8 Day Cyclical Femininity Women's Yoga Retreat with Julie and Lucile in Crete

Accommodation

Accommodation is offered in their lovely traditional stone house. Rooms are designed in a natural combination of old and new and are spacious and comfortable.

Rooms are allocated on a first come first served basis (there is a limited availability of rooms, and single rooms in particular). The house is a 5-minute walking distance to the village center and beach, but also pleasantly secluded. The garden at the front and the private olive grove at the back blend in with the landscape and offer options for places to rest.

Program

Every day at the retreat includes a morning meditation, a women’s intuitive movement and hatha-flow yoga practice, and a late afternoon women's circle, both designed to explore the energy of each phase of your menstrual cycle.

You will have the chance to swim daily in the cool, turquoise Mediterranean waters at quiet beaches, explore the idyllic unspoilt surroundings of Chora Sfakion, and be nourished by wholesome local food cooked with love by our wonderful cook Maria!

The retreat will awaken your deep knowing and intuition so that you will find your path and walk it, supported by like-hearted women from across the world.

You'll learn to express the whole spectrum of womanhood and experience a deep sense of relaxation and alignment with your body, your womb, your calling, your past, your future, your lineage, and your pleasure.

Our sisterhood is waiting for you on the magical and wild South coast of Crete!

”With softness and professionalism, Julie created a sacred space. Through the profound practices and empowering exchanges with wonderful women of different ages, I reconnected to my cycle, my body, my emotions. I feel aligned and glowing!" Sophie

"A big fat THANK YOU! This retreat has been so transformative, and the best gift I could have given myself." Iulia

Women in all phases of life are welcome, including post-menopausal women.

The week begins with an opening Women's Circle at 6.30 p.m. on the day of arrival, followed by a delicious vegetarian dinner cooked by our wonderful intuitive cook Maria.

All other days will begin with a 1-hour morning yoga and meditation class led by Lucile (usually 8.30-9.30), each day focusing on one of the phases of our menstrual and/or moon cycle.

This is followed by a Cyclical Living mini-workshop led by Julie (approx. 9.45-10.45), which will introduce the theme of each day, followed by brunch.

In the afternoon, guests are free to relax and enjoy the beach and sunshine, receive a massage treatment or private Somatic Caching for Women session with Julie, or explore the village and region.

In the late afternoon, there is a Women's Circle (approx. 18.30-20.30), in order to dive deeper into the exploration of the theme of the day, after which we'll have dinner together.

All sessions are held on the yoga deck under the olive trees so you can enjoy your connection with the sea, the trees and the hills.

The fourth day of the week is a rest day with no yoga or women's circles; an optional excursion can be arranged, including a guided hike through a gorge of the region (usually the magnificent Aradaina gorge) or other season-appropriate hikes, ending at the beach (approx. 25 EUR depending on number of participants going).

Individual excursions (e.g., hikes, boat trips) can also be arranged at an extra cost.

On the last day, departure can be arranged after brunch.

The number of women participating is limited to 14 to create a safe and supportive group dynamic.

Women's yoga

The morning yoga practice with Lucile will start with a short breathing meditation and end with deep relaxation and breathing techniques. The practice is based on Hatha Yoga and incorporates elements of free flow and somatic practices.

You will look at how the body can feel free and open when allowed to experiment, flow, and be breathed into. Through the practice you create a more bright, centred, spacious awareness of our being so we enter everyday life more confident, true to yourself, and happy.

You will uncover the vitality and joy that is present in the body when we slow down, listen to its needs and make space to receive its wisdom.

Particular practices for the four phases of the hormonal and/or moon cycle will be offered (follicular/waxing moon; ovulation/full moon; luteal/waning moon; menstruation/new moon), for menstruation and menopause to balance and contain hormonal and emotional fluctuations.

Women’s Circles

Women's circles are a beautiful, safe and supportive space to share, practice listening with compassion, allow yourself to follow your heart and be held by a group of like-minded women.

Julie, a trauma-informed life coach, menstrual and creative movement therapist, as well as Awakening Women Circle facilitator, will hold space for us to dive deep into exploring the feminine cycle through movement, art and rituals.

The sessions will start with a womb relaxation, then enter into a healing journey and we will complete with more relaxation and sharing.

In each circle, you'll experience initiation into another phase of womanhood, another way of entering pleasure and creating oxytocin (the love hormone!), another phase of our cycle, of the moon, of the sun:

* Inner Girl: Finding Peace and safety for our little girls (follicular phase or inner spring)**
*Abundant Woman: Healing the mother-daughter relationship (ovulation or inner summer) **
* Wild Woman: Welcoming our fierceness (luteal phase or inner autumn) **
* Wise Woman: Embracing our intuition (menstruation or inner winter) **

Whether you have a menstrual cycle, are going through or have passed menopause, these phases apply to the subtle energies that affect a woman and her creative potential throughout life.

If you're experiencing (pre-)menstrual pain, menopausal, fertility or sexuality issues, you're likely to find release, opening and a way forward.

