Suryalila: A Magnificent Yoga Retreat in Southern Spain

I have been practising, studying and teaching yoga my whole adult life, ever since I took my first yoga class in India in 1975. I have taught yoga extensively all over the world. In 2002, I created a beautiful yoga studio in Massachusetts called Frog Lotus Yoga. Six years later, when I was ready to make some major changes in my life, and live somewhere different, I gave up the studio. Fortunately a great fellow yogini, Jennifer Yarro, appeared in my life, to take the studio over and, happily, Frog Lotus Yoga Studio is still flourishing today.

Whilst running the studio I had also started travelling around the world teaching the Frog Lotus Yoga International Yoga Teacher Training Programs. Since the trainings ran as three-week intensives, I would rent a beautiful Yoga Retreat Centre in an exotic location, such as Costa Rica, Bali, Mexico, Thailand, Portugal or Italy and hold the Intensives there. This meant that someone else was providing the facilities, accommodation and meals, as well as the Yoga Hall and all I had to do was to show up and teach a great training.

After teaching five trainings a year for ten years at various retreat centres around the world, I began to experience some dissatisfaction with many of the retreat centres I was staying at. My standards were high. I wanted to be in a beautiful and peaceful location, and I also wanted the students to feel very comfortable and supported in a seamless way, so they could focus solely on studying and the life-changing journey they were experiencing. My trainings had also grown in popularity and had become quite large in size, which meant I needed accommodation for up to 50 participants, as well as a spacious yoga space.

There are plenty of smaller Yoga Retreat Centres around the world, but not so many larger ones; so my choices had become more limited. Another issue was that I was not very happy with the food served at many of the retreat centres. Having a great interest in nutrition and healthy organic vegetarian food, I often found the food lacking in quality, flavour and nutritional value. I also like to only eat organic, and preferably local, and this is not always easy to find.

I finally came to the conclusion that what I really wanted was to be able to control the whole experience on the trainings, so my students would feel completely nourished on every level. That was when I realised I would have to do it myself and create my own Yoga Retreat Centre. It also occurred to me that I probably wasn’t the only yoga teacher in search of the perfect retreat centre, so I surmised that if I created it, the yoga world would come.

I decided southern Europe was the right location for my project, as it wasn’t already swamped with Retreat Centres like some of the locations I had favoured.

I joined forces with a few old friends and we set about to find the right place. Within a year we had found it; a beautiful old olive farm in the heart of Andalusia, Spain. After involving various investors and many legal negotiations we were ready to move in by October 2011. Suryalila (cosmic play of the sun) Retreat Centre was born!

The first year was very challenging, navigating Spanish bureaucracy and setting the place up to get a hotel licence. I spent one month in Bali furniture shopping all day and we shipped four containers of furniture over. We figured that was preferable to becoming an Ikea showcase!

One of my passions is interior design, so I let my imagination run wild and continue to do so, as we constantly improve and upgrade the space. My dream from the beginning was to build a huge magnificent Yoga Hall. This took a few years to manifest, but now the amazing Om Dome, with its Buddha eyes, lords over us. This spectacular yoga temple is usually full of happy yogis, practising and loving the space.

My wild imaginings continue to miraculously come to fruition and we are currently in the process of building a gorgeous hexagonal and sustainable straw bale third Yoga Hall, as well as an ecological sauna for colder winter nights. We are all very excited about these new projects.

Suryalila is pure magic. It is hard to convey the depth of its natural beauty and wonderful sense of expansiveness, with its 360 degree vistas of rolling hills, lakes, and fields of sunflowers, stretching as far as the eye can see. And the vastness of the wide blue sky; the remarkable quality of light in the Costa del Luz; the brilliant sunsets every night over the Bornos Lake and the breath-taking star-encrusted mystery of the clear night sky.

After much hard work and several generations of chefs, we have finally been able to serve the food that I dreamed of; abundant and delicious local organic vegetables and fruits, prepared with so much skill and love by our wonderful international chefs. We harvest our olives and make our own organic cold-pressed liquid gold. We have a flock of happy chickens providing us with eggs and we grow many of our own fruits and vegetables in our expanding vegetable garden. We supplement our crop with produce from local organic farms. This year we also opened a juice bar, that serves juices, smoothies and wheat-grass shots. Our food is already becoming famous, as many guests post photos of our buffets on Facebook and Instagram.

I am most grateful for the staff who form our amazing team and work so harmoniously with me at Suryalila. The right people were miraculously attracted to the project. Everyone is obviously happy in their work and loves providing the best possible experience for the guests. We all get on very well and this creates a wonderful atmosphere to relax into for everyone that comes. You can tell immediately that “love is our religion” and it is really this that makes Suryalila so extraordinary.

We have been open almost four years now and it couldn’t be going any better. Many great yoga teachers have found their way to us. We were thrilled to host Tiffany Cruikshank this year and look forward to welcoming her back for several more trainings. We are also very excited to be hosting Sarah Powers next May and many other world class yoga teachers.

We cater for yoga teachers bringing their own groups for Yoga Holidays or trainings as well as independent guests, who come on their own or with a friend, to enjoy a peaceful break, eat scrumptious food and take some great yoga classes, which we offer daily. I also hold my own Yoga Teacher Trainings at Suryalila and feel completely fulfilled and enriched by the fact that I am now offering an outstanding all round Yoga Teacher Training experience for my students.

Suryalila Rocks! Somebody pinch me!