Why do people go on healthy holidays?

“The best six doctors anywhere… And no one can deny it… Are sunshine, water, rest and air… Exercise and diet”

A while ago we ran a survey asking a few key questions about people’s holiday choices. We thought you might like to know the results so here are the six top reasons why people choose to go on a healthy holiday:

1. Some proper “me time”   Top of the list was “me time”.  A healthy holiday is designed to be all about you – a holiday where everything is taken care of so you really can just “be”.  You’ll leave rested, refreshed, nourished and reconnected. And ready to go back to your everyday life with renewed energy.

2. Inspired to be healthy   Coming a close second, people said they came on a healthy holiday seeking inspiration, tools and techniques to help them to lead a more healthy life style.

3. Learning from top teachers and trainers A close third in our survey was the chance to spend focused time improving your yoga practice, fitness levels and health with some of the top teachers, chefs and trainers around. We hand pick everyone on our teams so you can be sure of  encountering consistently high quality, experienced people.

4. Sunshine & adventures Pretty much everyone loves a bit of sunshine and trying something new is good for the spirit. So whether it’s a new country, trying out yoga or spending a week with a group of strangers, you can go for it while knowing you’re in safe and experienced hands.

5. Being looked after: Let’s face it, it’s sooooo nice to be looked after sometimes. Not only do we organise everything and make sure your holiday runs smoothly, we make sure you feel safe and cared for too.  We feed you delicious food, pamper you, take you exploring, hang out with you and give you space if you need alone time.

6. Meeting new people: We’re a pretty friendly, down to earth bunch and while we take your well being seriously we like our guests to have fun too. There is always plenty of laughter to share and over the years we have seen many new and long lasting friendships formed between our guests. Awww – we find that really heart warming and inspiring.

“Life moves pretty fast.If you don’t stop & look around once in a while you could miss it”

Ready to book yourself a healthy holiday?  Check out our holiday calender here. 

Recipes From The Retreat Kitchen

Here is another recipe from our holistic chef, Hayley, taken from her forthcoming e-book “Recipes from the Retreat Kitchen”.

Hayley says: “Energy balls are an amazing snack food to have to hand. Dense and packed full with a combination of nuts, seeds, dried fruits, spices, and superfood supplements you can create any number of variations.

My favourite energy balls are based on the following:

Ground nuts – grind nuts in a food processor to a flour for a more fudgy finished product or leave a little chunky if you prefer. The more they are ground the better the mixture sticks I find.

Ground seeds – sunflower, pumpkin, flax, sesame, hulled hemp

Dried Fruits – I use dates, prunes, figs, mulberries, goji berries or apricots. When you add the fruit and blend the mixture starts to stick together and form a dough.

Spices – add cinnamon, ground ginger, cardamom powder or five spices and play with different flavours. Or even a touch of chilli or cayenne!

Superfood supplements – give a boost to your energy balls by adding spirulina, wheatgrass powder, hemp protein powder, maca or lacuma

Other – Raw chocolate powder, carob, orange zest, coconut

Top tips – If your mix still seems a little dry you can choose to add more dried fruits or instead a touch of liquid sweetener such as honey or rice syrup. A little coconut oil can help too if needed.

Squidge the mixture between your hands and bring it together. Then break off pieces to roll to the desired size. You can then roll your finished balls in coconut, cacao, cinnamon hulled hemp or sesame seeds.

Refrigerate. The longest I have kept any for was 4 days and they were fine. I have been told they freeze well too.

This recipe is from Hayley’s forthcoming ebook : Recipes From The Retreat Kitchen.  Watch this space for a launch date and you’ll be able to download the full version from Hayley’s website.

Where can you find Hayley?  Hayley will be creating her amazing retreat menus in Gascony 23-29 June, Italy 1- 7 September and the Cotswolds 22-24 November for Reclaim Your Self this year.  She will also be cooking and running cooking classes on our Mind Spa holiday in Tuscany 11-15 September - a rare and exciting to opportunity for those who want to get some amazing insights, recipes and tips from Hayley.

Recipes From The Retreat Kitchen

Hayley North, our holistic head chef, has offered to share some of her food wisdom and recipes ahead of the launch of her new website and recipe book.  Yipeeee!

“For me real cooking that comes from the soul. It is a ‘felt’ thing, it is sensory and intuitive. Often a recipe works one day and not another, or works for one person and not another, or works in certain environments and not others.

A recipe can provide guidelines and a framework for those who feel scared or uneducated about food and cooking.

However, I like to encourage the awakening of the inner ‘knowing’, the felt sense. You will come to feel what are the right amounts, consistency and texture of a dish in time. So let go, play, experiment and get to know your food inside and out, literally!” Hayley North, Holistic Chef

MAKING MILKS FROM NUTS & SEEDS

Guaranteed, this process will blow your mind and it is so satisfying! Say goodbye now to cartons and tetrapaks and welcome into your life the joy of making your own milks.

