A new dedicated retreat centre has opened in Indonesia, built around a simple idea: a retreat should actually give people the space to retreat.
Ocean Mantra Village is not a resort with yoga added to the schedule. Its entire environment — from the location and daily programme to the absence of neighbours, crowds and passing traffic — has been shaped around slowing down, restoring energy and creating enough distance from everyday life for a genuine reset.
Yoga, meditation and underwater meditation rooted in freediving form the core of the daily programme, led by experienced teachers and supported by a setting that does much of the work itself: a vast protected bay, two virtually empty swimmable beaches, a living coral reef and a 3.5-hectare coastal property with just 24 ocean-facing glamping rooms and bungalows.
When “off the beaten track” actually means it
“Beyond Bali.” “Hidden Indonesia.” “Off the beaten track.”
The travel industry uses these phrases constantly. Ocean Mantra Village asks a more literal question: what does off the beaten track look like when there really was no track?
Before Ocean Mantra was built, this stretch of East Sumbawa remained untouched by tourism and was genuinely difficult to access. There was no road leading to the site, and the project had to create access and develop its own solutions for electricity and water before a retreat could exist there at all.
Today, guests can leave Bali in the morning, take a direct flight of around one hour to Bima and arrive at Ocean Mantra in time for lunch — in a place that many Bali residents, including long-term expatriates, still do not know exists.
The journey is easy. The sense of distance is real.
Space to stop being busy
For Ocean Mantra, remoteness alone was never the product. The aim was to use that distance to create a retreat experience that is increasingly difficult to find in destinations where wellness has become part of conventional resort entertainment.
The daily rhythm moves between sunrise meditation, active and restorative yoga, underwater meditation, meals and time in or beside the ocean. The programme is extensive, but guests are not expected to fill every hour. Its purpose is not to keep people occupied, but to create enough structure and space for them to stop being occupied.
Accommodation, three buffet meals a day, the full daily programme and equipment for included water activities are combined within one all-inclusive stay, allowing guests to settle into the experience without repeatedly choosing, booking and organising what comes next.
The centre is reserved for resident guests, with no day visitors, neighbouring hotels or beach clubs around the property.
The remoteness is also literal in another sense: there is no mobile signal at Ocean Mantra. Rather than trying to override the character of the place, the founders chose to preserve it. Digital detox is treated as part of a genuine reset, so Starlink Wi-Fi is available in the restaurant while guest rooms remain offline.
The buffet is served three times a day, with a predominantly vegetarian menu complemented by local seafood.
Meditation beneath the surface
Underwater meditation is one of the defining practices of Ocean Mantra Village. Drawing on freediving principles, sessions focus on relaxation, breath awareness and stillness rather than depth or performance.
They take place in the retreat’s pool and calm waters of the bay and are suitable for complete beginners with no previous freediving experience. Guided by experienced instructors, guests gradually explore the relationship between breath, attention and the underwater environment in a setting where conversation, screens and most external stimulation naturally disappear.
The protected geography of the bay was one of the main reasons the founders chose the location. Rather than looking for surf or a busy beach destination, they wanted calm, swimmable water that could support daily ocean practice and allow guests to enter the sea directly from the retreat.
Where the night sky continues underwater
One of the most distinctive spaces at Ocean Mantra is its infinity pool, built in the spiral form of a nautilus as an extension of the retreat’s underwater practices.
A dedicated underwater acoustic system allows music to be experienced beneath the surface. Across the bottom, a constellation of lights recreates the pattern of the stars visible in the night sky directly above Ocean Mantra.
During evening Night Pool Magic sessions, guests can float or descend beneath the surface with sound travelling through the water and a second “night sky” below them, while the real stars remain overhead.
Leaving room for the landscape
Ocean Mantra Village features 12 glamping rooms and 12 air-conditioned bungalows, all facing the ocean, together with a cliffside yoga shala, the nautilus-shaped infinity pool, restaurant and direct access to the coastline.
The relatively small number of rooms across the site was intentional. Instead of concentrating the guest experience around buildings and facilities, the property leaves much of its identity to the surrounding landscape — the bay, cliffs, reef and views towards the volcanic island of Sangeang.
The search for the right location took several years and more than ten Indonesian islands before the founders arrived in East Sumbawa. What they found was not simply another undeveloped beach, but a landscape with the degree of isolation the concept required — and almost none of the infrastructure needed to build there.
Seclusion without the expedition
Direct flights connect Bali with Bima in approximately one hour, followed by a road transfer of around two hours to Ocean Mantra Village.
It creates an unusual combination for Indonesia: genuine seclusion without a complicated journey. Guests can move from Bali to a part of the country that still feels largely outside the established tourism circuit within the same morning — without sacrificing the sense of separation that gives a retreat its purpose.