ZEN TEMPLE

Wild about yoga: finding movement and stillness in the trees on a Zen mindfulness and yoga retreat

It’s a beautiful June morning and I’m driving in the New Forest, across open heathland, passing pastures of ponies and ancient woodland. The cool morning sky blinks at me through the hedgerows. The air smells of summer. But I can’t enjoy any of it. I’m trying to find a treehouse study centre – the base for a Zen mindfulness and yoga retreat, and I’m late, and I’m lost.

It’s not been the beginning I expected. But perhaps I’ve missed the golden rule of mindfulness. As I arrive at the treehouse, a little flustered, and disoriented, my teachers Juliette Olivers and Scott Browns remind me to leave my expectations at the door, to just be. Their words do the trick, and after a cup of tea, thoughts of Sat Navs and wrong turns and timekeeping are replaced by just one feeling; that I have arrived.

Perhaps one of the best ways to slow down is to leave ‘real life’ behind and spend a bit of time on your own (or in my case, with thirteen others), in nature. The spectacular Treehouse Study Centre resides in 40 acres of ancient broadleaf woodland at the heart of the Beaulieu estate, in Hampshire’s Old Forest.

Nestled high up in the treetops, its classrooms, turrets, viewing platforms and rope bridges provide an inspirational environment to change perspective and truly feel you’ve escaped. We begin the packed, one-day retreat with a Vinyasa Flow yoga class out on the veranda, led by Juliette, a Bournemouth-based Hatha and Vinyasa Flow yoga teacher, and organiser of this retreat.