Yoga Classes
Sunflower Retreats Holidays yoga classes are suitable for beginners as well as more practiced yogis.
We practise Friday through Tuesday each morning before breakfast, with some yoga classes throughout the week outdoors in spectacular surroundings when the weather is suitable.
Our morning Hatha yoga classes each last 90 minutes. Yoga mats are provided.
Optional Extra Yoga Classes
For those who would like the opportunity to practice more yoga, extra classes of Hatha yoga or meditation are available throughout the week with Lucy Bremner or our guest yoga teachers. The yoga classes on Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday afternoons are of one hour and cost €10 per person
We also offer a two-hour workshop on the last afternoon of each holiday week, in yoga, meditation and other related subjects. The Tuesday workshop costs €20 per person
Sunflower Retreats' Yoga Teaching Team
All of our teachers are required to have undertaken no less than two years training so that we do not rely on "fast track" yoga certification.
Lise Baronet, from Canada, will teach with us in March and April. She is a certified yoga instructor and yoga therapist through Yoga Alliance™ who teaches in Port Stanley, a fishing and tourist village on Lake Erie, and in other parts of Ontario.
Lise teaches private clients, at a hospice, yoga-on-the-beach classes, at retreats and in studios. She has also set up a program to provide free yoga for people who don't have easy access to such a healing form of connecting the body, mind and spirit.
With a background in competitive sports and ballet, from her first yoga class, Lise knew she was in the presence of a powerful holistic and spiritual experience that would lead her toward a different way of being, and of relating to others and to nature. Lise is known for blending peacefulness, gentleness and humour, while inspiring her students to make their own discoveries of what yoga means to them.
Lise is trained in Heaven Hatha Yoga™, which is influenced by the Anusara and Sivananda styles. With a heart-centered approach, Lise incorporates bio-mechanicallly therapeutic alignment techniques to enhance an optimal experience of the asanas. With a sensitivity to the setting and to how students are feeling each day, Lise integrates mindfulness into the practice, allowing students to come to an awareness that leaves them feeling nurtured and rejuvenated in their bodies and minds.
Patricia Cronin, from the UK, will teach with us in the first two weeks of May. She holds The Friends of Yoga Society International Teaching Certificate and Meditation Teachers Certificate from the British Yoga Teachers Association. She is in the final stages of obtaining her Yoga Therapy registration with the BCYT.
Patricia has been practising yoga for 36 years, and her deep knowledge and love for the subject shines through her teaching. She has studied many different lineages including: Satyananda, Sivananda, Iyengar, Ashtanga and Vinyasa Flow, bringing the best of each to her teaching.
She works with humour and compassion, encouraging each individual to reach their full potential while adapting postures and practices to suit differing abilities and physical limitations. She is based in Surrey where she teaches in spas, schools, yoga studios, work places and clinics, and has a thriving one to one practice based at her home. She is passionate about the therapeutic benefits of yoga, running courses in deep relaxation and meditation and works with a mental health charity helping people to combat the damaging effects of stress and modern living.
Katharine West, from the UK, will teach with us in late May and for the first three weeks of June. Katherine has been practicing yoga for twenty eight years. Her enthusiasm for yoga grew over these years, initially as a great antidote to stress, and latterly as an invaluable system to maintain health and promote healing. The realisation that yoga supported her health and wellbeing led her to become a qualified yoga teacher. She studied as a British Wheel of Yoga teacher with Angela Ashwin for two and a half years. She currently teaches one-to-ones, groups, classes, workshops and yoga weekends in the the South West of England.
Katharine draws together influences from Ashtanga, Scaravelli and Sivananda into her teaching. Her teaching enables her students to work within their own capacity helping them to build strength and flexibility in their bodies by encouraging them to explore different approaches to postures. She also teaches breathing techniques and pranayama to enable her student to get the full benefits from their yoga practice.
Her down-to-earth yet empathetic approach helps her students relax and builds their confidence. She has a friendly, open manner and teaches to help her students learn how to become more grounded. Using this connection to the earth she encourages them to draw from their foundation and move more deeply into the postures, freeing the spine and bring them into the present.
Erla Sigtryggsdóttir, from Iceland and Sweden, will teach with us from June 21st thru 4th July.
