But even for the yogically inclined, more than an hourlong getaway is sometimes necessary. It’s certainly alluring, especially when there are so many options for rolling up your sticky mat and dashing off to an exotic locale.

These days, there are yoga retreats that cater to every ability level and goal. Some, like the Ayurvedic Rejuvenation Retreat at Shreyas Resort in Bangalore, emphasize the traditional, holistic benefits of yoga (participants receive health and dietary consultations, plus personalized ayurvedic spa treatments, along with their classes). Others, like Yada Yada Yoga’s Bespoke Yoga Retreat at the St. Regis Bahia Beach, offers guests the opportunity to combine yoga with other activities like paddleboarding, kayaking and hiking, while others offer it as a double bill with music, photography and cultural study.

Whether the goal is serenity or invigoration, ancient traditions or innovative approaches, here are five places to make your escape.

Bespoke Yoga Retreat St. Regis Bahia Beach Resort, Puerto Rico

Boutique yoga agency Yada Yada Yoga has teamed up with the St. Regis Bahia Beach to create this retreat, which offers daily instruction by a Yada Yada yogi set against the expansive natural backdrop of the five-star resort, which is the first and only gold-certified Audubon Signature Sanctuary in Puerto Rico. Classes are taught in the Forrest yoga style, which works to overcome physical and emotional blocks; in between, guests can discover the 483-acre property and its wildlife through hiking, biking and guided bird watching. Not in the bird mood? Lounge beachside, take a plunge in the resort’s seafront pool or linger in the spa’s garden after indulging in a treatment. From $1,575; June 15–18; 954-624-1784.

Kuxan Summ Maya Tulum, Mexico

According to the Mayan calendar, this year’s winter solstice will mark the dawn of a new spiritual era for mankind; yoga resort Maya Tulum is celebrating with a weeklong retreat, incorporating yoga, meditation and Mayan culture. Guests will practice yoga twice a day, visit nearby Mayan ruins and take part in ceremonial drumming and a shaman-led Aztec energy dance. Those looking for a little less adventure can opt to explore the resort’s beaches (which lie along the world’s second-longest coral reef) or indulge in a Mayan-influenced spa treatment.From $2,360; October 27–November 3; mayatulum.com.

Self-Discovery Retreat Byron Bay Yoga, Australia

This retreat, set in Australia’s most famous spiritually minded community, aims to treat the whole self: daily classes in yoga, Pilates, meditation and pranayama are augmented by massage, Yoga Nidra (deep relaxation) and organic vegan ayurvedic cuisine. The centerpiece of the program is Core Energetics Body Psychotherapy, designed to put students in touch with the mind-body-spirit connection; those who need a day off, though, may find a stroll along one of Byron Bay’s lovely surfing beaches, or the wooded nature trails at Cape Byron Headland Preserve, just as healing. From $1,595; March 30–April 4; yogahealthretreats.com.

Wanderlust Festival Squaw Valley, California

Top-flight musical acts, the biggest names in yoga and several thousand fans of both converge at this annual three-day festival in North Lake Tahoe (others take place in Colorado, Vermont and Canada). The roster of celebrity yogis teaching at this year’s festival includes Shiva Rea, John Friend and Schuyler Grant (Wanderlust’s cofounder); the musical acts include Ziggy Marley and Beats Antique. Many festival attendees choose to camp during their stay, but with penthouse suites in the Resort at Squaw Creek available right up the road, why rough it? Tickets from $475; July 26–29; wanderlustfestival.com; squawcreek.com.

Yoga Cruise Finike, Turkey

Yoga is literally transporting at this retreat, which takes place aboard a ten-cabin traditional Turkish sailing yacht as it cruises the Mediterranean. After practicing yoga in the open air on the yacht’s sundeck, guests can dive overboard for snorkeling and kayaking, and visit ancient ruins, Greek isles and a traditional Turkish hammam. Yoga Cruise arranges trips throughout the year, but in October, the company will celebrate the maiden voyage of a new, additional luxury yacht. From $1,175; October 7–14; yogacruise.net.

(by Susi Hately, Functional Synergy)

Earlier this week, I received a request from a Facebook Fan to comment on a recent New York Times article, How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body, that has created quite a stir in the yoga world. I posted a short comment on my facebook page, with a promise to fill it out later …

And, here is my take.

