Four days that move at the pace you need.
Here is everything that happens, and everything that does not. Three things are fixed; the rest of each day is yours to spend however you like.
Four days, because three weeks off is not a thing most people have.
Most retreats along this coast run five, six or seven nights. There is a reason for that, and if you have the time, they are worth it.
This one is four days and three nights because that fits into a long weekend. You can fly out on a Thursday and be back at your desk on Monday having genuinely stopped, rather than spending the first two days deciding whether you have earned it.
It is long enough for the second morning to feel different from the first. That is the part that matters, and it arrives sooner than people expect.
Three things are fixed. Everything else is yours.
Yoga
Slow and unhurried, while it is still cool. Long holds, plenty of time between shapes, and nobody counting you down.
Mats, blocks and straps are there if you want them. Come as you are: nobody is checking what you can do, and there is no level you need to be at.
If you have never been to a class, this is a reasonable place to start. If you practise every day, it will feel like a change of pace rather than a step back.
Breathwork
You lie down and breathe in a particular pattern for a while, guided out loud the whole way through. Nothing to get right and nothing to learn first.
It is the session people end up talking about at dinner, and the one most likely to surprise you. The body reacts to it more than you would expect from something this simple.
You can stop at any point and simply lie there instead. That is a normal thing to do and it happens in every group.
Sound therapy
Bowls, gongs and a few instruments you will not recognise, played close enough that you feel them as much as hear them.
You do nothing at all. You lie down, you are covered with a blanket, and it goes on for the best part of an hour in the quietest part of the day.
Most people sleep unusually well afterwards. Some people sleep during it, which is fine, and nobody is woken up.
Four days, and what is in them.
Nothing here is compulsory. Sleep through a morning and go down to the water instead, and nobody will mention it at lunch.
Arrive
Land, drop your bags, breathe. An easy evening flow and dinner together, and nothing else asked of you.
Open
Yoga while it is still cool, then the afternoon is yours. Sound therapy once it is dark.
Deepen
Breathwork in the morning. This is the one people remember. A slow afternoon, and a closing circle at night.
Leave
A last stretch by the water and a long breakfast. No rush at anyone to the airport.
What is included, what it costs, and how to hold a place.
All three live on one page, written out plainly, with no form to fill in before you are allowed to read them.
- One number for the four days, quoted with your dates.
- A small group, and one house for the whole of it.
- Nothing is payable to ask, and a person answers.
You will know who is teaching before you are asked for anything.
The teachers for these dates are being confirmed now. This is exactly what you will be told about each of them, before any money is mentioned.
-
What they lead
Which practice is theirs, and which sessions across the four days they are actually in the room for.
-
Where they trained
The school, the lineage and the certification, written out, not implied by a photograph in a nice room.
-
Years teaching
How long they have been doing this, as a number. Anyone who will not give you one is telling you something.
Tell us when you can go.
Send the dates you are thinking of and everything comes back in writing: the number, what is in it, and what is not.