Yoga retreats are intended to provide you with the services, facilities, activities, therapeutic atmospheres, and qualities to bring serenity, peace of mind and harmony.
Yoga retreat centres have been purpose built to maximise the entire holistic experience. This means the demographic proximity is delicately reflected in the dynamic building structure, architecturally designed to embody the right light proportions, spacious attributes and other specific qualities inherent to the individual proprietor’s imagined ideal setting.
Capturing the subtlety’s is a quality innate to the practice of yoga, for yoga is the union of body, mind, spirit and soul and therefore requires the greatest amount of care to these four fundamental human aspects in order to restore balance and regain harmony. This harmony is often very difficult to maintain in our socially structured society where the opposite values are pursued on a day-to-day basis. Hence, the retreat like atmosphere allows individuals to focus in on regaining this delicate momentum.
Engaging in and committing to a yoga retreat is really an exercise in self valuing. It asks you to take time out from the busyness of your daily commitments and to return to a natural rhythm with nature instead. This rhythm is obtained by introducing daily routines, practices, and rituals into your personal practice. This includes the return to health and vitality through the food choices you make, the exercise choices you practice and the mental stimulation you subject your mind too.
During a yoga retreat you will likely be asked to refrain from the daily toxic intakes of food containing additives and preservatives and instead to begin a course of vegetarian food, fresh fruit and juices and plenty of fresh water.
Yoga retreats are historically renowned for their world class vegetarian cuisine. Often you will find the vegetarian options are delicious, organic, energising and nutritious, and you may even have the option of on-site naturopaths. Naturopaths can offer you advice in relation to eating healthy with raw food and super-foods as well as providing workshops for making gourmet vegetarian cuisine.
Your sleeping pattern will likely be altered as well, instead of waking to an alarm you may begin to wake to the natural rhythms of sunrise and learn to bed early by sunset. This will allow maximum time for you to engage in daily practice of mediation, relaxation, yoga poses, walks either in nature trails or bush settings or along beach shores or secluded mountain tops (depending on where your retreat is located).
Fasting is another option often offered during retreat time. This allows you to get in touch with your bodies natural harmony again by ridding the body of any unwanted toxic residue.
There will likely be other facilities offered on site such as private one-to-one sessions with holistic therapists who provide hands-on care, individual treatment plans and specific therapies and workshops.
Each retreat facility will offer slightly differing variations on their daily routines and structures. However, you can expect to find a morning yoga session where movements and postures are connected to the breath using variable sequences depending on the discipline being taught or followed.
Furthermore, you will notice the immediate benefits of relaxation as your mind begins to relax and your body will tone. The focus is normally set between learning correct alignment (Iyengar method) and a step-by-step approach (vinyasa krama method), which allows novices and experienced students to practice alongside each other with each enjoying the benefits according to their capacity.
The afternoon yoga sessions during a retreat like setting generally use restorative postures to gently open the major joints of the body and to bring peace into the heart and mind. Guidance in pranayama and sitting meditation is also often offered during most routines in retreat settings.