4 Canadian yoga adventures

Yoga is moving outdoors

Travel companies now offer packages that pair yoga with kayaking, hiking-or wine tasting. Here are just a few of the places offering amped-up yoga trips.

Newfoundland

Newfoundland-based Wild Women Expeditions offers groups, mostly women, the chance to hike, kayak and do yoga outdoors. Yoga teacher and director Jennifer Brammer says, “When we practise yoga in nature-on billion-year-old rock formations, in the forest, on a beach-a strength and energy comes from that.”

Brammer’s business has long offered various adventure trips across Canada, but her week-long yoga retreat is not the most popular. She says: “I’ll definitely have to add more this summer.”

Photo credit: Ally Lyske

New Brunswick

Summer is the time to try yoga under a historic lighthouse in Fredericton. Overlook the gorgeous St. John River as you hone your yoga practise at the Lighthouse on the Green, and watch the fishing boats drift by.

Ontario

For a more indulgent session, Yoga in the Vineyard, based in the Niagara wine region, offers one-hour classes in hatha or relaxation yoga among the pinot noir vines, followed by a winery tour, tasting and post-yoga lunch. Founder Alana Clark is working with five nearby wineries, and there are plans for it to expand.

“The response has been overwhelming,” says Clark. She says some people just want more from yoga.

Alberta

In Canmore, Alberta, Martha McCallum, certified hiking guide and hatha yoga instructor at Martha’s Heli-Hikes, whisks guests by helicopter to a secluded mountaintop for one or three days of hiking, meditation and yoga.

Related:
• Yoga for beginners
• 5 reasons to try yoga this year
• “I beat anxiety with yoga.”