Erla is schooled through the Krishnamacharya lineage with several qualified teacher programmes and certifications, along with her long personal and in depth studies and practice. A full-time yoga teacher since 2006, she teaches wide range of yoga from prenatal/postnatal yoga, children and senior yoga and beginners, as well as holding courses for other yoga teachers. She teaches regularly in Scandinavian.
Erla has a calm but powerful presence, an inspiring yoga teacher, within her yoga classes she creates an holistic space respecting tradition and allowing students to feel they are welcome to develop their practice from whatever is their place or state at the time or moment.
Sierra Campbell, from the USA, will teach with us from 5th to 18th July.
Sierra has been a daily practitioner of yoga since 1999. She began her journey with yoga after a debilitating car accident, leaving her with immobility and chronic pain. During two years of spinal rehabilitation, she studied meditation with the Himalayan Institute. In 2010, she received two hundreds hours of Vinyasa Flow Yoga training with Ganga White and Tracy Rich at the White Lotus Foundation in Santa Barbara, California. Also in 2010, Sierra completed a year long course through the Institute for Integrative Nutrition in New York. She is currently a primary instructor and the Director for Urban Yoga in Phoenix, Arizona, where she teaches regularly to all levels from beginner to advanced, blending influences from Ashtanga, Vinyasa Flow, Iyengar and Yin/Restorative Yoga.
Sierra shares a peaceful, healing presence and enjoys teaching all levels, focusing on alignment and integrity in each pose and the breath as the vehicle to deepen the practice. She is an ovarian cancer survivor and attributes the daily practice of yoga (including meditation & pranayama), nutritional wellness and creative writing to sustain a healthy, cancer-free life. Sierra offers private sessions to those seeking medical intuitive insight, nutritional consulting and hands-on Reiki and yoga.
Laura Milani, from Italy, is a certified yoga instructor through Yoga Alliance™ and she teaches Hatha, Nidra and Hot Yoga in London to both groups and individuals. She will teach with us in the last two weeks of July and the first week of August.
Laura started her training as an actress in Italy over a decade ago and she completed a Master's degree in acting with a distinction at the University of Essex, London. Since she began her studies, she has been deeply amazed by the possibilities for expression and strength of a well-connected body. She has had the opportunity to study and practice Ashtanga and Hatha yoga, Yoga Nidra, Pilates, Laban, physical theatre, contact improvisation, Butoh dance and traditional Balinese Dance.
What she has found is that all of these disciplines constitute different approaches to the same core aspects: the awareness of the body, the control of the fluctuation of the mind, the presence in the actual moment, the ego and the state of bliss. In her perspective yoga is a royal path to investigate and gently manage the complexity of the human being; it can be a tool to cope with life’s ups and downs and to enjoy while doing it.
Her classes are a mix of fun and focused attention; her students are encouraged to find awareness through their breath and subtle movements, to discover their own boundaries and gently challenge them. Laura’s style is light and grounding and includes visualisation and guided relaxation to explore different levels of awareness. She likes to incorporate some philosophy and cultural information about yoga throughout the class, in order to engage the student’s curiosity for an in-depth study.
Paraphrasing Marie Curie’s statement - ‘Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood.’ - yoga practice is a good place and time from which to start.
Vanessa Webb will join us to teach yoga for a second season from August 16th thru' 10th October.
Vanessa has been practicing yoga for most of her life; as a little girl her mother would take her to her yoga classes. She received her certified yoga teacher training in Vancouver in 2008 and is registered with Yoga Alliance™. Vanessa teaches in Goa, India in Hatha and gentle Flow-style classes as she loves the intuitiveness of Hatha yoga, pulling philosophy and experience from various yoga styles to fit the class and participants.
Vanessa has been involved in health and wellness both personally and professionally since 1995. This started at Heartwood Institute, a community for personal development and a massage school, just north of San Francisco. She was first trained in Cranio-sacral Therapy through the Upledger Institute and is a Cranio-sacral practitioner.
Vanessa is very passionate about her involvements, particularly the truth of Yoga. Travelling through India and Thailand in 2005 had a huge impact on her, and she again returned to India in September 2010 for further intensive Hatha yoga training, followed by a teaching opportunity in Bali, Indonesia.
