Recipes for Retreating

This weekend I was delighted to see my Spring Bank Holiday Yoga Retreat at Erth in Cornwall is featured in Conde Naste Traveller's Best Yoga Retreats for Beginners article. You can take a peak here. 

I feel passionately about creating space for ourselves and our practice regardless of whether we are new to yoga or have practiced for some time. While retreats might seem daunting to beginners they needn't be.

One of the advantages of retreating is having time to take things slowly; longer practices needn't mean 'harder', rather they enable us to explore the vast practices that form 'yoga' (remembering that it stretches far beyond asana / physical poses).

Retreats offer us the gift of space 'around' our practice. Rather than leaping from the mat to our daily duties, there's time for the benefits to permeate more deeply within us. There is time to soak up rest and quietly reflect. It is often in these moments that insights arise, that in stepping back from our lives we reconnect to what is really important to us, the quiet voice of our intuition being more easily heard as the chatter of our mind begins to subside.

Retreats are like carefully crafted recipes; yoga practices are an essential ingredient, but not the only one. Equally as important is time to roam or rest in nature, so that we feel as inspired and supported by the environment we are in as the practices we take. Another is the balance offered between connecting with others and having quiet time for ourselves.

While I can't promise such dramatic results, it was while on my first yoga retreat about 18 years ago that the direction of my life changed. While there I was meant to be considering which marketing diploma I would enroll on and had supervision booked to discuss it on my return. However things began shifting. As space began to open, not just in my body, but in my heart and mind, something deep within me said "no, that is not the path I want to take". It was a voice that normally my mind would have talked down, but here I somehow sensed on a much more visceral level that this voice needed to be listened to - a voice that gradually led me to what I am now grateful to be doing.

If someone told me all those years ago that one day I would be holding space for others while they go on their own journey of retreating, I would never have believed them, but my friend Norman Blair often says "shift happens" (read that again carefully if you need to ;-)