Liquid Detox Weekends – Bowen Island Canada

March 18 – 20, 2016
April 8-10, 2016
May 20 – 22, 2016

RETREAT OVERVIEW
Join Andrea Clark, yoga instructor & owner of Nectar Yoga and Natasha Vaz, Holistic Nutritionist, Ayurvedic Practitioner & owner of Vaz Wellness, for a weekend on beautiful Bowen Island. This inspiring retreat will be filled with yoga, meditation, nature, freshly prepared juices, smoothies and warming soups all designed to detox your body and enhance your personal health and wellbeing.

This retreat is located at Nectar Yoga B&B on 1.3 acres of lush forest, just steps from the ocean. A place where you can breathe deeply, sleep soundly and feel revitalized by the abundance of surrounding nature.

A weekend with Andrea and Natasha will offer you a chance to reboot, detox your body and mind, and will introduce you to new techniques, information and skills that will create positive change in your life. This retreat is a blend of yoga, mediation, delicious organic food, trail exploration, reading, dreaming and conversations by the campfire.

Leave behind the usual distractions of life and arrive in a space of nourishment, movement, self-reflection and discovery. Reconnect with your internal happiness.

For more information, click here: Liquid Detox Weekend

Yin to Your Yang

YIN TO YOUR YANG

Happy Holiday Season!!

This time of year can be filled with many opposites. Peace and irritability, love and anger, cold and hot, happiness and sadness, abundance and scarcity, love and hatred. If we are honest with ourselves, these are the fluctuations of the human mind on a daily basis. The polarities of life seem to be more evident during this season of tradition and family. Most of us have many mixed emotions about spending extended time with our relatives during the holidays. Whether it’s your unfiltered uncle or your mom who knows how to push your buttons, we all have loved ones in our lives that can test our patience. On top of family commitments, we have social gatherings, gift buying, food consumption, work, kids, and organizing it all brings forward our Yang energy.

We have all heard of and/or know what the Yin/Yang symbol looks like. If you were around in the 80’s and early 90’s it was also a popular fashion symbol on pendants, belts, t-shirts (and more), but did you ever find out what it actually means?

“Neither Yin nor Yang are absolute. Nothing is completely Yin or completely Yang. Each aspect contains the beginning point for the other aspect. For example: day becomes night and then night becomes day…Yin and Yang are interdependent upon each other so that the definition of one requires the definition for the other to be complete.” Personal Tao

This explains why the Yin/Yang symbol, which is actually called the Taijitu, has a black side with a white dot and a white side with a black dot. When two things are balanced, they are equal but still separate. In a relationship of harmony, the two energies blend into one seamless whole, as perfectly embodied by the swirling Yin-Yang symbol.

General Examples of Yin & Yang:

Yin = Darkness, Moon, Feminine, Shade, Rest
Yang = Light, Sun, Masculine, Brightness, Activity

When our Yang energy becomes dominant, we need to create balance by introducing more Yin energy. If we are feeling overwhelmed, hot, tense, agitated, we should sit, relax, slow down, cool down. This is intuitive, but we often continue to add more Yang energy into our already Yang like life.

So, now we know that the holiday season can create an abundance of Yang, and we also know that we need to balance this with Yin. If you feel your blood pressure rising and your breath becoming restricted while you are waiting in a shopping line-up, tune in, cool yourself down, sit down, take a few conscious breaths, go outside, turn on your Yin energy. It will balance you and enable you to have more equanimity with this beautiful season.

I just completed my Yin Yoga training in Vancouver with one of the founders of the tradition, Bernie Clark. I am very excited to introduce this teaching style into my classes. At Nectar Yoga B&B on Bowen Island, we will have regular Yin Yoga classes and at all of my upcoming Exotic Retreats.

Join me in Morocco, Iceland, and Spain (where there will be a specific Yin & Beginner themed retreat). Limited Space still remains for my Morocco andIceland Retreats coming up in February 2016.

Sending you much peace and balanced energy during this special season.

Om Shanti,
Andrea.

Vegan Spiced Hot Chocolate

Best news ever: this version of the every-so-popular hot chocolate is actually good for you! Free of dairy, sugar and other harmful ingredients, this hot chocolate is made with raw cacao, warming spices, almond milk and energizing maca powder. I would say it’s the perfect hot drink to nourish yourself on a cold day.

