Lots of exciting news to share, so much is transforming!

Our retreats are taking a big turn in a new direction. We are restructuring our attention towards opening up the week to create space for radical healing in response to people’s desire to get answers and discover what is happening to them in these shifting times.

To match the transformation we are excited for our new collaboration with people who are committed to creating change, who are pioneering a new way of being by what they stand for.

It’s the Art of Life Retreats with more power and intention!

We’ll be fueling our bodies with organic living foods. Yes!

We’ll be flowing with Yoga Synergy. Perfect for beginners who want to start moving their bodies, and perfect for those who are fluent and want to find more grace and ease in a more advanced practice.

We’ll also be incorporating our new love-affair with the movement practice of Qi Gong and going deeper on bridging our connection to our center.

We’ll focus on bringing everything back to ourselves. There will be sessions in self healing, releasing unserving habits and looking into the control settings of patterns to ultimately come closer to restoring our factory settings. Freedom!

This is the perfect opportunity for those wanting to make real change in their lives, to resolve the unresolved. We’ll create a space to cultivate energy and then apply it to deepen our intuition and connection, to be who we really are. The feeling is fantastic.

This is no ordinary retreat. We are coming together to catalyse change.

30th April – 5th May 2016
Notice something different?

Our April-May retreat has had to be reduced to 6 days – We aren’t reducing the offerings, we’ll just be packing more in, but we are offering a super special discount in lieu of the unexpected changes.

Book 2 places together for US$2,000 all inclusive for 2 ~ perfect for couples, best friends and partners in support of coming to experience the retreat week together.

Limited spaces, reserve your spot now info@artofliferetreats.com and for more details see our website www.artofliferetreats.com

We are keeping all of our favourite elements with guest speakers sharing their passion for movement and philosophy, as well as being powered by amazing living food meals that keep us nourished and satiated from the inside out.

Have you seen our new video Come on a magical tour with us!

Our very talented friend and yogi Ms Shabby tells us the intricacies of muscle activation to get into a handstand ~ with a little cheekiness on the side too!

Have you ever wondered what’s the essence of yoga? Or how to be cool and do handstand? I’ll tell you both.

I jump out of bed on a Saturday morning to snap on my gypster outfit after I have massaged green juice into my forehead. Then I whisk down to the closest yoga studio to plug into Mother Earth with my sitting bones and open my heart chakra while chanting a Sanskrit song whose meaning I don’t have the slightest clue about.

No, wait. Rewind. I jump out of bed on a Saturday morning to start the day with hot lemon water and wheat free pancake – yes, I’ve finally nailed that wheat free pancake with organic Nutella – and then I do a few sun salutations bare naked to air my labia and realise that my individual consciousness is one with the universal consciousness .

Maybe not. Start again. So I just jump out of bed to sit on my yoga mat for half an hour to dwell on how cool it would be to do all those one arm balances and fancy inverted postures in handstand like that tiny ashtan. But unfortunately my legs are long, my hips are wide, my shoulders are narrow and I have flabby arms, which cannot lift up and bear the weight of my lanky legs and massive bum.

Sexy and enlightened

I just want to look like Kino MacGregor and do all the fancy postures. I know that putting my legs on the top of my head in a tiny bikini in Scorpion posture will make me sexy and enlightened at the same time.

Now that I have figured out the essence of yoga, I’m going to reveal to you the secrets of handstand, so that you can be the weird yoga person at parties who entertains their pals after you’ve got tired of small talk, or you can do it on a sunny beach in front of some exotic temple and ask someone to take a photo of you to post in on Facebook.

Muscle matters

Inverted postures are the asanas that have the most rejuvenating and energising effect on your body if you do them properly, and for long enough periods.

To be able to do handstand, you need not only core (abdominal) strength, but also strong shoulder flexors (anterior deltoids), strong shoulder depressors (pectoralis major and latissimus dorsi), and substantial elbow extensors (triceps) which will all make a joint effort to help you maintain the handstand once you have lifted your legs off the floor with the help of your core muscles. If your shoulder muscles and your triceps don’t have enough strength, your shoulders and back will collapse, and you will fall back to the ground no matter how much core strength you have.

When you are in handstand-preparation – which means that you are bending forward, feet still on the floor while leaning on your arms, and then you start shifting your whole weight gradually on your arms – your shoulder joints are semi-flexed and you try to activate the shoulder flexors in a shortened state. After that, from handstand-preparation to actual hand-stand you have to go from shoulder semi-flexion to complete shoulder-flexion and that is when you need the strong shoulder flexors and depressors, or else, you won’t be able to push and hold yourself up from semi-flexion to flexion.

In the moment of lifting-up, however, you use mainly rectus abdominis, your diaphragm, a little bit of transversus abdominis, hip-extensors (glutes and hamstrings) and spinal extensors (the hip-extensors and the shoulder-flexors will switch on the spinal extensors, namely the erector spinae).

There are quite a few yoga postures in which you can train each of these muscle groups I have mentioned above, but you should know how to activate those muscle groups effectively as it is easy to do these postures in a completely non-effective way:

How to train the rectus abdominis and transversus abdominis:

Do half sit-ups, Pendulum Posture (Lolasana), and Kneeling Plank (see below for how to do kneeling plank)

How to train the spinal extensors:

Do Locust Posture (Shalabasana)

How to train the hip-extensors:

Activate the glutes and the hamstrings in asanas like the Unsupported Standing Frog (Niralamba Utthita Eka Pada Bhekasana), or in Triangle Posture (Trikonasana) and in the Side-lengthening Posture (Parsvakonasana) by trying to ‘stretch the mat with your feet’.