My favourites are almonds, hazelnuts, brazil nuts, macadamia nuts, hemp seeds, pumpkin seeds or the seeds from a fresh pumpkin or butternut squash.

Method:

For a nut milk you need to soak the nuts in water overnight and then rinse thoroughly in the morning.

Add to the blender with approx double the quantity of water to nuts. Feel free to adjust this if you prefer a thicker or thinner milk.

Blend until as smooth as possible and then strain through either a nut milk bag, muslin cloth or fine sieve. (use the nut pulp for the fibre breads, cakes, in porridge…all sorts of things).

The liquid is your basic milk and this should keep for approx 3 days. Store in an airtight glass bottle if you can.

This milk has not been sweetened in any way. You can use it as it is for any purpose you would normal milk. You could add dates when you blend for a little sweetness but why change the yummy natural flavours of the nuts? Adding the extra sweetness feeds into those little sugar loving microbes in our bodies, just waiting for that next hit!

Hemp seeds and dry pumpkin seeds don’t need to be soaked overnight, just for a few hours. Make the milk the same way.

A really special thing to do is to use the seeds from a fresh squash or pumpkin. These do not need soaking, you just carry on making the milk in the same way.

It is so rich in nutrition and a great way to use them up. They make a gorgeous deep orange milk, great to make ‘sunshine’ porridge with.

DID YOU KNOW…

Nuts and seeds contain smaller amounts of phytic acids compared to grains, but they do contain enzyme inhibitors. Soaking nuts and seeds before use will neutralize these enzyme inhibitors, and help encourage the production of beneficial enzymes. These enzymes, in turn, increase many vitamins, especially B vitamins. It also makes these nuts much easier to digest and the nutrients more easily absorbed.

This recipe is from Hayley’s forthcoming ebook : Recipes From The Retreat Kitchen.  Watch this space for a launch date and you’ll be able to download the full version from Hayley’s website.

Where can you find Hayley?  Hayley will be creating her amazing retreat menus in Gascony 23-29 June, Italy 1- 7 September and the Cotswolds 22-24 November for Reclaim Your Self this year.  She will also be cooking and running cooking classes on our Mind Spa holiday in Tuscany 11-15 September - a rare and exciting to opportunity for those who want to get some amazing insights, recipes and tips from Hayley.

Meet Hayley North, our chef

In February this year, the very wonderful Hayley North joined the team as our new head chef. Hayley is often asked how did you end up doing this job? What’s your story?  So here it is… Hayley’s story:

Doing kitchen time…  Hayley started working in catering aged 14 in a working man’s cabaret club in the West Midlands and spent several years working in as many different roles related to catering as you can imagine.  From being a waitress to working in a well known fast food establishment, working in bars, washing dishes and being a kitchen assistant – you name it, Hayley has done it!

Urban adventures… During this time, she was training to be a dancer and the catering jobs paid the bills. She moved to London to train at two renown dance schools, fully embraced the urban dance scene of the late 80′s, early 90′s and became a regular on the underground hip hop dance scene!

Time to heal… In 1996 she moved to Brighton and found herself suffering from severe menstrual health problems. Searching for pain relief other than pills and potential surgery, Hayley tried yoga and found that it worked! She went off on a yoga retreat in Greece and while she was there she was introduced to yogi food and suddenly everything changed.  For the first time Hayley discovered healthy eating…

A new path unfolds… This was a start of a new path in her life.  She began to experiment with food, researching, studying and learning to cook healing foods – all the time feeling better and better. Empowered and inspired, she began to change her choice of catering jobs and in 2003 she a job cooking vegetarian healthy food and managing the cafe of a yoga/holistic health centre in Hove.

Time to learn… Her passion and knowledge of healthy cooking grew as she immersed herself in the vibrant alternative health scene in Brighton. She met many inspirational people and learned as much as she could from experts in natural nutrition, macro-biotics, ayurveda, chinese 5 elements and raw food. Hayley mastered her craft, found her approach and began to develop her intuitive way of working with food. She took herself off to India where she ran a holistic kitchen at a yoga centre and used the opportunity to learn more about Indian cuisine.

Retreat inspiration… While all this was happening Hayley would head to Italy every year to attend her teacher, John Stirk’s, yoga retreat.  As her knowledge and experience of food grew she noticed that, even though the food on these retreats was tasty wholefood, it wasnt fully supporting her yoga practice and it didn’t match the food that she was creating. So she decided she wanted to try cooking for yogi’s and creating menus that fully supported the journey they took when they did a week of intensive yoga on a retreat.

Success story… Hayley started by running her own annual retreats with a group of friends in Cornwall and creating intuitive menus where the food worked in tune with the yoga journey.

