Why Yoga Retreats are the Perfect way to Travel Solo

Top 5 Reasons Why a Yoga Retreat is the Perfect Way

to Make your Solo Travel Journey Deep and Meaningful

Traveling to a new part of the world can be an intimidating experience, especially if you’re going alone, and especially if it’s your first time.

Some thoughts that may go through your minds – Is it safe for me to travel alone? Will I feel lonely? How will I know where to go or what to do?

And yet when we feel that call to explore the world, we know in our bones that traveling alone can be one of the most rewarding experiences of our lifetime.

Often when we begin our travels into the world it’s to honour the calling to create more adventure, balance and wellness in our lives.

While there’s definitely a magic in traveling for the sake of travel, when we have a passion to tether our interests to, like Yoga, it empowers us to meet like-minded people and to develop ourselves and our skills to have a more fulfilling journey.

Coming on a Yoga Retreat in is the perfect mix of combining your call to travel solo to an exotic destination, with your desire to invest in your health and well-being, and travel with purpose.

A yoga retreat is a disciplined space in which to cultivate more connection, presence, health, wellness and awareness of our bodies, minds and hearts.

It is also a deepening journey to whatever healing process you may currently already be on.

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The Beginning of My Solo – Travel Journeys

My first solo travel was at the age of 18, when I was young, naïve, and adventurous. At the time, my thirst for the world and its people was unquenchable and I was so happy to just go with the flow, figure out the next step of my travel on the fly, sleep in hammocks under the stars or out on the beach in the wild.

I met incredible people from all over the planet, expanded my horizons a lot, and really started the journey of knowing myself a lot more.  

As I move into my late 30s now, I notice that my preferences are changing, and I now feel called to travel with a deeper purpose.  

I still crave adventure and to meet like-minded people from all over the world, but more important for me now, to travel with purpose, to be learning or to be in service, to be investing in my skills, knowledge, and well-being.

My life changed forever after I attended my first meditation and yoga retreat.  I really tasted the magic of Yoga, and its benefits for my mind, body and spirit.  After the retreat, I felt more clear, more balanced, more open, and some of the people that I connected with there, I’ve now travelled with or have visited in different parts of the world.

After that retreat, Yoga became the central organising focus of my life, work and travels.  Anywhere I go, I know that if Yoga is at the heart of what I do, that I am investing in my education, my happiness and well-being and my connection to community, nature and like-minded equally impassioned people.

Top 5 Reasons Why a Yoga retreat is a perfect way to Make your solo travel journey more deep and meaningful

1) Connect with international community & Create lifelong friendships with like-minded people

Coming on retreat is a powerful way to make new life-long friendships and connect with new like-minded people, at different stages of their lives – people who have come across different challenges and breakthroughs in their careers and in their relationships –  from all over the planet.  

What becomes so apparent in the shared experience of retreat, is that despite all of our individual differences, we are all so much the same. We all just want to be happy and we all want to be free of suffering. And we all do suffer with our own challenges and fears. This is something that we all have in common.

2) Get Inspired and Create new travel plans from like-minded people

Often your new retreat friends are also solo travellers, and oftentimes in Yoga they are women  who travel with a passion for adventure, yoga, and new experiences, and they are excited to share with you their experiences and insights.  

People who come on our retreats often make new travel plans and have lots of local and international adventures together.

New retreat friends often meet up in other parts of the world, open up their homes to each other, and also come back the next year to our retreat to meet again as well.  

3) Retreats can help your Connect deeper to a Community or Place

A retreat offers a perfect way to connect deeper with the place you are visiting.  

When we are in travel-mode, sometimes we stay just a night here, or 3 nights there.  

While this can be an awesome way to see the planet, when we allow ourselves the opportunity to stay in a place longer, we can drop-in to our daily rhythm, drop-in with the local community, and create a home-away-from-home.  

Staying a little bit longer allows us to unfold more more depth and connection with a place and the people that call that place their home.

Our experiences and connections become richer.  We feel like we are a part of something.

Our location in Koh Phangan, is in a magical hidden gem of a community where there are no cars and no roads.  It is accessible only by boat which makes it an incredible off-the-beaten track find.  

The community here is from all walks of life and from all over the world.  One of the greatest things that unites us is our love of this place and the experience of transformation it has had on us all as individuals.  

We all feel we are a part of something bigger, and for this reason, we keep coming back year after year, deepening our friendships and making new ones.

4) Retreats are an Investment into your own Happiness, Well-being and Self-Love

Within a Yoga retreat, you give yourself the space to transform and integrate your life and travel experiences.  

You give yourself the experience to take a pause, reflect, integrate and drop in deeper with yourself and whatever experiences you are having in the moment.   

This opportunity to reflect and connect through being in nature, slowing down and practicing meditation and yoga is incredibly nourishing for your body, mind, and spirit, and is a worthwhile investment into your wellness and happiness.

In this way, you come to know yourself more, where your blockages, challenges or areas of self-growth are.  You get to practice discipline, gratitude, self-knowing and self love.

5)   Retreats can help you begin the ritual of a daily practice to help support you throughout the rest of your travels

Retreats are an awesome way to begin the ritual of a daily practice.

Having a daily practice when you’re traveling is a really awesome way to ground and center your energy so that you can move into the mystery of each day with more confidence, grace and ease.

A yoga retreat can help you to develop you balance, strength and flexibility both on and off the yoga mat.

It can also help to set you up with the skills and tools to navigate the rest of your travels with more confidence, clarity, decisiveness, depth, and meaning.

On our retreats for example, we offer lots of tools and techniques to help you establish your commitment to a daily home practice and resources, like our free 21-day post-retreat practice program, to help you continue developing and practicing once you leave.

The qualities of flexibility and openness that we foster on retreat offer so many rewards in the present moment, but also help you navigate your travels moving forward with more grace, ease and magic.

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In the end, one week is not such a long time, and it goes by in a snap of the fingers. But when you create time out of time to really invest in yourself, the experiences that you will have can be utterly life-changing, and can help you to step even deeper on to the ever-winding path to self knowing, self mastery, and ultimately to self love.

So if you’re looking to bring more depth, meaning and purpose to your solo travel, please consider coming on a Yoga Retreat in Paradise @ Pure Flow Yoga.  Our retreats are affordable, intimate, magical and life-changing.