Eco-Tours & Yoga Retreats
Yoga is a practice that takes place both on and off the yoga mat.
No Retreats currently scheduled… sorry! But if you or a group of friends would like to organize one, please let me know!
Vahana Yoga Eco-Tours and Yoga Retreats connect our personal health and well-being to the health and well-being of the earth by offering carefully crafted, educational, transformative and restorative trips in the U.S. and overseas. Taking some time away from the busy-ness of our lives and to practice yoga in natural settings is a deeply healing experience. Spending several hours a day in yoga workshops designed to meet the needs of retreat participants will expose you to new aspects of yoga and allow your body to restore and realign itself. You have to try it to believe it!
Not all trips are designed equally. Some may have a heavier emphasis on deepening your yoga practice while others may have a heavier emphasis on getting to know the land and the people we visit. For example, touring local farms and learning about the sustainable production of crops or visiting protected natural areas while we learn about the ecology of the place. Some may be just a day long, while others last a week. Some may take place in a glampground (that's glamorous camping!), while others take place in an eco-lodge, a retreat center run by an eco-village or private villas.
However, any of these trips will give you the opportunity to immerse yourself in the experience of how a sustainable lifestyle affects our personal health and happiness, to showcase innovative projects which are working to protect and better the world, and to connect us with nature. We strive to find inner peace while we work towards peace on earth!
If you have a group of students or a destination in mind and would like to craft a yoga retreat or eco-tour suited to your particular interests, please contact me.
Come along and take a ride on a Vahana with me!
(What’s a Vahana, you ask? Click here :)
“My trip with Astrid and Vahana was a spiritual experience for me - the totality of the yoga practice, the community of people, the natural surrounding, the menus and the activities, left me feeling totally refreshed and revitalized.”
Yoga Eco-Hikes
By Request
Yoga and Fitness in the Outdoors! With a yoga mat in tow, learn a bit about the history and ecology of the Finger Lakes region of New York State. Tune your breath into the trees, give yourself a good stretch and practice exercises for renewable energy as I lead you on a walk through the Finger Lakes. This is a fantastic way to explore this iconic and unique region while achieving a bit of physical and mental fitness. Hikes can be tailored to various groups and locations. Just let me know of your needs and interests! Inquire here.
Eco-Tours and Retreats in the Past
Click on the images!
Core Principles of Vahana Eco-Tours & Yoga Retreats:
We view our tours as an opportunity to manifest a multi-pronged approach to sustainability incorporating environmental protection, social and economic justice as well as personal well-being - and infuse our trips with various aspects of these concepts. Some tours may focus more on personal health, while others may focus more on time spent in nature or others on, for example, education around renewable energy or organic farm systems. Each tour is carefully designed to support these ideals and in coordination with locally aligned partners with the following components:
Tours operated according to the principles of Sustainable Travel (for more information about this concept please visit: http://sustainabletravel.org/)
Accommodations in eco-lodges, eco-villages, glamp sites, campgrounds, yoga retreat centers or other carefully chosen lodging which have a focus on sustainability
Delicious and healthy cuisine that nurtures the body and spirit as well as the land
A yoga component – sometimes as the primary focus of the retreat, at other times as a corollary to the main intention which may focus more on sustainable food systems, for example
Time in nature with an attitude of 'leave only footsteps, take only photographs'
Visits to sites that have cultural, social, or environmental significance
Visits to projects, organization or businesses which are focused on an aspect of sustainability
Reflection about our personal roles in the context of a sustainable world and ideally an inspiration for further action
Cross-cultural interaction and learning - whether it be with retreat participants and organizers, and/or host communities and partners
A possible service learning or volunteer component
A possible percentage of proceeds going to fund note-worthy and relevant sustainability project
Carbon on-setting through our partner organization Earth Deeds