Organise a yoga retreat in 5 steps

Organise a yoga retreat in 5 steps

Organ­is­ing a yoga retreat requires care­ful prepa­ra­tion of many details, both at the plan­ning stage and dur­ing the retreat itself, when you will have to han­dle a mul­ti­tude of tasks. That is why we have put togeth­er this guide that will help you organ­ise your upcom­ing yoga retreat!

Con­tents

  1. Prepar­ing beforehand
  2. Choos­ing a venue
  3. Plan­ning activities
  4. Pro­mot­ing your retreat
  5. Com­mu­ni­cat­ing with your group
  6. Var­i­ous tips

1. Preparing beforehand

Have you ever attend­ed a yoga retreat? It may be ben­e­fi­cial for you to expe­ri­ence one from a par­tic­i­pan­t’s point of view before you start organ­is­ing your own. You can even ask your yoga teacher if it is pos­si­ble to assist him/her dur­ing his/her next retreat. Take notes on what you want to repli­cate or not dur­ing your own yoga retreats. For­get what you expect to expe­ri­ence as a yoga retreat organ­is­er. Talk to teacher-friends to get their feed­back, or join forums or Face­book groups.

Even if it can take place in an exot­ic place, guid­ing a yoga retreat is not a relax­ing expe­ri­ence. That’s why you need to plan qui­et moments every day of your retreat. After all, you must first take care of your­self, and set an exam­ple for your participants.

Con­trol your ener­gy and expens­es wise­ly. How much time, mon­ey and ener­gy are you will­ing to invest? Which part do you want to con­trol and which part do you want to delegate?

Make your yoga retreat your own. There are so many of them today that you absolute­ly must dif­fer­en­ti­ate your­self. To do this, when plan­ning your retreat, make sure to inject your own style and per­son­al­i­ty into it. It will also help you choose a loca­tion. Think back to the cities or coun­tries in which you have done your best yoga ses­sions and find sim­i­lar locations.

2. Choosing a venue

Once you have cho­sen an area that match­es your yoga retreat theme, you must find a venue that will wel­come you. Make a list of any inter­est­ing venue in your cho­sen area. In the best-case sce­nario, you can vis­it your 3 favourite places and then make a final choice. If this is not pos­si­ble, com­mu­ni­cate often with your cho­sen venue and ask for as much infor­ma­tion as pos­si­ble to make sure that it meets your expec­ta­tions. You can’t say to your­self “we’ll see once we’re there” — every­thing must be clear before the retreat starts.

The venue must be pro­fes­sion­al, avail­able and organ­ised. Good qual­i­ty food and a com­fort­able yoga space are pri­or­i­ties. Also con­sid­er things from the venue’s point of view — its staff does not nec­es­sar­i­ly know your expec­ta­tions. The more you com­mu­ni­cate clear and pre­cise needs, the high­er the chance that they will pro­vide you with a ser­vice that meets your expectations.

3. Planning activities

Cre­at­ing a pro­gramme of activ­i­ties is impor­tant when organ­is­ing a yoga retreat. It will also feed your com­mu­ni­ca­tion mate­r­i­al. How­ev­er, don’t plan every­thing down to the minute either — remain flex­i­ble and spon­ta­neous. Each group of par­tic­i­pants is dif­fer­ent, so you will have to adapt by get­ting to know them. Give every­one the free­dom to live their own experience.

Give your par­tic­i­pants time off between yoga ses­sions — it’s a rest­ing trip after all! And you should make any non-yoga activ­i­ty — such as hik­ing or surf­ing — optional.

4. Promoting your retreat

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion is key when organ­is­ing your first yoga retreat. First, aim to attract peo­ple who attend your tra­di­tion­al class­es. You can offer them a dis­count for the retreat since they are already pay­ing for – or sub­scrib­ing to — your class­es. You can also offer them dis­counts if they rec­om­mend your yoga retreat to a friend. This cre­ates a vir­tu­ous cir­cle: your stu­dents bring friends, who bring their friends, etc.

Remem­ber to col­lect every­one’s email address. Send reg­u­lar infor­ma­tion about the retreat — emails sent ear­ly in the morn­ing between Mon­day and Wednes­day are gen­er­al­ly more read than others.

Also cre­ate a web­site, or a Weezevent mini-site where you can store this infor­ma­tion per­ma­nent­ly. The same goes for Face­book with a Page or Group ded­i­cat­ed to your retreat.

Widen your audi­ence by organ­is­ing yoga class­es in dif­fer­ent stu­dios some­times. Once you have organ­ised a few retreats, your most loy­al atten­dees will keep com­ing back.

5. Communicating with your group

Once peo­ple have booked their space for your retreat, you should let them know what to expect. You should also col­lect some of their details, whether for you or for the venue. If you have cre­at­ed a com­pre­hen­sive reg­is­tra­tion form, you will have every­thing you need: dietary require­ments, med­ical cer­tifi­cate, yoga expe­ri­ence lev­el, any his­to­ry of injuries, emer­gency contact.

We then rec­om­mend to send 3 emails spaced out before the yoga retreat:

  • Trav­el tips 
    • Some of your par­tic­i­pants may not be used to trav­el­ling. Give them some key infor­ma­tion about what to bring with them and things they should not forget.
  • Instruc­tions for the stay 
    • Set some rules of good behav­iour accord­ing to your pref­er­ences: time­li­ness, alco­hol con­sump­tion, etc. It is crit­i­cal to com­mu­ni­cate those as far in advance as possible.
  • Pro­gramme of the retreat 
    • This will allow every­one to imag­ine the retreat and will cre­ate a feel­ing of excitement.

6. Various tips

Think about insur­ance and your lia­bil­i­ty. You should require that your par­tic­i­pants pur­chase trav­el insur­ance before the retreat. You can also ask them to sign a disclaimer.

Be cre­ative when prepar­ing for your yoga retreat. Most of these events repli­cate the same for­mu­la, so yours should stand out by offer­ing unusu­al activ­i­ties. The more dif­fi­cult it is to repli­cate the pro­gramme of your retreat, the more attrac­tive it will be for your participants!

You now have all the cards to organ­ise your yoga retreat. All you need now is an all-in-one tick­et­ing tool and your prepa­ra­tion is com­plete! Dis­cov­er the ben­e­fits of our online tick­et­ing solu­tion by click­ing below:

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