Included excursions

A round trip by boat to the beautiful Sweet Water beach is included

Instructors

Julie Mosmuller

Julie combines her management consulting background with a thorough understanding of personal growth and coaching. She has a keen interest in dance, nutrition and eastern spirituality, which has led her to spend most of the last five years in India practicing yoga and meditation. After quitting her strategy consulting career with Deloitte London, she retrained as a Certified Professional Co-active Coach with the acclaimed Coaching Training Institute, London. Also a certified Dance and Movement Therapist with the International Dance Council, Julie coaches a broad client base.

Lucile Pinteaux

As a soul based coach, yoga teacher and living somatics movement educator, Lucile holds space for participants to experience deeper awareness of themselves. While she was living her passion for dance, rhythm and movement as an International Swing dance teacher, she started, in 2014, to study yoga and embodied movement in Spain and South India. Since then, she integrated them into her cyclical way of living. In her classes she aims for students to go within, sense their body, rest the nervous system, release tensions in the different planes of their being and allow regeneration to take place.

Location

Chora (pronounced "Hora") Sfakion or Sfakia, the capital of the municipality of Sfakia, is located on the south-west coast of Crete.

The landscape of the region is particularly dramatic. The mountains in this part of Crete meet the sea, with steep slopes towering over the beaches. The road from the north of the island threads through breathtaking mountains and small villages to reach the port village of Sfakia. A sense of peacefulness radiates from the dry mountains and the sunset skies.

With its quiet, picturesque alleys, the beaches just a walking distance away, and a few restaurants and cafes with tasty local dishes on offer lining the old harbor, Sfakia can become the little haven for anyone who wants to step out of the modern city fast-paced lifestyle for a while.

If you are up for a short hike after the sun has gone down, just above the last house of the village is the little church of Agios Georgios, hidden away in a cave. Previously a neighborhood of the village, but nowadays abandoned, Georgitsi is also a ten minute hike up the mountain.

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Features

General

Dining area
Environmentally friendly
Garden
Kitchen
Lounge
Special menu request
Terrace
Yoga studio

Services

Free Wi-Fi

Food

The Cretan diet is renowned for its macrobiotic qualities, but also for its great variety of delicious flavors. More than the pure, fresh ingredients themselves, it is the fact that cooking is traditionally performed almost like a ritual, with love, and always in the prospect of offering the food to others, that makes the Cretan cuisine so special.

All brunches and 5 dinners are offered at the house, while on two nights, guests are free to dine out in the village restaurants (not included in the course cost; approx.15-20 EUR for a full meal including drinks).

Their cook embodies this spirit, preparing two nutritious Lacto-vegetarian meals a day, using local, and wherever possible, organic products (grown in their own garden!). Vegan and gluten-free options available.

The village restaurants, only a short walk away, offer a wide range of local dishes, including fresh fish and game.

If you have any dietary requirements, please notify them and they will do their best to accommodate them.

The following meals are included:

Brunch

The following drinks are included:

Water
Coffee
Tea

The following dietary requirement(s) are served and/or catered for:

Lacto-ovo Vegetarian
Vegan
Gluten Free
Organic

If you have special dietary requirements it's a good idea to communicate it to the organiser when making a reservation

Things to do (optional)

The fourth day of each week-long course is a rest day from the classes. Guests can join an optional excursion, including a guided hike through the stunning Aradaina Gorge on this day, at an extra cost (25 EUR).

Individual excursions can also be arranged to numerous gorges, along the coastal trail, as well as boat trips to neighboring seaside villages and beaches, in addition to snorkeling tripes and scuba diving lessons, at their local scuba diving center.

Area attractions

Most beaches of the region are pebbly, the white of the beach and the turquoise of the water creating a beautiful scene for relaxed swimming and sunbathing. The waters in most beaches actually come from springs high up in the White Mountains, so they are literally crystal clear.

The village beach, Vrisi (Spring), is just 10 minutes walk away from the house
lligas (Vertigo), 1.5 kilometers out of the village, has been awarded a Blue Beach Award for its pristine waters
Filaki (Prison), approximately 2 kilometers away, offers a nudist choice
Amoudi (Sandy Beach), 1.5 kilometers away, is the quietest beach around
Glika Nera (Sweet Water) is the favorite pick. Its name refers to the fresh water springs that are found under the sand and that give the sea its magical clear color. It can be accessed on foot (30 minutes walk along the coastal path) or by kaiki (small boat, 10 minutes from Sfakia)
Frangokastelo (Frankish fort) and Orthi Ammos (Vertical Sand, literally), are two adjacent sandy beaches 15 kilometers away from Sfakia. Frangokastelo takes its name from the very well preserved Frankish (Venetian) castle built by the shore. There is actually a legend that just as dawn is breaking in late May-early June, the image of men on horseback, exiting the castle and riding into the sea, can be witnessed in the early morning mist – these are the mysterious Drosoulites (mist-men)

Spa treatments

Choose from Holistic massage, Cranio-sacral treatment, and Reflexology with ginger compress treatment, with Federica (when she is teaching) or another on-site or local therapist. 50-60 EUR per hour.