Yoga is amazing. All of us yoga teachers have been awed by watching what can happen with yoga. And, when not done appropriately, major problems can occur.  You would be shocked with how many emails I receive each week from yoga teachers – from the “rock star” yoga teachers, as well as from teachers who are “less known”. They ask questions with a similar theme . . . “why is my back sore, I do yoga!” As I share the mechanics of what is happening, I also add….”it is because you do yoga that your back is sore”.

Y’see the trouble is two fold. First, we have to remember that we are westerners pursuing an eastern philosophical movement program that has important tenets (yamas and niyamas) as the foundation. If we follow those tenets, we’ll progress in our practice – in all its forms – physically, mentally, and spiritually. Second, we need to consider the term “Asana” which, when loosely translated means, “sitting comfortably and still”. This means, that no matter the asana you are practicing, are you “sitting comfortably and still” or are you in “tension”?

Consider your practice – when you are in Warrior 1, Warrior 3, Triangle, Headstand, Downward Dog, or any other myriad of asanas, are you in tension? If you are. . . you aren’t practicing yoga . .  you are “doing fitness”.

It sets up an interesting predicament, doesn’t it? A predicament which has me understand and have compassion for why it is so difficult for yoga practitioners in the West “to get it”.

1. As a culture, there is a preference for the “end”, not the “journey” or the “process”.
2. Many trainings are about “going deeper” since there is some apparent belief that “going deeper” is “better”. (I recall a teacher who came to a training of mine who was utterly shocked that my training was the first she had been too that wasn’t about depth of asana and she was so “wow’d” that she felt so good).
3. There is a focus on not paying attention to the pain, to move through it as opposed to listen to it.

I am all for a physical challenge, and for the mental and spiritual stretch required to see my “blind spots” so that those things that restrict or limit me can be resolved; just as I enjoy practicing with energy and prana and transcending the physical plane. But truth be told, the physical plane is where we live, and Newton’s laws still reign true. Biomechanics and Kinesiology are facts of life on this earthly plane, and we need to honour their principles. If you don’t honour them, you will suffer the consequences.

Does this mean that “some people should give up yoga all together” as written about in the article? Well, that assumes that yoga consists only of the physical postures in their classic form. Perhaps in those times of injury, it is actually time to read up and embody the yamas and niyamas so the journey back to the mat, the journey back to living the life you want to live, through great yoga therapy and then modified asanas, is one of exploration, curiosity and awe.

Medical advances sometimes happen in strange ways. Someone finds a fungus in dirty lab dishes and — eureka! — penicillin is born. Now a premier Manhattan hospital is turning a cancer-treatment floor over to a world-famous fashion designer in the hope that serendipity, science and intuition will strike again.

A foundation run by Donna Karan, creator of the “seven easy pieces” philosophy of women’s wardrobes and founder of the much-imitated DKNY line of clothing, has donated $850,000 for a yearlong experiment combining Eastern and Western healing methods at Beth Israel Medical Center. Instead of just letting a celebrated donor adopt a hospital wing, renovate it and have her name embossed on a plaque, the Karan-Beth Israel project will have a celebrated donor turn a hospital into a testing ground for a trendy, medically controversial notion: that yoga, meditation and aromatherapy can enhance regimens of chemotherapy and radiation.

“While we are giving patients traditional medicine, we are not going to exclude patients’ values and beliefs,” said Dr. David Shulkin, the chief executive of Beth Israel, noting that a third of Americans seek alternative treatments. “To make care accessible to these third of Americans, we’re trying to embrace care that makes them more comfortable.”

On Wednesday, Dr. Shulkin, who had never done yoga before, joined Ms. Karan and about 60 Beth Israel employees on the floor of her late husband’s West Village art studio for an hour of yoga poses, finishing off with “om” and the recorded sound of bells.

“They didn’t teach us that in medical school,” Dr. Shulkin said afterward, still sitting barefoot on his black mat, swearing he had put his BlackBerry on “meditation mode” and had not checked it. Asked if the yoga had worked, he formed his answer carefully: “I think the personal touch and the personal attention to a patient absolutely works.”

