more receptive to the consciousness and more plastic under its working. These are just the qualities that one can acquire through physical education.”

The Mother