Surrey Hills Yoga and Mountain Bike Retreat

Surrey Hills Yoga & Mountain Bike Retreat

More information and booking here ~ Trail Unknown's Website

Embrace the coming of winter with a weekend in a quaint 1920's National Trust chalet nestled in the Surrey Hills, an area of outstanding natural beauty.

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The weekend is co-hosted by my dear friends and incredible humans Tom and Hugo of Trail Unknown who will lead be leading scenic mountain bike rides throughout the day. We will be cycling through beautiful forests and explore the stunning surrounding areas. Mountain bikes will be provided for those who need them. ​I will be leading yoga, nidra and meditations in the mornings and evenings.

​We will be based near Leith Hill, the highest point in the South East of England, offering a network of leafy cycle paths and friendly mountain bike tracks that offer views all the way to the South Downs. Fingers crossed we get those crispy clear mornings that make the beginnings of winter so magical and golden.

​The theme of the weekend will be around embracing the coming of winter so we'll wrap up warm, get outside, see the sights by bike, put smiles on our faces, get muddy and come home to enjoy hot showers, delicious food, a roaring open fire and restful yoga nidra practices.

Tom and Hugo will be providing meals on the Friday evening, Saturday morning, Saturday evening and Sunday morning. For lunches we will drop into the little cute villages. The weekend will be wholly embracing of beginners to both yoga and mountain biking.

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LOGISTICS

Exchange

Earlybird price: £190 (up to 14th October)

Full price: £220 (from 14th October)

Booking

Tom and Hugo at Trail Unknown are managing the bookings for this one. Registration link will take you to their booking page or you can click here.

Where and When

Henman Bunkhouse near Leith Hill, Surrey Hills

Arrive from 5pm Friday 30th November

Departure 5pm Sunday 2nd December

Mountain Biking

Tom and Hugo (Trail Unknown) are British Cycling Level 2 qualified mountain bike leaders and full time adventure lovers. ​We will ride for a gentle 2 - 3 hours each day, starting with some skills games to make sure everyone is comfortable. We will be offering guidance and handy tips for building your confidence on the mountain bike trails. ​We'd classify this style of mountain biking as 'scenic cross country' so it will be friendly for beginners with little challenges, and also enjoyable to riders with more experience. You will need to have a basic level of fitness. Mountain bike hire is included but feel free to bring your own if you have one.

​Yoga

Yoga allows us a moment of respite from the relentless pace of modern life, giving us a taste of what life can be like when we slow down and simplify. Yoga gives us explicit permission to stop and rest; to start to tune back into our natural rhythms and our true nature, to discover who we are behind our social conditioning, what is expected of us and what we do. Yoga teaches us to value ourselves in terms of the quality of our relationships and health rather than our possessions and wealth. It provides the tools to help us to rewire our brains, reminding us how to relax, think and feel, allowing us to better understand and process our emotions and make better choices.

About Carly's Teaching Style

I seek to promote a culture of inner listening and self-enquiry in my classes, inviting students to listen inwardly before moving outwardly, over time developing a strong relationship to their own unique inner teacher. Our movement has become constrained, habitual, repetitive and rigid, yet another way for us to keep our bodies under tight control. I like to invite a surrender to the flow, a release from the expectations of consistency, predictability and infinite resource and a deeper dive into infinite pool of wisdom within. It is here that we experience freedom beyond form and are empowered to practice in a way that is fluid and adaptable to the waxing and waning of our needs and natures.

​Accomodation

Henman Bunkhouse is a quaint 1920’s Swiss Chalet style bungalow located on the National Trust’s Leith Hill Estate. The bunkhouse can accommodate up to 16 people in two six person dormitory style rooms and a four person room, with two female bathrooms and two male bathrooms containing baths, showers and toilets. The bunkhouse has a fully equipped kitchen, large dining space, ten parking bays, private garden, washing machine, drying room, central heating and an open log fire (wood and marshmellows will be supplied).

Food and Drink

To give a few examples of the meals we cook; sweet potato and mango curry with cashews, burritos with refried beans, pineapple and peppers. And for the mornings; cinnamon and banana porridge, yoghurts, seasonal fruits and nuts. We can cater for most dietary requirements, please just make sure we know about them. Feel free to bring your own lunch food and snacks.

​What should I bring

• Lots of warm clothes, waterproofs, spare shoes, winter ware
• Your sleeping bag, pillow and extra blankets
• Your bike (we can arrange bike hire for you)

​Rewilding

Wild as a word stems from the word ‘wildeor’ meaning self-willed and wilderness from ‘wildeorness’, the home of self willed animals, so to allow nature to be wild is to allow the flora and fauna to behave and live intuitively, freely and without restriction including our very own species; humans. Rewilding has since come to be used in many different contexts, including the rewilding of human life, allowing humans to behave, think, feel and live in ways that we have long forgotten. Rewilding our lives to remember that deep in our bellies and our hearts we are still wild animals, clawing at the walls of our self-made enclosures, desperate to escape domestication and live self-willed lives. All of our striving, seeking and struggling is just years of evolution manifesting in our modern minds as they adapt to a strange and unnatural environment but when we reconnect to our natural home and our natural state we are reminded that life doesn’t need to be so complicated. Rewilding reminds us that our purpose is and always has been to simply exist, to revel in the experience of being alive.

‘Rewilding is about becoming re-enchanted with nature. It is about nurturing our sense of wonder.’ ~ Marc Bekoff

Nature and Health

We are not supposed to live full tilt, constantly under attack from a barrage of external and internal stimulus, our ancestors would have shifted between short bursts of reactive stress (running from predators) and long periods of responsive recovery (digesting in the sun). Our modern way of living violates this natural cycle and leaves us with a baseline of perpetual stress. Nature is a natural antidote to our unnatural lives and has been scientifically proven to reduce the levels of cortisol and adrenaline in our bodies. Yoga and meditation are the perfect accompaniments to nature as they too work with the body and mind to promote relaxation, which can overtime help us to bring our baseline back to a more natural, balanced state.

For more information and booking: http://www.trailunknown.com/rewilding-retreats-yoga-meditation-mountainbiking-exmoor.html