The husband-and-wife team leading Wednesday’s session — Ms. Karan’s yoga masters, Rodney Yee and Colleen Saidman Yee — will oversee the experiment. Fifteen yoga teachers will be sent to Beth Israel’s ninth-floor cancer ward starting in January to work with nonterminal patients, and nurses will be trained in relaxation techniques. Their salaries, as well as a cosmetic overhaul of the ward, are being paid for by Ms. Karan’s Urban Zen Foundation, created after her husband and business partner, Stephan Weiss, 62, died of lung cancer in 2001.

While other hospitals in New York and across the country have dabbled in yoga, the new Beth Israel project is broader, better financed and more integrated into the medical protocol, and because of Ms. Karan’s concern that it might be dismissed as touchy-feely nonsense, it includes a research component. Ms. Karan hopes to prove that the Urban Zen regime can reduce classic symptoms of cancer and its treatment, like pain, nausea and anxiety (thereby cutting hospital stays and costs) and serve as a model for replication elsewhere.

But Dr. Benjamin Kligler, the research director in integrative family medicine for the Beth Israel-affiliated Continuum Center for Health and Healing and the research project’s principal investigator, acknowledged that the experiment of yoga teachers and their interaction with patients did not lend itself to the random, double-blind placebo trials favored in the medical world.

“The truth is, from a very traditional research perspective, that’s a problem,” Dr. Kligler conceded, adding that it might be time for the medical establishment to consider a new research model for what he called “lifestyle interventions.”

Organizers are also wary of the halo effect: Will Ms. Karan’s fame taint the experiment? But they are cognizant of the value of stroking people with deep pockets and of celebrity branding: Someday the cancer ward’s plaque reading “Leo and Rachel Sussman Division of Hematology/Oncology” will be joined by one honoring Ms. Karan.

“You have your right-column energy and your left-column energy,” Ms. Karan said, suggesting that there is room for both.

She traces her commitment to integrative medicine to what she saw as the narrowly limited treatment of her husband, a sculptor, and of Lynn Kohlman, a photographer, model and DKNY fashion director who was still ravishing and dignified despite the staples in her head and mastectomy scars on her chest when she died of brain and breast cancer in September.

Ms. Karan longed for the help of a Marcus Welby, the kind of friendly, wise doctor who seemed possible only on television, and even then in a more innocent era. “Today everybody’s a specialist,” she lamented in an interview. “We’re only one person, even though we have a lot of parts, but everybody takes a piece of us.”

Despite all his high-tech medical treatment, her husband could not breathe, she recalled, until a yoga teacher taught him to “open his lungs.” “He went from ah-ah-ah,” she said, mimicking his gasping for breath, “to aaaaahh.”

“Everybody was dealing with his disease,” she said of the doctors. “Nobody was looking at him holistically as a patient. How do you treat the patient at the mind-body level? Not only the patient but the loved one?”

Ms. Kohlman apparently sensed her illness before her doctors did. Lying on the floor during a yoga session at a beach resort on Parrot Cay, a tiny Caribbean island, she began to shake. “You’re having kundalini rising,” Mr. Yee, the yoga master who is partnering with Ms. Karan at Beth Israel, yelled, running to her side. Ms. Kohlman, who wrote about the experience for Vogue, insisted, “I have brain cancer.”

She intensified her yoga. “She asked for it in the hospital,” said Ms. Karan, who practices yoga daily. “She needed it, she wanted it.

“This works,” Ms. Karan insisted. “Now we have to prove it in the clinical setting.”

To do that, she turned to Beth Israel because it is among the handful of hospitals nationwide with full-fledged integrative medicine departments. Beth Israel’s department is headed by Woodson Merrell, known as Woody, who rides a silver Vespa to his Upper East Side office and who made the obligatory pilgrimage to India in the 1960s. Beth Israel has experimented with integrating mainstream and alternative therapies for eight years, mainly through the Continuum Center, which employs 10 doctors. In the spring, integrative medicine was elevated to department status, just like surgery, orthopedics and the rest.

“A lot of other hospitals have integrative medicine, but it’s kind of stuck away in the basement,” said Dr. Merrell, who, not coincidentally, is Ms. Karan’s internist. “People like to think it’s not there.” Starting in November, the cancer ward will be renovated by Ms. Karan, the architect David Fratianne and Alex Stark, a feng shui master. The dull beige walls and green linoleum tile floors will be replaced with bamboo wallpaper and cork floors. Nooks and crannies now used for brown-bag lunches and naps and crammed with a desultory selection of dusty books will be turned into yoga, prayer and meditation retreats for patients, their families and nurses.

