2023 Magical Kapsali Yoga Retreat

Hello Yogis!

OK! Finally! This email is about the Kapsali Yoga Retreat. I have my tickets! As I always say, come with me to a place where the soul can breathe! Take a look at pictures and testimonials from previous years. Our day will be a yoga sandwich, early morning and evening yoga and the filling will be lots of lovely things to do: workshops, saunas and treatments, walks… If you want to come with a non-yogi friend or partner (like me! I’m the carer of a beautiful 91-year-old) they can do the stretchy, meditative evening class and the excursions.

Dates: Flying Monday 25th September, returning Monday October 2nd. I’ve priced up everything based on sharing a room.

Included. Porto Delfino, our usual hotel, is now a spa hotel with a Hammam steam room and treatment rooms by the infinity swimming pool. All rooms are en-suite and have a balcony facing the bay and sea and Aphrodite’s Rock.

Also included. Breakfast and vegetarian dinner – also vegan options. I’ve included a trip to Sara’s shop – you’ll know it if you’ve come before. She’s a herbalist and will conduct a herb workshop for us - taking us for a herb-collecting walk and teaching us to make treatments with our finds. One other organised trip is to an oil factory to see the olive oil process and experience olive oil tasting. A short walk away is a traditional pottery. We can easily visit that too at the same time.

Kythera is famous for its ancient walkways and we will have a guided walk. (The hotel often hosts walking groups). The main one to do is to the cliff-side church, Agios Ioannis on the cliff, visible from all around Kapsali. If you like hiking and want more, I would suggest, first of all, Hora and the castle of Hora and secondly, the Cave of Kalamos with its stalagmites and stalactites.

The price of all of this for 6 nights is £860. This is comparable to the price I charged three years ago – our last retreat! I have just called Aegean and there is availability on the flights of Monday 25th September to October 2nd. (My suggested flight includes a night in Athens and a shuttle bus to a hotel). The cost of the round-trip is €359 with just on-board luggage or €440 with a suitcase. Call me if you’re interested in coming and I can reserve the flight while you make up your mind.

Call me or reply to this email. I can give more details if you need them.

Retreat Recap

Monday 25th September to Monday October 2nd

Retreat cost £860

One more thing, I’ll be arriving in Kapsali, Kythera, on Tuesday September 26taking the Monday 25th flight but leaving on October 11th. If you want to stay longer, I can arrange that.

Classes

The weather next week looks lovely. We can have our Ashtanga classes outside, maybe the stretchy classes too. It’s like being on retreat! Here’s a round-up: Monday and Tuesday = stretchy class at 7.00pm, Wednesday = Ashtanga at 7.00pm and Friday morning = Ashtanga at 8.30am. You can book here.

Yoga In The News

The Times has another one of those yoga-but-not-yoga articles! Yoga with cocktails? Count me in. ‘It’s Friday night and I am dressed in my best yoga gear drinking a cocktail at the bar of my new favourite yoga studio. I have just done a RocketBeats class, 90 minutes of hardcore yet somehow joyful physical grind to even harder-core techno music…, the class is a bit like going clubbing, with the welcome addition of a sense of virtuousness.

The Financial Times has: Why Rajiv Jain is betting on an Indian yoga televangelist. (I find this article funny because it is apparently the West that misunderstands and misappropriates yoga!) ‘GQG founder Rajiv Jain has one main argument when he defends investing some of his firm’s $93bn into a business run by a right-wing, yoga televangelist with ties to India’s prime minister: growth. “There is no political angle,” Jain told the Financial Times’.

Marie Claire UK has: Why body scan meditation is my go-to technique for sleep. ‘As you mentally scan the body, you might begin to notice sensations like warmth, coolness, tingling or tension. The idea is that you'll become aware of these sensations without judging them, and allow any tension to melt away before simply moving on to the next body part and the next sensation.’