Once again we’re heading out into the dunes for a week of storytelling, music and meditation under the desert sky.

We’ve been running meditation and yoga retreats in the Sahara Desert in Morocco since 2011 and it just keeps getting better and better. It’s such a pleasure for us to host these events where we watch everyone find their true colours and connect to a sense of inner joy as they connect to their breath in the silence of the dunes, and then dance and sing beneath the full moon at night!

The Sahara retreat is something quite unique, we believe. Every year an eclectic mix of travellers, students, professionals and free spirits come together for a week in the dunes to disconnect with their busy lives and just be here, now and with each other.

Every year we see people open up as the week goes along and everyone leaves as a slightly different person. The meditation, yoga, dance and voice workshops help a lot in giving people another perspective and new tools to use in their everyday lives, but if we had to sum up the retreat in a few words I’d say it’s all about opening the heart. In the sharing circles we hold at night we hear each other’s stories and learn a new empathy with others, and also feel the support and understanding of the group as we express where we are at in our lives.

More importantly, we learn an empathy with ourselves – with our bodies when we dance, with our spirits when we sing. Looking up at the millions of stars overhead stretching into infinity we’re reminded of how precious each moment of our lives is. Forgiving ourselves, we come to peace with the world and leve the desert light in heart and mind.

For us each retreat has been a learning experience and each year we learn to bring in new elements to bring the group together and allow people to find a new self-expression, a new potential. We try to feel the pulse of the retreat and introduce a meditation, an ecstatic singing circle or just some fun games around the fire according to the mood.

The retreat is a unique space in that we’re interested in spirit, not spirituality. You don’t need to believe anything to come or be any kind of person in particular. People often try to exclude themselves, asking us in emails if they’re too old/young/inexperienced/shy to come and our answer is always the same: we’re all beginners on the retreat and the richness of the group is in its diversity.

It’s the best week of our year, every year and we always look forwards to returning to the Sahara. A piece of us lives there.

But I’m not a hippie!

Don’t worry, apart from the meditation, dance and yoga sessions, the retreat is also a place to take some time out to think and walk in the desert, tell stories around the fire and make some music with 20 other interesting people from around the world. It’s up to you how you experience the retreat. Either way you’ll be blown away by the majestic dunes, the brightness of the stars in the desert and the magic of the Sahara.

The desert is the perfect place for transformative experiences on a personal level. Just watching the moon rise at the same time as the sun sets, casting new nuances of shadow over the dunes, watching scarab beetles leave tiny tracks across the sand; it’s like being in another world.

If you have any questions or doubts don’t hesitate to write to us!

“You can make this whatever you want it to be. For me it was about spirituality, wandering around the desert by myself, surrounding myself with a group of positive people and simply enjoying and admiring the beauty of nature.” (Tim Fabian Bartel)

You can read more experiences from those who have attended previous retreats here.