Planning a Yoga Retreat Part 1: The Teaching

I’m in the days after a long weekend of yoga, surf and slowness in the beautiful North Cornish town of Mawgan Porth, happily exhausted and reflecting on the time we’ve had. After my second retreat here, I thought I would share a little more on my planning process, particularly around the movement and meditation practices that I shared over our 3 days together.

The theme …

If you practise with me, you’ll know I love to build a theme into our practices together. This might come from a particular philosophical text, reading or experience in the body. Most often, it’s a few subtly connected themes rolled into one. This isn’t something that I typically schedule months in advance but rather something that develops from the ways I’ve been practising with my own teachers, through my self practice and from what I’ve been reading recently. However, in preparation for a multi-day practice I’ve found it helpful to have a broad theme in my mind in the time leading up to the event. This has allowed me to gradually structure our practices and collect readings, movements and inspirations over the last 3 months, as well as practice composite parts of our practices in my regular studio classes in London.

For this retreat, I began with a passage from the Radiance Sutras by Lorin Roche, a beautifully poetic contemporary interpretation of the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra.

‘The radiance of space permeates the body

And all directions simultaneously.

Space is always here.

Already here before your noticing of it.

What we call space is a presence.

Permission to exist,

And worlds within which to express.

Without thinking about it,

Without forming mental images,

Rest in this vast expanse,

Friends with infinity.’

This led to my overarching theme of the ‘radiant heart’. Through these practices I hoped to encourage a felt spaciousness in this part of the body, as well as an interconnectedness with the world, or collective heart. With this in mind I started to consider how we could build movement into the spaces closest to the heart - the ribs, the lungs, the shoulders. I also considered how we might sense into our organ awareness, and the challenges we might meet here (how often do we really consider how your organs might feel?). I took inspiration from Five Element systems and considered the meridian lines associated with the organ of the heart and featured a great focus on the energetic experience of the hands, which are often considered as messengers of the heart itself within Qigong practices.

I was also influenced by something my teacher Jean Hall said in class recently - where one of the biggest challenges she sees as a teacher is in letting ourselves go, allowing ourselves to feel and getting out of our own way. This stuck with me. I considered how it might feel to first arrive on retreat, in a new space, sleeping in an unfamiliar bed and getting to know new faces, all having just crash landed after a long journey still carrying the feeling of our busy lives and expectations. With this in mind I used our first long practice as a way to release - using lots of somatic movements to evoke feelings of letting go as well as intention based practices around clearing, filling and sealing. We worked along the axis of the spine, and considered the three energetic centres of the head, the heart and the belly, aiming to build a sense of clear communication through our centre. Our meditation practice was centred on dropping down, a letting go of the thinking experience of the head and an opening to the more receptive sensitivity of the heart and belly. We also chanted to Sita Ram - a chant translating to the yearning pull of our poles of consciousness. Our masculine/feminine, lunar/solar, yin/yang, doing/being in a constant dance of being united and then pulled apart, just like the young lovers of Sita and Ram in the traditional storytelling.

I spent the weeks leading up to the retreat teaching these themes in my own classes and exploring different sequencing to support. This meant by the time I got to Cornwall I had a pretty clear idea of how I hoped to structure the weekend, as well as all the texts and readings that I would include.

Incorporating different styles and disciplines …

With three days of practice to prepare, I wanted to give a varied experience for my students and incorporate a few different supportive teaching approaches. From experience, different language, movements and ideas can land differently with different people. Approaching the same theme through complimentary disciplines encourages students to see things a different way or discover a new way into embodiment.

On a practical level it’s also so healthy to move the body in different ways as well as take the pressure of certain body parts by.

Across the weekend we practised both somatic and qigong inspired meditation techniques, as well as breath awareness practices and traditional pranayama. Our longer practices followed creative vinyasa based sequencing, with lots of space for rest, reflection and slow repeated movements. We took guided relaxations and long, long savasanas. We hummed to the sound of the harmonium and closed the weekend singing our hearts out together.


The things you can’t plan …

In the months leading up to retreat, I was planning a long morning flow practice, before heading out to surf and returning for a shorter qigong and restorative practice in the evening. However you can’t plan for surf with the conditions varying depending on tides and wind. In the days before the retreat we decided that the best time to surf would be a sprightly 9.30am. This was a curve ball for my class planning. I switched to a short morning movement and meditation practise first thing in the morning, wanting the day to start quietly but also seeing the need for a little warming up through the limbs before jumping in the water. We then returned for a longer movement practice in the afternoon. With shoulders a little more tired after the paddling I encouraged rest and offered vinyasa alternatives with minimal weight bearing through the arms. We also took more time for longer held stretches to soothe any aching muscles.

On our final morning, we practised a completely hands-free sequence. Feeling a sense of flow through the body but allowing recovery through the group's tired shoulders. We used circular patterns from qigong and somatic shakes, rolls and releases here.

While I had my handwritten notes with me to check on, I also allowed space in the sequencing to change tack, to add in things that felt right, and to skip parts that felt like they no longer fit. As a new teacher this would have been wild for me, but has now become something I feel so much more confident with - trusting in the back catalogue of everything I’ve taught and practised before. Teaching in this way feels much like the practice itself - a balance between structure and creativity. An openness to feel presence unfolding, guided by the work we do to get out of our own way enough to feel it.

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