Darwin Yoga Space

05/06/2026

The Greek landscape is harsh.

But the contrast with the brightest of blue sky and the deepest of blue ocean is breathtaking 🥰.

And fills one with a sense of awe and wonder.

I remember walking on these brown hills surrounded by blue every day for a year on Hydra island.

It was 1984, I was 24 and didn’t have a clue what to do with my life.

Walking and finding a book on yoga philosophy in the house turned me around for the better.

42 years later I came back to do that again. And by the grace of God to teach as well!

But I didn’t walk on the hills this time.

I was on crutches, in week 9, 10 and 11 of post hip surgery.

But ghee was I ever so happy and grateful to be able to:

-🇬🇷be in Greece

-🇬🇷teach almost as if nothing had happened to my hip

-🇬🇷walk the long steep hill to dinner and back every night, with my trusted crutches.

In the meantime the group did numerous walks on Iraklia’s with Socrate ‘the adventurer extraordinaire’ and some guided by Fanis our host extraordinaire.

I call it more of a yoga holiday than a retreat because of all of the walking and swimming.

Isn’t yoga also experiencing a deep sense of awe and appreciation for the exquisite beauty of the land, sky and sea?

Once a yoga philosophy teacher suggested we approach life with a sense of wonder, awe and astonishment.

Easy to do on a Greek island for sure.
Can we find it in our day to day life?

In Yoga,
Carole

02/06/2026

Attending a yoga retreat means:

👍doing lots of yoga

👍eating great food

👍recharging one’s battery

👍leaning about a new culture

and something that we tend to underestimate: meeting new friendly, like minded people 🙋‍♀️🙋‍♂️.

Some go on being friends for life.

And for me: the joy of brigning people together 😊👌

02/06/2026

A little teaching on pratyahara to access vijnana kosha😊🙏.

30/05/2026

Yoga sees the body as made of layers (koshas), like Russian dolls that fit into one the other.

From the biggest to the smallest it goes like this:

🧅Physical or food body (annamaya kosha)

🧅Energy (pranamaya kosha)

🧅Mind (manomaya kosha)

🧅Intuition and wisdom (vijnanamaya kosha)

🧅Self (anandamaya kosha)

The grossest part of one’s being is the body which is made of food or ‘anna’ in Sanskrit.

Our body keeps on being recreated by the food we eat.

In affluent societies, the hyper abundance and availability of food is such that we lost the original purpose of food which is to nourish the physical body.

It has become a commodity, a way to satisfy the sense of taste and we tend to eat to excess as the high level of obesity can attest.

There is a lack of reverence for it.

During our Greek retreats we were treated to exquisite, tasty, nourishing food, with recipes handed down the generations.

Greek people have a deeply ingrained ‘food culture’ and we revelled in it.

We thanked Fanis’s mother for feeding us exquisite brunches every day and the local tavernas’ cooks to feed us great meals at night. 🙏

27/05/2026

Hands on adjustments: another gift handed down to us by BKS Iyengar 🙏.

👍 And yoga retreats are a great opportunity for me to use them on students and students on each other.

👍So much learning to be had.

Hands on adjustments: another gift handed down to us by BKS Iyengar.

And yoga retreats are a great opportunity for me to use them on students and students on each other.

So much learning to be had.

➡️The body responds to touch.

➡️Touch creates an indelible imprint in the body.

➡️New neurological pathways created.

🧍‍♀️🧍‍♂️The body gets reconfigured.

🤩And so is the mind.

Neuro plasticity at its best.

Om Om Om

Carole

Touch creates an indelible imprint in the body.

New neurological pathways are created.

The body gets reconfigured.

And so is the mind.

Neuro plasticity at its best.

Om Om Om

Carole

22/05/2026

That was last week. The last day of the second retreat.

Many students who booked for this retreat had canceled at the last minute, afraid of the war in Iran.

But hey quality not quantity is what matters 😊.

Hear what the students had to say 😊.

All the elements were there for all to leave with indelible memories. 🥰🙏🕉️🇬🇷

20/05/2026

20/05/2026

There are thousands of young people wanting to live a life better aligned with yoga principles and values.

Values that seem to be more and more elusive in the corporate, digital and increasingly conflicted world.

They travel the world in search of places where they can work in some yoga environment.

Nika is one of them and a rare find as she is seriously committed to her yoga practice.

She reminds me of myself when I found yoga.

So we hit it off :-)

And hatched a plan to chant the Gayatri mantra during savasana.

A treat for the students on their last class last week.

And a treat for us 🥰.

The Gayatri Mantra is among the oldest continuously transmitted and continuously recited sacred chants in human history.

Om bhūr bhuvaḥ svaḥ
tat savitur vareṇyam
bhargo devasya dhīmahi
dhiyo yo naḥ pracodayāt

It is traditionally understood as a meditation on the divine light of consciousness, often associated with the solar principle ‘Savitur’. And praying for that light to guide us and our lives .

Om Shanti
Let there be peace 🙏

18/05/2026

This post talks for itself.

And it doesn’t include walks and boat ride and hanging out at the port. All in a day at one of my Iyengar Greek island retreats.

16/05/2026

Trikonasana building blocks.
Like barre work for a dancer.
Scales for a musicien.
Live model drawing for a painter.
In paradise.