Autoimmune Thriving Yoga Retreat Recap & Scholarship Announcement

The Autoimmune Thriving Retreat was a complete success despite a few hiccups! We came, we yogaed, we learned about Reiki and we ate a delicious fresh meal!

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With the sun streaming in the windows on Sunday morning, I got up to let the dogs out. After making warm lemon water & coffee, I curled up beside our pup Rogue on the couch to meditate. I grabbed my notebook with my class notes written out and turned on my playlist. I then verbally taught my empty living room the morning restorative yoga class to practice.

11:30 am couldn’t come quickly enough. The morning seemed to go by so slowly!

Finally, I jumped in the car and drove up to Strathmere, a short 15 mins drive from our house. I found my Reiki guest speaker, Jo Tucker, sitting by the fire pit. A few women had also started to arrive. We gathered around our lunch table while waiting for the yoga room to open up. A yoga class was in the yoga room just before us so as we waited for them to vacate the room. I ran in like a mad woman to help clean up and set up the class. My set up called for 2 bolsters, 2 blocks and a blanket on everyone’s mat. Jo and I then set up the mats around the room near a wall space.

Restorative Yoga Practice

The wall space was important for legs up the wall pose at the end of practice. With 8 people in attendance, we actually had to close & lock the door and have one lady use that space.

Here’s a list of some of the things that didn’t go as planned but I’m just laughing about now:

  • My phone wouldn’t connect to the blue tooth speaker
  • We opened the windows as the room was quite warm and could hear people in the hot tub below.
  • The retreat cafe was quite noisy with the lunchtime crowd.
  • During the last few resting poses, someone from Strathmere kept knocking on the door to bring us our smoothies. I tried to ignore the knocking but after the third knock, one of the ladies whispered “I think you should get that!” to which I responded “yup I guess I should” LOL

None of these things seemed to bother anyone. Here’s hoping it was just their yoga teacher that was slightly worried it would ruin their experience.

alt="Autoimmune Thriving Retreat Yoga"
alt="Jo Tucker"
alt="Autoimmune Thriving Retreat Yoga"
alt="Autoimmune Thriving Retreat Yoga

The Yoga Playlist

Reiki Guest Speaker

After grabbing our smoothies (Arugula, Green Apple & Pineapple), readjusted our set up to get comfy, and got to listen to Jo Tucker tell us all about Reiki. She shared what it can do for people on a healing journey and her practice with clients. From there we moved over to the Retreat side and devoured our lunch around a long table. Lunch was absolutely amazing. From non-stop conversation, great food and laughter around the table you couldn’t have wiped the smile off my face if you tried.

Autoimmune Thriving Retreat Paleo 3-Course Lunch

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alt="Autoimmune Thriving Retreat Lunch"

I cannot wait to host the next one! I’m thinking the fall…

Autoimmune Thriving Scholarship

Ok so now the scholarship! As a part of the Autoimmune Thriving brand, I want to give back to the autoimmune community every time I do something for a profit. I set aside 10% of the overall profits from the Autoimmune Thriving Retreat to be able to gift someone in the Ottawa area (who can’t always take advantage of holistic therapies) with a massage from my RMT.

All you have to do is nominate someone or send in your story to apply yourself to robynbaldwin @ gmail . com. I’ll accept applications until May 21st and then get in contact with someone to arrange for the massage!

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