The Advocate

5 Travel (Non-Essential) Essentials

So, you’ve booked your yoga retreat (yay!), triple-checked your passport and have your favorite funky yoga pants, a swimsuit, and maybe even a fleece (hellooooo Iceland!) ready to roll. Our packing lists will make sure you’re prepared for every adventure... BUT, we’d love to suggest 5 non-essential essentials that will help to make your yoga retreat travel experience truly unforgettable.

1. A Sense of Adventure

You’ve skipped town and it’s time to put the adventure in ‘adventure yoga’! Chilling in the cenotes? Immersing yourself in Bhutanese culture (and food…yum)? Visiting a local Balinese temple? We’ve found that the folks who have the most fun are also the most open to the new and different (or those who fake it ’til they make it…haha!).

Trying something new helps to open you up to a world of new perspectives that you may only ever have access to in this unique moment. So join us, being ready to breathe out any butterflies and soak up the culture you’ve carved out the time to experience.  Your time on the mat will ground you while your experiences off the mat will amaze.

Mexico Yoga Retreat  

2. An Experimental Attitude

This is the time to break open some old boundaries and let yourself be led. Yoga retreats are immersive and often provide learning experiences that are far outside of our norm. New teachers, new countries, new friends and a new way to look at our big, beautiful world.

This is your time to experiment – dig deep, fall down, laugh out loud. In short, our teachers are there to take you on a journey – you’ll have more fun if you’re able to step outside your comfort zone and take it all in from start to finish.

Bhutan Yoga Retreat Adventure

3. An Open Mind (and heart!)

The first time your yoga retreat group gets together, take a look around … Instant new friends! An open mind and an open heart will let you embrace this new temporary family. You may find yourself discovering new thoughts, new dreams and new depths on your yoga journey on this immersive adventure. Yoga can be an intimate and challenging experience and it can help facilitate your yoga journey to know your new family cluster is in the same boat! Embrace this chance to be open, honest and surround yourself with the adventurous spirits who’ve joined you on this trip. Panama Yoga Retreat Adventure

4. A Willingness To Disconnect

While wi-fi is available everywhere we go, we hope you’ll take this trip as an opportunity to really disconnect. It can be scary to put down your guard and the social “security” that comes from having a device in-hand. But we promise you this: Once you unplug from your phone and into your  adventure, nothing online can compare to what your yoga retreat adventure has to offer. Whether it’s the northern lights in Iceland, the gorgeous karsts in Vietnam, or going surfing with the locals in Bali, we promise it’s better than anything on Instagram  :-) Vietnam Yoga Retreat Ha Long Bay

5. A Good Book

Trust us. How often do we carve time out of our day to relax and crack the spine of an amazing tale? It’s delicious to end your day blissed out in bed with a good book in hand, or take some time to relax during the day (on the beach maybe?) and have some quiet time all to yourself… Some of our favorite travel companions come in paperback (ha). Choose something inspiring, gripping or just plain escapist. No matter what you choose there’s no better delight that a juicy new book and the time to dive on in. Yoga Vietnam