Urban Zen will cover the salaries of a patient “navigator,” a sort of cancer-ward concierge, and a yoga coordinator. The Yees and Dr. Merrell expect that about half the eligible patients will decline to participate. Those who do will find a flexible definition of yoga, with some who are very ill simply getting help to breathe from a yogi who will also manipulate their limbs, rub their feet or simply listen to them.

Last week, two yoga teachers in Karan-designed black T-shirts printed with white block letters saying, “The Unstoppable PATH/Patient Awareness Towards Healing,” approached several patients for an impromptu workout.

Looking like a radiantly healthy creature from another planet, one of the teachers, Shana Kuhn-Siegel, sidled up to the bedside of an emaciated 34-year-old patient, Natoya Harrison, who insisted on eating her meal of chicken and potatoes before embarking on yoga. Ms. Harrison, who was formerly obese, was hospitalized in a coma caused by complications of a gastric bypass performed elsewhere. What did she miss about life outside the hospital? Ms. Kuhn-Siegel asked. “Not being able to participate in sex, church,” Ms. Harrison said, adding, “I shouldn’t have said those two things together.”

“You can say whatever you want,” Ms. Kuhn-Siegel replied. She prompted the woman to talk about her 15-year-old son, and asked if she would like to close her eyes. “I thought you were going to ask me questions,” Ms. Harrison said nervously. “Why are you trying to put me to sleep? What’s your M.O.?”

Noticing the T-shirt, she perked up, asking: “Where can I get one of those?” Ms. Kuhn-Siegel promised to tell Ms. Karan that Ms. Harrison would like a shirt, and tried to capitalize on the connection.

“There’s a position I can put you in to relieve the pain in your abdomen,” she said. “It’s a position called ‘bound angle.’ ”

Ms. Harrison let Ms. Kuhn-Siegel manipulate her scrawny limbs, bending and straightening her knees, propping up her head. “How about a cup of green tea?” Ms. Kuhn-Siegel asked.

“Nope,” Ms. Harrison said. “I think I’m going to throw up.”

Ms. Kuhn-Siegel handed her a wastebasket and backed away.

8 Limbs Yoga Centers has been offering outstanding quality yoga programs for Seattle communities since 1996. 8 Limbs teaching staff includes some of the most highly trained and experienced teachers from the Northwest including Melina Meza, Anne Phyfe Palmer and Chiara Guierreri. In 8 Limbs teacher training courses they offer serious yoga practitioners and yoga instructors the learning circle that will support them in the prompt advancement of their practice and ability to share it with others.

8 Limbs’ goal is to broaden the field of practice for each participant while encouraging yoga practice as a means to discover and fulfill one’s dharma, or purpose. A residential retreat, with healthy food, old-growth forest, thermal baths, sauna, and the nurturing qualities of Breitenbush, offers an ideal environment to enhance your growth as a wholesome yogi/yogini. To learn more about Breitenbush, click here.

Certification

This training may be taken as PART TWO of the 8 Limbs Teacher Training Program or as a personal retreat. Teacher Training participants will have advance reading and presentations during the retreat that are optional for other participants.

This 7-day training will offer a spectrum of subjects:

• Advanced Art of Teaching Sequencing, and Pranayama
• In-depth Study of Yoga Philosophy
• Student Observation and Diagnosis
• Holistic Living as a Yoga Teacher
• Supportive Adjustments
• The Science of Ayurveda
• Introduction to Pre/Postnatal Yoga
• Anatomy Workshops

Our aspiration is that you will blossom into an elegant teacher that will continue to inspire others to the yogic principals of peace, compassion and oneness.

Get more information here.

On the Big Island of Hawaii, the earth is constantly changing, stretching out to create new ground upon which new life will grow. What better place to create new ground for yourself by harnessing the tremendous energy that comes from such a natural transformation. Explore your own boundaries and the possibilities for your personal transformation – for moving onto and into new ground. Flow at your own pace – slowly and quietly, or rapidly and with great fanfare.