How to train the shoulder-flexors and depressors:

In Kneeling Plank:

Armpits (shoulder-depressor pectoralis major and latissimus dorsi) should push forward towards the hips while elbows and hands should push away from the hips. Hips and sitting bones should push towards the hands by which you activate the rectus abdominis as well. The knees should push away from the hands as if trying to do hip-extension. So in short, armpits and sitting-bones should be pushed towards each other while knees and hands should be pushed away from each other.

If you push the knees forward, that will train your rectus abdominis, but if you push the knees backwards, the deltoids will be trained more (as the hands will push forward) and the rectus abdominis will switch off.

In Downward Facing Dog:

Push sitting-bones and armpits towards each other, while arms and legs push away from each other. The hips and the knees try to extend; the ankles try to plantarflex (as if you want to push your feet into the ground) and the shoulders try to flex just like the wrists, meanwhile the elbows extend.

Our retreats are taking a big turn in a new direction. We are restructuring our attention towards opening up the week to create radical healing in response to people’s desire to get answers and discover what is happening to them in these shifting times.

We are coming together to create our own mastery. We want to bring our attention to being in charge of our own shifting. Pausing and ultimately releasing the constant reliance on asking anything / anyone from outside of us to always help us.

The aim being is to stop living in a cycle of needing to constantly better ourselves in a world that wants to constantly distract us into believing that we’re not either good enough or were not ready.

What if you knew of your own entirety ~ and you knew you could not fail? What would you do, who would you be?

We want to deepen into the teachings of bringing everything back to ourselves. There will be sessions in self-healing, releasing unserving habits, deprogramming conditioning, looking into the control settings of patterns, behaviors and genetic traits to ultimately come closer to restoring our factory settings.

Each person has varied levels of different emotions that will tend to govern their lives. Deep seeded thoughts of fear, anxiety, guilt, shame, doubt, grief, etc. will vary, but are present in all of us. What if your emotions were set to an automated setting and we were not in control of them as we are led to believe? And what if we were able to completely neutralize them from having any ill effect on us, forever? How would this feel? Who would we be without them?

This is the perfect opportunity for those wanting to make real changes in their lives, to resolve the unresolved. The possibility to transform comes from a commitment to take time to slow down, to connect to our own beating heart, to tangibly feel the experience of what it is to listen to our inner voice. Here is a space to cultivate energy and then apply it to deepen our intuition and connection, to be who we really are. The feeling is fantastic.

And we always have a lot of fun, connecting with new people, exploring new enriching ways of being, leaving us feeling energized and ready for taking all we’ve experienced back to our lives. There’s no better way to experience it all surrounded by nature, with yoga and Qi gong to and vibrant healing, living foods to support the week of diving deep.

And it just gets better, to support you coming to our next retreat we have offered a never to be repeated special offer for you and your partner or friend to attend at US$2000 twin share.

To reserve your spot email us now info@artofliferetreats.com for  30^th-5^th April/May 2016 retreat dates. And see website for all details www.artofliferetreats.com

Join us!!

Coconut Milk Chia Pudding with Fresh Mango, Mint and Lime

Chia seeds, a magical tiny little seed that expands when soaked and becomes jelly-like. Some people compare this to tapioca pudding. It is usually mixed in smoothies or on top of salads. This Chia Pudding recipe will surely taste like dessert while secretly being super healthy. All hail chia!

You will need:

For the Chia Pudding:

• 2 cups coconut milk (see recipe below)
• 1/3 cup chia seeds
• 1.5 tbsp sweetener of choice (raw honey/maple syrup)
• 1/3 tsp ground cinnamon

Toppings:

• 1 ripe mango, peeled and cubed/sliced
• handful of fresh mint (Moroccan mint goes really well)
• pinch of chia seeds
• pinch sesame seeds
• 1 tbsp coconut yogurt per serving (you can omit this if you don’t have any available, but it’s gorgeous with)
• A bit of freshly squeezed lime juice (don’t worry if you have none, it’s awesome without as well)
• optional: bee pollen

To make Coconut Milk:

• 2 cups water
• 1/2 cup coconut (dry, shredded, dessicated – whatever you have, just not flour)
• pinch sea salt flakes
• pinch vanilla seeds

How to make:

1. If you’re making coconut milk only for this recipe, the easiest way is to add everything to the blender, both the ingredients for the coconut milk and for the pudding, except the Chia seeds. Add: water, coconut (dry, shredded or dessicated), pinch sea salt, vanilla seeds, cinnamon and sweetener. Blitz until you get frothy milk.
2. For the purpose of this recipe, there is no need to strain the milk as the pulp will give the pudding more creaminess.
3. Pour the spiced coconut milk to a bowl or mason jar, add the chia seeds and give it a good stir or shake. Cover it and place in the fridge for at least 1 hour (until the chia fully expands and absorbs all the milk) or overnight.
4. Add the toppings and be prepared to be dazzled.
5. Serve chilled.