A fun and playful approach is used to help students gain a greater understanding of anatomy and how they can relate this to their yoga practice.
The focus is very much on 'feeling the pose from the inside out', letting the breath guide the movement, finding softness within the pose, creating space in the body and length in the spine"
Lauren Maher, from the USA, will teach with us in the last 3 weeks of October.
Lauren is certified yoga therapist and yoga instructor through Yoga Alliance™. She teaches Hatha, Kundalini and Yoga Therapy in the greater Los Angeles area. She has been practising yoga for fifteen years and teaching full-time for nine. Lauren has taught in a variety of settings: yoga studios, hospitals, the corporate world, wellness centres and through her own private practice. She received her first certification through Yoga West, and then graduated from Loyola Marymount University's esteemed two-year Yoga Therapy RX program.
Lauren's classes are inclusive and open to all levels - she has taught everyone from seniors to seasoned yoga practitioners to cancer patients. She draws from her knowledge of various yoga styles to create a practice that is appropriate for the shifting, daily needs of her students. Her style is gentle and grounding, and focuses on breath awareness, proper and safe alignment in asanas, meditation and visualisation. Lauren takes a non-dogmatic approach to yoga and infuses her classes with a sense of humour and lightness. Lauren views the real benefits of yoga as what you take with you outside of the class into the world.
Lucy Bremner, born in London and co-founder of Sunflower Retreats, has been a holistic practitioner in the UK and worldwide since 1988. She specialises in a wide range of body work, therapies and energy and spiritual balancing treatments such as Chakra Balancing and Reiki.
After first working as a model at Select in London and Why Not in Milan, Lucy was drawn to the practice of Hatha Yoga and the yoga philosophy while studying holistic therapies professionally in London in 1989. In the late 80s and early 90s, then in her twenties, she travelled independently in Nepal, India, Thailand, Indonesia, Bali, Australia, New Zealand, Sudan and the USA, where she broadened her studies of yoga, Eastern philosophy and the healing arts, including the American Indian tradition and philosophy.
Lucy is a qualified Holistic Therapist and international yoga teacher, accredited with a distinction in her final examinations with Friends of Yoga - a society and examination body for yoga in the UK and India which is recognised by Yoga Alliance as an international yoga school. Over the last twenty years she helped hundreds of people with healing therapies and with yoga instruction, either through her yoga classes and treatments, or through all she has coordinated in the yoga and healing section at Sunflower Retreats' centre in Casperia.
Lucy's yoga classes are holistic and grounding, fusing the elements of Ying and Yang, yoga asanas and practices to bring balance (union) to the body, mind, emotions and spirit. She loves to share and communicate the ancient knowledge of Western and Eastern traditions through the healing power of yoga and meditation, both in her classes and her treatments. She is a gentle teacher, encouraging and supportive in her teaching and holistic therapy work.
A mother of two children born by natural childbirth methods, she also teaches pregnancy yoga and preparation for natural birth.
Lucy is available for yoga sessions at Sunflower Retreats on weeks when there are no guest teachers. Lucy also teachers the 2 year part-time Yoga Teacher Training courses at Sunflower Retreats.
Our yoga deck
Outdoor yoga classes take place on our platform which is located in an oasis of green inside the village walls. It's a beautiful and serene environment, with dappled sunlight and the sound of birdsong all around.
Our yoga studio
When we choose to practise yoga indoors, we use our own professionally designed and restored 40 square metre studio, which has a wooden floor, a fresh water spring and an ancient cave as a bathroom. It has full central heating for use in the cooler months.
What Our Yoga Holidays Cover
The classes taught cover the physical teachings of Hatha yoga with emphasis on the spiritual and holistic aspects of the yoga tradition in general.
Your yoga class includes:
■ Asanas (Physical Movements)
■ Pranayama (Breathing practices)
■ Meditation(Stilling and calming of the mind & inner self)
■ Relaxation (Complete mind, body relaxation)
Individual Yoga Lessons
Individual tuition is also available, with one-to-one yoga lessons in Asana, Pranayama, Meditation and Relaxation. These private classes are great for those people who would like to deepen their yoga practice or work on a yoga routine specifically for their individual requirements.