Drink in some fun, sun, meditation, yoga, and dance when you join Chiara Guerrieri, Melina Meza, and Lara McIntosh for a new dynamic collaboration – Melina’s Seasonal Vinyasa Ayurvedic insights, Chiara’s core-awakening style of yoga, and Laura’s Afro-infused Wassa Dance come together to nourish your body, lift your spirits, and shake your bootie!

Melina, Chiara and Lara each bring over 15 years of dedication to their practice and, together, they will help you free your vitality and luminosity.

Seasonal Vinyasa

Seasonal Vinyasa describes Melina Meza’s artistic style of sequencing asana to match the rhythm of the seasons. In this winter workshop, Melina will offer new perspectives on how to live and practice in harmony with the Kapha season, adapting dietary approaches, cleansing techniques, and lifestyle routines to be in synch with nature.

Core Focus

Chiara’s class will focus on strengthening the core of the body and manifesting vital, grounding power – that which sustains you. It is only with a strong sense of stability and security in our physical and emotional core, that we can then begin to focus on finding more opening, freedom and joy in our yoga practice, both on and off the mat.

Wassa Dance

Inspired by music specially created for her unique dance style, Lara will help you explore rhythm and spirit to unlock your movement potential and inspire the dancer in you. In this unique collaboration, Lara brings her experience as a teacher, dancer, choreographer, performer, and devotee to Afro-Infused music and culture to Kalani Oceanside Retreat.

About Kalani Oceanside Retreat

Kalani Oceanside Retreat Center is located in the district of Puna, which is on the southeast coast, surrounded by the mountains, jungle, sea and volcano — the natural elements give rise to the countless legends and myths within the Hawaiian Islands. Across the road from Kalani, dramatic lava cliffs which offer breath taking views of the sunrise, turtles, dolphins, whale watching and a short walk to the nearest black sand beach.

For More Information or to Register

For much more information about this event and/or to sign up, please visit my website.

In the Pacific Northwest, every season offers opportunities to get on your feet and enjoy the bounty of nature that surrounds us – even if it’s cruising around Greenlake or walking to your favorite pedicurist for a little pampering. But have you ever thought about how your feet support you? As much work as they do, you might take the time to tune into your arches.

In architecture, arches are the structures that support what is above. In the same way, arches of the feet are the foundation that supports what is above.

Feet are the base of everything as long as you are standing. Think of your feet as a car, as your vehicle of locomotion, and your arches as shock absorbers. If your feet were a car, your car would have four tires. The four tires would be under the ball of the big toe, under the ball of little toe, on the inside of the heel, and on the outside of the heel.

To feel this, stand and imagine those four tires under your feet. Now begin to rock from side to side and forward and back. Notice if the air in your tires is even. Now stand and rock forward and back, and then side to side. Stop when you feel that you are in the middle of your feet and in between your feet. Pay attention to each foot.

Is the air in the tires of each foot equal? Are your feet falling in more in one direction or the other? Can you identify the tire or tires that have less air?

Next lift all your toes up, keeping the balls of the toes down. Look at the arches of your feet. The arches of the feet go from the ball of the big toe to the inner heel and from the ball of the little toe to the outer heel. These are called the longitudinal arches. The other pair of arches go from the inner part of the foot to the outer part of the foot: these are your transverse arches. Feel how when you lift the toes up from the ground you are engaging the front of your lower legs. To feel the difference, relax your toes. Notice how your arches deflate a little bit and how the muscles of the front of the legs relax.

Scrunch your toes under and notice how the arches of the feet appear again. When you scrunch your toes, do you notice how the back of the leg muscles engage? Relax your toes again. Do you feel the difference?

Your arches are created by the tone of the muscles in the front and the back of the lower leg. One of the ways that you can bring more air in your tires is to engage the toes by either lifting them a little or scrunching them a little until you feel that you have a sense of how those arches are in place by inflating the air in the tires.

Next relax your feet completely. Without moving your toes, as if you were a car with perfect wheel alignment, can you inflate the air in all of your tires equally by lifting your arches?

The reason why you want to have arches in your feet is because your arches are the shock absorbers. Just like in a car, if you do not have shock absorbers, you will feel every little bump. The arches are the lowest shock absorber in the body.