Basic info

What?

A Yoga Lifestyle Retreat for Gay Men is an experience designed for trying out living a week under the principles of Yoga including the physical practice (once or twice a day) and healthy vegetarian food in a setting appropriate for quieting our minds.

We will refrain completely from meat, alcohol, smoke, recreational or psychedelic drugs, or any other type of intoxicants to build a healthy relation between our body, mind and each other in a natural environment.

When?

Check our section about upcoming events below. We start operation in Summer 2019 and we plan to offer the experience several times a year.

Who?

Each Yoga Lifestyle Retreat will bring together between 7 and 17 participants from diverse backgrounds.

Participating involves committing to a week in which you are going to try the Yoga Lifestyle and give yourself the opportunity to learn from it something that you can take back to your current life.

To participate you need to be relatively healthy with no serious physical or mental limiting condition. It is important to understand that this is not a rehabilitation retreat and if you have any kind of addiction (alcohol, smoking, drugs of any kind, sex) this retreat is not adequate for you.

Where?
The retreats are organized in a small town near Valencia, Spain, just 45 minutes away from its international airport. The retreat venue is on a hill, includes a large natural space (forest), and has comfortable accommodation, a swimming pool and hiking trails that start directly inside the venue and go out into the public mountain park areas. The nearest beach is 25 minutes away by car. We take care of everything providing transfers from the airport and to the beach, when a group of participants want to go together. Valencia has mild weather all year round and is known for its traditional dish: paella and for producing fruits exported to all Europe. In this retreat we have everything (except the weather) under our control. The facilities, the contents, the food have been designed for this experience.
How?

To book your space for participating in a retreat you need to contact us by email or through our contact form, please provide some information about yourself and your motivation to participate and we will reply to you and possibly schedule a call together. We want to guarantee that the retreats have the right people creating the environment to meet the objectives and everyone's expectations, therefore is not possible to book directly online, instead human to human interaction is required.

Why?

There are plenty of places for yoga courses, retreats and yoga vacations. This is neither and a mix of all that.

This is an experience designed to give you a taste of a yoga based lifestyle so that you can take something out of it and implement in your current life, improving it.

Yoga instead of just a physical activity provides a way of living that focuses on a healthy body and mind, integrated with each other and connected to that what we feel is greater than us, which helps providing purpose and meaning to what we do.

Why do we live our life as we do? Rarely do we take the time to think about what are we doing with our lifetime and how much of it have we actually decided ourselves. It is very common to just do what we have been told or instructed that is what we should do; and it is very common to be frustrated and feel that we are not using our lifetime adequately.

We acknowledge health is the most important aspect of our life (specially we notice it when we are sick); yet we live in unhealthy polluted environments, eat unhealthy processed food and incur in all kind of unhealthy activities. Mental health we rarely think about nor do we do anything to preserve and improve it. More and more people suffer from depression, anxiety etc.

In our messy urban lifestyle seldom do we have time to think about purpose and meaning and most people cannot really answer to simple questions like what are your life goals, what makes you happy etc.

Yoga, correctly understood, helps living a fulfilling life.

And yes, this is an experience for gay men who want to explore together the yoga lifestyle. Women and non gay men of course face the same life challenges but the community we know the most and in which we are part is that of gay men and therefore we have designed this experience for them.

There are some other retreats for gay men that include some yoga practices but also include either naked practices, sexual tantric practices, alcoholic drinks etc., basically they address a completely different audience; there is nothing of that here.

The focus of this retreat experience is providing a taste of an alternative lifestyle based on the Yoga principles for gay men.

Upcoming Events

To start the summer we will organize a Yoga Lifestyle Retreat for gay men, including asana practice but beyond it. In an amazing space in the mountain not far from the beach we will integrate mind and body into a yoga principles based lifestyle. Send us an email for more information.

info@gay-retreats.com

Starting September with a Yoga lifestyle retreat to end the summer connecting to our true selves

info@gay-retreats.com

WHAT WE OFFER

Yoga practice

We will practice Yoga physical exercises (asansas) every day during a week.

An early morning 1 and a half hours practice provides great foundation for the day. The practice will be based in the Asthanga vinyasa primary series but adapted to all levels. Asthanga vinyasa combines a challenging physical activity with a much more challenging mental exercise that connects movement with breath developing focus and a clear mind.

In the afternoons we will have alternating programs of short workshops on specific topics of the Yoga lifestyle as well as relaxing restorative yoga practice, yoga Nidra etc.

Healthy food

Three vegetarian meals a day using as much as possible local produce served in a buffet style. A mix of traditional spanish cusine adapted for vegetarians and flavors of the world.

Plant-based only and vegan food options will be available but also ovo-lacto-vegetarian.

Hiking and Swimming

Our retreat spot, which is gay owned and managed, is located in nature outside of a small town and there are hiking trails in the mountains starting from the retreat venue itself. The area enjoys clean and fresh air with views of the sea which is just a 25 minutes away drive.

Either at the beach or in our large salty water swimming pool you will be able to enjoy swimming and the sunny days of Valencia.

Time and space to rest

While there is a full program of activities during the retreat, there is also time to rest. Rest and sleep time is a fundamental part of respecting our bodies and is often disregarded by the urban busy lifestyle.

Opportunity for meeting real people

In our retreats we want to have between 7 and 17 participants, all gay men with diverse backgrounds and life situations but all willing to try out a different lifestyle to that gay men end up in.

Being outside of our daily life and roles, surrounded by nature doing something good for our body and minds permits us to move out of the common frames in which we relate with other people opening a space for more sincere and real interactions.

An opportunity to be You

Yoga is about the integration of mind and body. Such integration is a process of self-development that starts possibly with a physical practice but ultimately impregnates your life.

After discovering the blissful state that Yoga can bring to your life your lifestyle changes towards a more genuine, awareness based, fulfilling and healthy one.