Small note: I wrote this when I was planning to host a retreat in Tenerife. Whilst this is something I would still like to do when longer distance travel is easier to plan reliably, the France 2022 retreat is actually going to be very eco-friendly, as attendees from the UK and the Netherlands (where most of my students are based) can very easily reach the venue via train, or by car-pooling. A lot of my concerns about running the Tenerife retreat were (and are) about the contradiction of wanting to promote a sustainable and eco-friendly retreat, whilst running the retreat in a venue that all but required air travel. It’s not a contradiction I have a perfect answer to, but at least for the France retreat this particular con and contradiction is considerably reduced!
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I must admit, I was always someone who cringed a little at the idea of a retreat. Even once I had started training as a teacher, something about the phrasing made me rather embarrassed. It sounded a little ‘woo’ to me. It was not until I was really reaching breaking point — at a time when I was nearing the end of my first teacher training, and gearing up for university exams, and also had a relationship that was gasping its last breaths — that I decided that I really did want to get away from everything for a bit.
I was fortunate to find a very affordable yoga retreat, offered by Yoga Evolution in Portugal. I was not sure what I would get, which was maybe a good thing as I went in with few expectations. What I got was a invigorating two week experience in a beautiful place, with a interesting group of people from different walks of life. My yoga practice developed of course — it had to with two long practices each day — but I also was able to get a little mental space and perspective. Talking to a range of people that you would not have otherwise met can be both liberating and cathartic. It was not a luxury or always comfortable experience, but then that was not what I had been looking for.
The benefits of yoga retreats are much touted: progress your practice, shape-up, get mental calm, travel the world . . . . all in only 6 days! It is easy for one’s cynicism to be triggered by the very exaggerated claims that are sometimes thrown around. After all, retreats are usually only a week or two — can anything really change fundamentally in that period of time?
Actually sometimes I think they can — or at least things can be set in motion which do have a lasting impact. If you have never traveled solo before, for example, the act of going abroad on your own can really shift how you perceive your own capability and independence. Experiencing how much better daily yoga practice makes you feel can be a huge motivational boost for practicing more frequently at home. As a personal example, when I first went on that first retreat, I was 21 and had never encountered vegan food before. I was already eating less meat, but vegan food was still just something I had heard people joke about. The food on that retreat had a genuine lasting impact on my perception of cooking without animal products. Although I’m a pescetarian, not a vegan, I do eat about 90% vegan nowadays when I cook for myself — something which would have been unthinkable to my 21 year old self.
So, whilst I would say no one week will change your life immediately, you can plant seeds on a retreat which might grow into enduring changes of habit, if they are nurtured. Yes, that is a very yoga-teacher sentence, but I stand by it.
Now, onto the thorny stuff. The controversies around yoga retreats which are increasingly impossible to avoid. One: the environmental impact of yoga tourism. Two: the apparent contradiction of ‘retreating’ to practice yoga, when so much of yoga is about learning that you already have everything you need, whatever your daily duties are.
Yoga tourism offers a real dilemma whereby the relatively privileged can afford to escape to beautiful areas of the Earth, at great environmental cost (long-haul flights, expensive equipment etc). This is a difficult one and I admit I had a lot of mental back and forth with myself about hosting a retreat on Tenerife — an island which is very easy to reach by plane, and very time-consuming to reach by train and boat. Ultimately I made a decision which could certainly be argued to be selfish, in that the retreat location is one immensely dear to my heart, as the venue for the first place I traveled to independently age 18. I am doing everything possible to minimise the environmental impact, and to maximise the carbon offset, but yes - it is troublesome. It is unlikely I will do another retreat which is not accessible by train from Europe in the future, but it certainly preys on my mind. Concerns about the repercussions of yoga tourism are entirely valid and part of a larger reckoning that will have to take place within the community — unless air travel can progress to sustainability.
Which leads onto whether it is truly necessary to get away at all. If yoga tells us that we already have all we needs within ourselves, and if modern day sound psychology tells us that running away from our problems will not make them go away, then are retreats really just a distraction and an indulgence, rather than a cure? The first point (the yoga teachings) is part of a much wider web of philosophy and tradition which I am not going to attempt to tackle in this blog, but will develop later. I will touch on the second point now — running away from our problems.
When I first went on a retreat, I was not consciously running away from anything (who ever thinks ‘I am running away from my problems today’?). However, on some level, that is certainly what I was doing, and it could be argued that that was a ‘coping mechanism’, or something else which sounds rather disparaging. But, as I have said, during those two weeks away I gained new knowledge, I regained some sense of self that was being stripped away by a unhelpful partner, and I gained some distance and perspective .
In a perfectly ordered life, indeed, we would always be able to step away mentally, and recognise those things in ours lives which are not serving us, and deal with it appropriately. But almost no one — yoga teacher or not — is perfectly ordered in mind and body. Which is probably for the best (how dull we would all be). Our lives are not perfect, even the best and most contented ones are often messy and tangled and hectic. Which brings me full circle, to another phrase I cringed away from until a year or two ago. Self care. It is very easy to get so wrapped up in the routines and patterns of our lives that we forget to take a step back and take care of ourselves.
Is a yoga retreat the only route to self care? Of course not. Maybe it’s a weekend with your family. Maybe it’s a weekend of deciding to firmly avoid your family. Maybe it’s a cupcake. And yes, maybe it’s a yoga retreat. Is it going to solve all your problems? Of course not. Self care is not a one stop fix. But you might just have a really lovely time and meet some lovely people.
And as a bonus, you might even get some mental space and perspective thrown in.
Update: the Tenerife retreat is currently on hold until long-distance travel is easier to plan. The France 2022 yoga holiday retreat is currently open for booking, with more information available here.