Ingredients (serves 2):

–       almond milk 4 cups

–       raw cocao powder, 3 tbsp

–       maca powder 1 tsp

–       cinnamon powder 1 tsp

–       chilli powder ½ tsp

–       Natural sweetener of your choice

Method:

Slowly warm up all the ingredients except the sweetener in a small pot. I actually blend the ingredients in a blender first, just to make sure it’s stirred well.

In order to keep all nutrients alive, don’t cook the hot chocolate, but just heat it to drinking temperature.

Add some sweetener of your choice, like raw honey or maple syrup.

Enjoy and warm up!

Recipe compliments of: http://www.mirellasaraswati.com/spiced-hot-chocolate/

Golden Fall Soup (Raw-Vegan)

From Chef Mirella: http://www.mirellasaraswati.com/golden-fall-soup-raw-vegan/

Fall is one of my favorite seasons when it comes to food. The local farmers market in Amsterdam fills up with pumpkins, root vegetables, apples and cabbages. It’s super colorful and I always need to control myself to buy just what I need and not buy everything that looks beautiful.

In this turbulent season of change the predominant sweet and heavy foods help to ground and nourish us. It is a beautiful example of the earth supplying exactly what we need.

This soup is like a little fall sunshine in a bowl. Made from yellow beats with tahini and ginger, this is a well combined raw soup for this season, being nutritious, warming and oh so tasty!

I serve this soup at room temperature and not chilled because the weather is already cold enough for me!

Ingredients (for two):

– 1 large yellow beet (or two small ones)

– 3 Tbsp Tahini

– 1 glove of garlic

– 1-1.5 inch piece of ginger

– one or two spring onions

– juice of 1 lemon

– Himalayan Salt (to your own taste)

– 1-2 cups of water water

Method:

Put the first 6 ingredients and one cup of water in to a blender. Blend until smooth. Add some salt and extra water if needed to get the right taste and consistency for your liking and give the blender another short swirl.

Enjoy the soup at room temperature or chilled!

Nectar Yoga B&B Bowen Island – ONE YEAR!

WE ARE ONE YEAR OLD TODAY!

I’m gushing with joy and gratitude. One year ago my partner and I took possession of our home on Bowen Island and Nectar Yoga B&B was born.

We have met hundreds of people in the past year from all over the world. Thank you to all my students, you are my teachers. You show me the light and teach me all I need to know.

Here are some things I’ve learned this year:
Be Happy
If you are not happy, make a change, maybe a really big change
All your dreams are possible but that doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy
Follow your intuition and base all your life choices on it, if you don’t know what intuition feels like, be still
If you have trouble sleeping, come to my house and I’ll put you to work, hard manual labour will have you sleeping like a baby
Everyone on this planet needs space to reflect and breathe
Not everyone is as clean as I am
Talk a walk in nature, you’ll feel better
Find a partner who has your back, who helps you to accelerate on your spiritual path, who gets you!
If you’re not with that person, let them go, find your soul mate, they are waiting…
This too shall pass, everything is always changing
It’s not what is happening to you, it’s how you move through it
The energy you put out is the energy you get back, action/reaction
Life is truly beautiful, even when its cold and raining
Find stillness, breathe, refill
Eat amazing food and love every bite (even full gluten, full sugar, full fat chocolate cake – love it!)
Don’t get too caught up in perfecting your diet, your body, your appearance, your yoga practice, just be a damn good person
Surround yourself with people who are vibrating at your frequency
Be real – be the actual person you portray on Facebook
Find community, if you can’t find it, create it
Making money has nothing to do with success, real success is soul to soul connection
Our body is impermanent, at any moment it could be gone, so live the life of your dreams
Say yes to every good opportunity, unless it sacrifices balance
Heal your past, forgive, mostly yourself, then everyone else
You are beautiful, you are uniquely you, no one can replicate that
See beauty in the diversity, not difference
Judging is different than noticing the reality as it is
If you have knowledge that will heal others share it, it’s potency accelerates when you share
Be selfless
Find the lessons and the blessings in all of your life experiences
I love island life, I love small community, I love sharing in other’s healing process, I love small details
Swim in the sea, swim in the lake, just swim, there is a deep stillness in the water
A true Yogi is someone who speaks kind and softly, who shares all they have, who sees the connection of all beings, I hope to one day be a Yogi
You are deeply wise, no truth is outside of you, it’s all within
Surround yourself with good people, but also lots of animals, they have so much wisdom and love
Go for it, today is the day, tomorrow may never come, you can do it!!
Most of all…Be Happy

These are not cliches or cute quotes I found on the internet, these are the REAL lessons I have learned this year. Thank you to the love of my life, my forever partner, without his amazing dedication and deep wisdom, this life would be the same. Thank you to all our guests and your beautiful comments, feedback, wisdom, and energy, this has made Nectar Yoga B&B so amazing.

