YOGA - weekend workshop September '14

another wonderful yoga weekend

Just like last September, this weekend - running from Friday afternoon until Sunday evening - saw us practicing yoga in the outdoors around La Vudèle. Under the blue sky of Provence...

The June date with focus on meditation and pranayamas, the September date with an introduction to the 7 chakras. For the September date we welcomed a return visitor from last year, Conny! Weekends of yoga outdoors, blue skies, sun, fresh air and warmth. 

For 2015 there will be 3 dates to enjoy Yoga & Nature, yoga practice outdoors, surrounded by the sound of birds, the rustle of leaves in the wind, the feel of the warming sun on the skin, the eyes feasting on the blue of the Provencal sky...

yoga weekend 15. - 17. May &11. - 13. September (Friday afternoon - Sunday evening)

yoga retreat 21. - 26. June (Sunday afternoon - Friday morning) - 4 spaces left

Namasté!

YOGA - "le yoga du jeudi" or Yoga in the Morning

under the mulberry tree
with guests from Australia

This June I had decided to offer a morning yoga session, along with our weekend workshops and private retreats, to our guests in the B&B and gite and to the locals in Quinson who descend onto the salle de fête every Monday evening for yoga with Christiane. During the summer months this weekly course is suspended so that I thought - to bridge this gap - I would offer a class at La Vudèle. And to show that yoga in the morning is quite a different experience from the usual evening classes I decided to start the class at 10h, after breakfast and with enough time to digest. What makes this even more special is the outdoor setting: Yoga & Nature, taking our yoga practice outside, under the blue sky of Provence, surrounding by plants, flowers, wild life and the occasional breeze plus the scent of lavender, especially during harvest time!

Each Thursday a different constellation formed, a slightly different group participated, sometimes 3 people, once even 7; sometimes in French, then in English, sometimes in German, and once in all three plus Dutch! Since no reservation was required I never knew who showed up or how many. This truly meant for me to "take without expecting" or AparigrahaWe had some locals come and participate, some guests in our chambre d'hôte, some visitors to the area who had seen the poster in the village announcing this new class.
Each week there was a different theme, a different focus, be it on balance, inversions, cooling asanas, invigorating sequences, all dependent on the experience of the participant, the mood of the day and the general energy.

And what a joy it was to practice outdoors, to be outside, surrounded by nature: in the cooling shade under the vast mulberry in our garden; by the side of the wheat field with views across lavender fields onto Mont Denier. This mountain range, with an altitude of almost 2000m, served as a focal point for tadasana or mountain pose: imagining oneself a mountain, a natural structure which like our body and mind does neither sway nor move, solid, grounded.

This is definitely an experience I shall repeat to offer next year, along with 3 dates for yoga weekends in May & September and a 6-day yoga holiday in June.

Namasté and thanks to everyone who joined me this summer