I had the honor of spending last weekend leading a retreat with my dear friend Dorie at our fall Core Desire Yoga retreat at Wild Dunes Resort.
First and foremost, I would like to thank the weather gods. Going into the weekend we had a 100% chance of rain. We arrived to find this on Friday afternoon. We quickly decided to host our Friday evening welcome practice poolside and had NO RAIN for the rest of the weekend. It was a blessing.
My assignment to the group after savasana on Friday night was toes in the sand! It was such a beautiful evening.
We held our Friday evening session at our condo along with a dinner prepared by me! I was super excited to cook for everyone and made a spread of honey dijon pork tenderloin, lemon parmesan salmon, roasted brussels and salad with roasted butternut squash, arugula, dried cranberries, almonds and goat cheese with my homemade honey dijon balsamic.
Dinner was a hit and I freaking love cooking for other people! I am SO in my happy place in the kitchen. 🙂
And of course there was dessert. Salted fudge brownies and flourless peanut butter chocolate chip cookies. Wish I would have had time to try out new recipes but this was the best I could do.
We met at 7:30 a.m. on Saturday morning for an oceanfront sunrise yoga class that I led. We had such beautiful scenery for it. I swear, nothing beats outdoor (and water view!) yoga practices. It was a lovely way to start the day.
We spent the day in session working through Danielle LaPorte’s The Desire Map. The goal of these weekends is that our participants leave with their Core Desired Feelings solidified. It’s a really special process to work through in a group environment.
Here’s our beautiful altar. We always ask everyone to bring something that is special to them to these weekends to “hold space” and honor our participants.
We took a break on Saturday for a paddle board excursion. We took a long paddle through the intercoastal waterway and breaked for some paddle board yoga. On Saturday night we had a group dinner at a local restaurant.
We reconvened on Sunday morning for one more oceanfront practice.
And then had a morning of wrapping up our Desire Map work and deconstructing our altar. There are always tears shed during this process.
Dorie and I are so in synch in our belief that our groups are the right people coming together at the right time and this group was no different. Each one of thing brought something so important and so meaningful to our group. It’s really amazing to bring together women from all walks to life and realizing that you’re truly not alone and we all struggle (and triumph) in many of the same things.
Stay tuned for details on our next retreat. It will be another 8-10 person, small group beach or mountain weekend and we can’t wait!
Have you ever been on a yoga or personal development retreat? Are you interested in attending one? If so, dream destination?
