Soul Detox Yoga Retreat - food is medicine

After a few years of experience in healthy cooking (mostly for myself) and yoga, I decided it was time to mix things up and I took things to the next level. Me and my friend, Ekaterina, who is a yoga teacher, decided to do a short but well packed with different activities retreat in the mountain town of Apriltsi, Bulgaria.

There is a well known retreat center, called the Trinity House and luckily they were not booked for the dates we wanted. The idea of detoxifying the body is quite widespread, but not many people think about the spiritual or even psychological aspect of the word.

From my experience, whenever you change your diet your mind changes too. I spent around 3 months eating only raw vegan food with very few exceptions (I would eat a cooked meal once a week). The result was I had much more energy, my mind was more agile and free of tension and I felt very strong and capable. We had only two days with the people, so I gave them instuctions with a sample diet they could follow and most of them did.

The menu was simple, but tasty. Early morning we would have a ginger shot which was made of ginger, lemon and some water. After that we had a yoga session and only after the yoga we would have a smoothie - usually banana with cocoa and coconut milk, or apple with cinnamon and dates. Then there was some other practice and lunch was served around 2 PM, consisiting of raw vegetable smoothie and some small amount of rice. Dinner was light, only steamed veggies and rice or quinoa. And that was basically it.

We would also have a workshop for making raw sweets, which have become more and more popular these days. I would love to share some recipes in my next posts sostay tuned.

As for the yoga - I have found that physical activity goes very well with any kind of detoxifying diet, be it only juice/water fast or as it was in this case - low calory vegan meals.

Yoga is a good metabolism booster and also alleviates the mood. And talking about mood - We also had some singing and dancing to take care of any grumpiness that might have been left after the yoga.

I will be sharing with you my other retreat stories, recipes and yoga practices for healthy and happy living. Enjoy!!!