Before long yoga teachers were inviting Hayley to cook on their retreats/workshops, including her own teacher John Stirk. She was snapped up by the inimitable Healthy Holiday Company, cooking for their intensive health and fitness retreats and last year the Italian yoga centre where she used to be a guest invited her to be one of their chefs and the catering co-ordinator.

She has since cooked on over 50 retreats and has travelled all over the world. More recently she has also worked with Honestly Healthy on their fridge fill project, chef training and developing recipes for them.  She runs educational workshops and twice a year she runs her own equinox retreats with natural nutritionist Kirsten Chick where they support their students on a deep immersion into yoga and natural nutrition.

Hayley and Reclaim Your Self… And now we have managed to get her board. Yipeeeee!!  Hayley says “I am really excited to be part of a team and to be able to work consistently with people who I really resonate with on  every level.  There are so many creative possibilities ahead of us. I want Reclaim Your Self to be as known for it’s food integrity as it is for its fantastic venues and teachers”   And that is music to our ears I can tell you!  Here’s to many fruitful years of working together to give our guests the most amazing healthy holiday they ever had.

Where can you find her?  Hayley will be creating her amazing retreat menus in Gascony 23-29 June, Italy 1- 7 September and the Cotswolds 22-24 November for Reclaim Your Self this year.  She will also be cooking and running cooking classes on our Mind Spa holiday in Tuscany 11-15 September - a rare and exciting to opportunity for those who want to get some amazing insights, recipes and tips from Hayley.

In response to demand, Hayley is now developing a retreat recipe book, a new website  and monthly newsletter. Watch this space for more news on that, as we’ll send updates once it’s all launched. You can be sure that they will all be amazing resources for anyone wanting to work with food in a healing way.

Watch out for some of Hayley’s recipes on this blog over the next couple of weeks too.

Sri Lanka retreat review by Jools Sampson

In February we returned to our jungle villa in the Kegalle region of Sri Lanka for another yoga retreat. A magical time was had by all. Here’s my story…

A week long yoga retreat in the jungle is a journey. It’s beautiful and peaceful but its also powerful and at times pretty intense.

Our guests arrived in Colombo, mostly tired from busy lives and long journeys. We loaded them into the minibuses and whisked them out of the urban madness and away to the jungle (with a quick coconut stop along the way!)

After settling everyone into their rooms, a gentle stretch class to undo some of the impact of travelling and a nourishing evening meal, everyone was in bed by 9pm. Good job too as the local temple blasted out some extra early prayers at 6am the next day!

Helen Noakes, our Scaravelli yoga teacher, had arrived in Sri Lanka a few days earlier, inspired and energised after finishing a week retreat with her own teacher, Elizabeth Pauncz.

I love watching Helen at work. She is a superb teacher and holds a group with such ease and charm.

 

Sometimes people misjudge Scaravelli style yoga, thinking the slow pace means you don’t “do” anything. Watching our guests slowing down day by day then releasing and moving their bodies into challenging asana reminded me again that it’s harder than you think to do something slowly!

It can be very moving and humbling watching our guests on their yoga journey and this week was no exception.

We had a new chef on board for Sri Lanka, Hayley. She blew us away with her unbelievably delicious yogi food. Hayley is an intuitive and experienced chef, adjusting her menus to suit the group’s mood and needs.

Watching her work in complete harmony with her local team, despite the fact that they didnt speak each other’s language was an absolute joy.

This was a retreat (rather than a holiday, which we do in other locations) where we guide our guests through a journey and create a programme intended to be a fairly profound experience.

It can be a roller coaster sometimes – with moments of pure joy and bliss, feeling so happy to be in such beautiful place, tempered with feeling deeply tired, homesick or hitting a wall in yoga.

The first few days are always quite buzzy as everyone gets to know each other and then, usually around day 3, most people experience some level of discomfort.

We call it the wobbles and often our guests crave treats and sometimes feel a bit grumpy or sad!

We guide them through, supporting them with kindness, empathy, laughter and chats as well as nourishing food and nurturing yoga.

After that day, the mood changes and there is a sort of invincible feeling in the group.

Amazing things start the happen in yoga, a stillness and connection to the amazing nature all around us pervades. The food tastes even more delicious and we all start to feel really comfortable with each other. It really is a magical feeling.

In between yoga classes, our guests spend their time having massages and pampering treatments with myself and Helen then relaxing, napping or swimming and sunbathing.

On our penultimate day we went to see the elephants. Watching them hanging out in the river was an amazing experience. To be so close to such beautiful animals was incredible and watching the babies bundling about, standing on each other’s heads and sliding off rocks was great.

Suddenly it was the last day and no one wanted it to end. Always a good sign!

But it was time to go and we set our guests up for their journey back with a king coconut and packed lunch and we waved them goodbye. A few hours later it was time for the team to leave too, tired but proud and happy and already making plans for the next one.

You can watch a little movie of our adventures here. And if you want to take the journey yourself next year, email us at info@reclaimyourself.co.uk or see our holiday diary.