I'm Teaching on a Yoga Retreat in the French Pyrenees This October — Here's Why You Should Come
October 2026 · Clare Maddalena, Senior Yoga Teacher & LushTums Founder
I'm Teaching on a Yoga Retreat in the French Pyrenees This October — Here's Why You Should Come
Something I've learned from eighteen years of teaching: the people most likely to tell themselves they "can't really take the time" for a retreat are the ones who need one most. I say this without irony, because I have been that person more times than I'd like to admit.
So I want to tell you about Soul of the Pyrenees — a retreat I'm genuinely thrilled to be teaching on this October — and I want to make the case that if you're a yoga teacher, a birth worker, or simply someone who gives a lot and is quietly running low, this might be exactly what you're looking for.
The Retreat: What It Is and Where
Soul of the Pyrenees runs 2nd to 6th October 2026 at La Taillede — an ancient Catalan farmhouse at 950 metres in the Pyrénées-Orientales region of France. The yoga space is open to mountain air and surrounded by the kind of silence that you can actually feel. On clear days, the views reach all the way to the Mediterranean.
The retreat is led by Alistair Crompton of Yoga Mountain Run, who has spent over a decade guiding people through mountain landscapes and has forgotten more about the Pyrenees than most people ever learn. I'm joining to lead the somatic movement and yoga nidra sessions — two practices that sit at the heart of my teaching and that I think deserve a lot more space than a regular class schedule allows.
Twelve participants maximum. Five days. A full and beautifully structured daily programme.
Why This Is Particularly Good for Yoga Teachers
As yoga teachers, we spend a lot of time holding space for other people. Which is a genuine privilege. It's also, over time, a particular kind of depletion — one that doesn't always get named.
A retreat like this isn't a CPD course (though what you experience in the somatic and nidra sessions will absolutely inform your teaching). It's something arguably more important: an opportunity to be a student again. To receive. To practise without an agenda. To remember what it actually feels like to be in your body when nobody needs anything from you.
I've found, consistently, that the teachers who invest in their own practice in this way come back with something that can't be faked in the classroom. Presence. Spaciousness. The quality of someone who has genuinely arrived.
The Daily Programme
Morning: Vinyasa Flow Yoga
An hour of vinyasa to open the day — breath and movement linked into something that is as much meditation as it is physical practice. Alistair leads with clarity and depth, and the sessions build progressively across the week. Experienced practitioners will find genuine challenge; those newer to vinyasa will be guided carefully through.
Afternoon: Somatic Movement and Restorative Yoga
This is where I come in. Somatic movement works through sensation rather than performance — slow, exploratory, attentive to the nervous system in a way that faster practices often aren't. If you teach somatic principles yourself, or have been curious about integrating them, these sessions will give you a rich foundation to draw from. If you're completely new to it, you'll likely find it becomes the thing you didn't know you needed.
This alternates with restorative yoga — long, supported holds, full surrender. After days of morning vinyasa and mountain walks, these sessions carry a depth that is genuinely hard to describe from the outside.
Evening: Yoga Nidra and Meditation
I lead the yoga nidra sessions each evening. Nidra sits in a fascinating place between wakefulness and sleep — a guided practice that research increasingly associates with deep nervous system restoration. One hour is often spoken of as equivalent in restorative value to several hours of sleep. For those of us who carry a lot, this isn't a small thing.
Evening meditation draws from compassion-based Tibetan Buddhist practice — accessible to all, spiritually optional, and genuinely grounding.
"The thing about a retreat is the container. A single class, however good, barely allows the nervous system to settle before ordinary life rushes back in. Five days is different. Something actually shifts."
The Food, the Setting, the In-Between
All meals across the five days are plant-based, organic and locally sourced. Long breakfasts. Family-style dinners. Buffet lunches with time and space built around them. Eating here becomes part of the practice rather than a break from it.
The Pyrenees in October are extraordinary. The summer visitors are long gone, the air sharpens and clarifies, and the light goes golden in a way that makes you want to stop walking and simply stand in it for a while. The forested slopes around La Taillede are quiet in a way that genuinely restores.
The walks are optional. The rest is structured but not rigid. There is time to read, to sit with your thoughts, to have the kind of unrushed conversation that never quite happens at home.
Practical Details
The retreat is €1,395 per person in a twin room, or €1,750 for a private room — inclusive of all accommodation, meals, daily yoga, guided walks and evening sessions. A €200 reduction is currently available. A €500 deposit holds your place.
Twelve spaces in total. I expect them to fill before summer.
If you've read this far, something in it has probably already spoken to you. Trust that. October in the Pyrenees, twelve people, five days of genuinely good practice — I'd love to see you there.
Find out more and book your place →
With love, Clare x
LushTums Founder & Senior Yoga Teacher