Yoga Feed Retreats: Nourishing body, mind and tastebuds

Chef Erica Drum talks about cooking for the Yoga Feed retreats and how hands-on cookery classes have become an essential part of the weekend

Erica Drum

ALMOST 20 years ago, a friend went on a yoga retreat and returned with tales of wheatgrass shots, juice-fasting and five days without coffee. This was when wellness focused more on penance than pleasure and, although she really enjoyed the time away, it was not for the faint-hearted. While I never missed my weekly yoga class and liked the idea of a few days away to concentrate on my practice, her experiences turned me off the idea of a yoga retreat for a long time. I had no yearning to pay for the pleasure of starving myself and I’m not one for hair-shirts: If I go away for the weekend, I want to enjoy the experience, the eating and stretching.

Then, a few years ago, we went to one of Jess Hatchett’s yoga weekends at the Dzogchen Beara Buddhist Centre in West Cork. The yoga was alternately relaxing, challenging, and enjoyable. The food — our appetites whetted by the stretching and salty sea air — was memorable for all the right reasons. The fact that chef Caitlin Ruth was in the kitchen was one of the main reasons that I signed up. I lay on my yoga mat and dreamed of the huevos rancheros that Ruth served up for breakfast, brightly coloured salads at lunch and a most memorable celeriac and buffalo ricotta lasagne. My meditations were more on trying to figure out what she was magicking up in the kitchen for our next meal than any higher spiritual ideal.

It’s not just me: Food is a big focus on yoga retreats and having a chef that understands this can be a real draw. Erica Drum, a regular on Virgin Media’s The Six O’Clock Show, works with yoga teacher Lucybloom Webb on their Yoga Feed retreats. Drum believes that food is an intrinsic part of what they do: “The retreats are designed to release and reset. The food plays a huge role in that. It is full of local, seasonal, and vegetarian produce made from scratch with love and intention. All dishes are nutritious and delicious, designed to help nourish each guest and please them through fantastic flavour combinations and textures.”

Mealtimes have a dual role. Participants get to enjoy good food along with the opportunity to connect to others.“The meals together are genuinely the biggest bonding moments of the weekend,” says Drum. “When our guests are in the yoga classes or talking circle, they will open up individually… but it is not until they all sit in the casual and comfortable environment of our dinner table do they really begin to feel at ease, to share more and bond.”

She believes that eating together is about far more than just nourishing the body. “Food is a form of showing love, breaking bread together, sharing an experience, tasting the same dishes, and smelling the same aromas — this is all part of it.”

Drum caters for buffet brunches, which include homemade granola, fresh fruit salad, peanut balls, oat bars, kombucha, smoothies, and a hot option, like shakshouka or fluffy pancakes, so that no one feels deprived. Main evening meals are themed, with spreads of, for example, Indian or Middle Eastern food. “There are always snacks, teas, coffee and fruit available for our guests to enjoy at whatever time they wish,” says Drum.

Along with flexing your body, Yoga Feed weekends involve you working your cooking brain. Part of September’s Yoga Feed Equinox Escape in Connemara’s Killary Lodge includes a hands-on cookery class with Drum, something she started offering after noticing the disconnect between what participants ate on retreat and what they dined on when they returned home.

“We love to feed our guests delicious, nutritious food, but I felt it was important that we passed on the methods and recipes so that guests could continue making the food they enjoyed over the weekend. I also like to make it fun and interesting,” she says.

Drum, who is an advocate for avoiding food waste and cooking sustainably, teaches participants how to make “a ferment and a quick pickle — perhaps kimchi and red onions or something like that. Then I like to do a class on something we have eaten while they are with us, like falafel or chocolate coconut tart. I send them home with a document of all the recipes I used over the weekend, including smoothies, granola etc.”

For Drum and Webb, it’s about giving people the opportunity to relax, release, and eat good food at the retreat and see them leave equipped with a selection of new tools that they have learned over the weekend, “whether that be breathing techniques, meditation, journalling guides, yoga poses or recipes”.

Enjoy the retreat and bring the benefits home — no hair shirt required.

Erica Drum and Lucybloom Webb’s Yoga Feed Equinox Escape at Killary Lodge in Connemara will run from Friday, 22 to Sunday, 24 September 2023. See www.instagram.com/yogafeedretreats or email [e-mail]

More food and yoga:

Yoga and paella: 18-21 August, Majorca

Alma Murray, known to Corkonians from her Yoga with Alma classes at the Marina Market and Soothe & Swirl wine and yoga nights, will be hosting a yoga and paella-making retreat in Cala Tuent, Majorca this month. Along with daily yoga classes and guided walks, the Es Vergeret vegetarian paella cooking demo will be at the heart of the three-day retreat.

• reviveyouretreats.com

Spa wellness retreat: 27-28 August, Northern Ireland

At Killeavy Castle Estate in Co Armagh it’s a point of pride that as much food as possible is sourced from the estate’s 350-acre mixed farm and walled gardens or from local suppliers. The retreat includes a Taste of the Estate dining experience at the hotel restaurant alongside a mixture of vinyasa flow yoga practices under the guidance of teacher Eleanor Steane, spa treatments and the opportunity to hike Slieve Gullion and the Mourne Mountains.

• killeavycastle.com

Retreat to the cliffs: 27 August, Cliffs of Moher, Co Clare

Yoga instructor Caroline Rouine-O’Connor and wholefood chef Tanya Ranalow are a formidable team. Their retreats, according to Ranalow, combine “yoga and movement, nutritious healthy food, mindfulness and meditation and an outdoor experience”, incorporating horseriding at Clonshire Equestrian Centre, stand-up paddle boarding on Kilkee Stand and walks at the Cliffs of Moher. Food is an important part of the equation and Ranalow describes her menus as “healthy, vegetarian, ever-changing, seasonal, vibrant, and colourful”.

• Instagram: @retreatyourselfirl

Autumn yoga retreat with Dearbhla Glynn: 1-3 October, Ballymaloe Grainstore, East Cork

Dearbhla Glynn, who practices and teaches meditation, vinyasa, yin and restorative yoga, is leading a three-day Rest, Reflect & Restore retreat. Meals will be served in the Ballymaloe House dining room under the careful eye of head chef Dervilla O’Flynn, who says that she will “be serving mostly garden produce” including the vegetables grown on-site in dishes like miso-glazed aubergine, ruby beetroot fritters, Shanagarry garden minestrone, and garden vegetable shawarma.

• ballymaloegrainstore.com

Jess Hatchett InFlow

Jess Hatchett runs full retreat days, which include a vegetarian lunch, at the purpose-built studio she and her husband, Toby, built during lockdown. Based near Clonakilty, she focuses on the mind-body connection with a practice that incorporates vinyasa flow, resting restoratives, yin, hatha, yoga nidra and tantric meditation.

• yogawestcork.com