Mevlana Retreat – in Vienna (AT)
Friday 27 November - Sunday 29 November 2026
With Ilyas Klawatsch & Lizelot de Stigter
Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi is one of the most renowned Sufi figures in history. He expressed and transmitted his spiritual knowledge primarily through poetry, music, and dance.
At the heart of his teachings are love, tolerance, faith, and hope. He composed thousands of verses, inspired the Sufi path of the Mevlevi Order, and gave the Sema — the whirling ceremony — its distinctive spiritual form.
During this retreat, we will explore the unique meaning Rumi holds for our path and the extraordinary wisdom he left behind.
To truly enter into his teachings, however, requires a particular inner attitude — and a special key that can open the door to this universe of beauty, bliss, and love (Aşk).
program
Friday 27 November
18:00 – 22:00h
Saturday, 28 November
09:00–12:00h & 14:00–17:00h
Mevlana — history, stories, prayers & dhikr
Sunday, 29 November
09:00–12:00h
Mevlevi Adab & Practices
Price: Early Bird — €130 (valid until 3 November) | Regular Price — €160
Included: retreat fee, Sema, and tea.
Location: Bezirksmuseum Wieden | Klagbaumgasse 4 | Wien
Info & registration: bengusu@gmx.net
Gerald Ilyas Klawatsch
Musician, author, music therapist, and teacher in the tradition of Tasavvuf (Sufism).
“My life’s path has been deeply shaped by the privilege of spending approximately twenty-three years in close connection with Dr. Rahmi Oruç Güvenç.”
After completing his studies, Gerald Ilyas Klawatsch taught in the fields of instrumental pedagogy, music therapy, ethnotherapy, art and traditional healing practices, as well as in the tradition of Tasavvuf.
As a music therapist, his clinical work has focused primarily on oncology, pediatrics, and neurology.
In 2008, he founded the Center for Traditional Science and Ethnotherapy, followed in 2017 by the international community Bengüsu Gild.
Lizelot de Stigter is a contemporary Sufi teacher.
Her Sufi path began at the age of fourteen, when she discovered Rumi and came to regard him as her spiritual guide. At the age of twenty-four, she was initiated into a Persian Sufi order. Through her Sufi master, Dr. Javad Nurbakhsh, she received transmissions that prepared her to embody and transmit the alchemical dimension of Sufism and the path of Enlightenment.
The seeds she received during those years have since grown into an original path of inner development, deeply rooted in the Sufi lineage and tradition, yet translated into a form that speaks to our present time and to the current stage of human development.
She also developed her own movement-based body of work, MIU – Moving into Unity, as a method for arriving at a deeply lived and felt realization, and for bringing the knowledge of the soul into embodied experience.