What's included

Daily morning 1 hour Hatha flow yoga class
Pranayama and meditation
Morning cyclical living mini-workshops to deepen your menstrual cycle awareness
Afternoon women’s circles to experience each of the archetypes through beauty medicine, intuitive movement, singing, drawing, soul sharing, ritual, and much more
Time off to explore the wild Sfakian coast, its solitary gorges and beaches on the turquoise Libyan Sea
A round trip to the beautiful Sweet Water beach
7 nights accommodation in traditional guesthouse located near beach
Daily brunches and 5 dinners
Linen and towels provided

What's not included

Massage treatments
All lunches and 2 dinners out per week
Flights to Crete
Transfers to Chora Sfakion
Insurance
Additional excursions to beaches (if you would like to explore other beaches that are not at a walking distance from the village, you should budget approximately 5 - 20 EUR per trip - depending on whether boat or taxi ride is shared with other guests)

How to get there

Recommended Airports

HER

Heraklion International Airport (Nikos Kazantzakis Airport)

95 km

Transfer not provided

CHQ

Chania International Airport ("Ioannis Daskalogiannis")

36 km

Transfer not provided

ATH

Athens International Airport (Eleftherios Venizelos Airport)

304 km

Transfer not provided

Arrival by car

A car can be hired and pick you up at either Chania or Heraklion airport upon arrival, or during your stay in the village. The windy mountain road down to the village has in recent years undergone extensive work, with three tunnels replacing the sharp curves, making it much safer and easy to drive on! Alternative car hire companies they recommend are Tracer and Drive Kreta. Please contact them if you have any difficulty arranging your transfer.

Arrival by airplane

You can fly directly to Crete, to the airports of Chania (CHQ - pronounced Chania, which is an hour's drive) or Heraklion (HER, which is 2.5 hours' drive).

For flights from the UK, Easyjet, Ryanair, and Monarch airlines have direct flights from several UK airports to Crete, both to Heraklion (HER) and to Chania (CHQ), during the tourist season. You can also use TUI, Just The Flight, Charter Flights, Cheap Flights, or Flight Line. From London Stansted, also check the daily flight of Aegean Airlines to Chania via Athens.

For flights from other European countries, try Ryanair that now connects several European cities to Chania (CHQ). Also Easyjet, Transavia, Norwegian Airlines, Aer Lingus, Eurowings, or Air Berlin. Be aware that on some occasions booking two single flights can be cheaper than a return flight!

You can also fly to Athens (ATH) and either get a transit flight with Aegean or Ryanair, or boat to Crete (Chania – CHQ).

Arrival by bus

To get to the bus station in Chania from the airport (2.50 EUR; duration 30 minutes), buses run at different times every day to correspond with the flights. This is also the case for the return journey.

The bus station in the city has a luggage storage, operating between 6:30 and 20:00, which can be useful if you have a long wait, as the beautiful old city is just a few minutes walk away.

If you need to get a taxi from the airport to the bus station, the cost should be about 15-20 EUR. From Chania, you can then get a bus directly to Chora Sfakion. Confirm departures in advance because during high season (April-October), there are only four buses a day (at 8:15, 11:00, 14:00 and 16:00; 8.30 EUR; duration 1 hour and 45 minutes).

From Heraklion airport, there is a frequent bus service (No. 6) that takes you to the main bus station in Heraklion (duration 15 minutes). Ask the driver to tell you where to get off for the bus station, because it is not obvious.

From there, you first need to get a bus to Rethymnon (approximately every hour; 8.30 EUR; duration 90 minutes) and then a bus to Chora Sfakion changing buses at Vrisses (at 8:00 and 13:00; 8.30 EUR; duration 2 hours).

Vrisses does not have a bus station per se, rather, a coffee shop in which you can buy a ticket and in front of which the buses stop.

Arrival by ferry

There is an overnight ferry to Chania from Piraeus, the port of Athens, easily accessed by metro from Athens "E. Venizelos" airport. It departs at 21:00 and arrives at Souda, the port of Chania at 5:30 the next morning. The port of Chania is a 10-minute bus journey away from the main bus station in Chania city center.

The return journey with Anek lines starts from 63 EUR (deck price; there is a discount if the return journey is booked at the same time as the first part).

From Paleohora, Sougia, or Aghia Roumeli, the south-west coast of Crete is fairly well served by daily ferry lines travelling from Paleohora to Chora Sfakion. This is a convenient option if you were thinking of spending some time on the south coast before arriving at YogaOnCrete.

You can also reach them in this way after hiking the Samaria gorge (consider putting your luggage on a bus at Chania, to be picked up by them at Chora Sfakion, so you can hike light).

Arrival by taxi

Travelling by taxi is the most convenient way to reach the village. A taxi from Chania city center or airport costs 85 EUR (1.5 hour) and from Heraklion 140 EUR (2.5 hours).

When there are several guests arriving at similar times at either airport, they can arrange a shared taxi. Make sure you provide them with your arrival details (arrival time, flight number, airport name), as soon as you book flights, to make this possible!

Cancellation Policy

A reservation requires a deposit of 30% of the total price.
The deposit is non-refundable, if the booking is cancelled.
The rest of the payment should be paid 14 days before arrival.

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