Come visit us: www.nectaryogabnb.ca

Moroccan Spiced Quinoa Salad

Try this delicious recipe from my retreat partner and chef Mirella Saraswati. Join our upcoming Morocco Yoga Detox Retreat in September for more delicious food inspiration!

“At work I often make couscous salads. I add lots of delicious Moroccan spices, grated carrots, herbs and almonds and people love it. However I never eat it much myself because I try to avoid wheat. In an attempt to healthify my Moroccan couscous salad even more I decided to replace the couscous for quinoa.

Now, for a healthy food enthusiast I seem to eat a ridiculously low amount of quinoa. I must confess I’m just not a huge fan of the texture. There are only a couple of quinoa recipes that I really like and usually they are pretty stuffed with other delicious things so I don’t notice the quinoa too much. This recipe is one of those and I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

This salad is full of fresh veggies and herbs, nuts and spices. I used a ready-made spice mix called ‘Ras el Hanout’, which can be seen as the Moroccan variation of Garam Masala. You should be able to get this at an exotic or middle-eastern style supermarket, or you can mix the spices yourself from the recipe I share below.”

Ingredients:

Salad Fillings (serves 2-3):

–       1 cup quinoa, uncooked

–       2 medium carrots (grated)

–       ¼ cup raisins (soaked for 1 hour)

–       1 spring onion (thinly sliced)

–       1 red bell pepper (thinly sliced)

–       handful of mint

–       handful of basil

–       1 avocado (sliced)

–       ½ cup of almonds

Dressing:

–       1/2 cup olive oil

–       1 small garlic clove

–       1 inch piece of ginger

–       3 tsp ras-el-hanout

–       1 tsp salt

–       juice of half a lemon

Ras el Hanout spice mix:

– 1 teaspoon ground cumin

– 1 teaspoon ground ginger

– 1 teaspoon salt

– 3/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

– 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

– 1/2 teaspoon ground coriander seeds

– 1/2 teaspoon cayenne

– 1/2 teaspoon ground allspice

– 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

Method

Cook the quinoa according to the package’s instructions, drain and let stand to cool.

In a dry frying pan, toast the almonds on medium heat until they start brown a little.

Prep all your veggies by grating the carrot and chopping the bell-pepper, spring onion, avocado and herbs.

In a small food processor or blender, combine the olive oil, garlic, ginger, Ras el Hanout, salt and lemon juice and blend until smooth. Taste and decide if you need more of any of the ingredients to balance the flavour out to your liking.

Add the quinoa to a bowl, mix in the dressing and toss till it’s well coated. Then stir through the carrot, bell-pepper, spring onion, mint, basil and raisins. Serve the quinoa salad topped with the toasted almonds and sliced avocado.

Enjoy!

From the Mouths of Babes.

From the Dalai Lama

A Letter From Einstein…

In the late 1980s, Lieserl, the daughter of the famous genius, donated 1,400 letters, written by Einstein, to the Hebrew University, with orders not to publish their contents until two decades after his death. This is one of them, for Lieserl Einstein.

…”When I proposed the theory of relativity, very few understood me, and what I will reveal now to transmit to mankind will also collide with the misunderstanding and prejudice in the world.
I ask you to guard the letters as long as necessary, years, decades, until society is advanced enough to accept what I will explain below.
There is an extremely powerful force that, so far, science has not found a formal explanation to. It is a force that includes and governs all others, and is even behind any phenomenon operating in the universe and has not yet been identified by us.

This universal force is LOVE.
When scientists looked for a unified theory of the universe they forgot the most powerful unseen force.

Love is Light, that enlightens those who give and receive it.
Love is gravity, because it makes some people feel attracted to others.

Love is power, because it multiplies the best we have, and allows humanity not to be extinguished in their blind selfishness. Love unfolds and reveals.

For love we live and die.
Love is God and God is Love.

This force explains everything and gives meaning to life. This is the variable that we have ignored for too long, maybe because we are afraid of love because it is the only energy in the universe that man has not learned to drive at will.

To give visibility to love, I made a simple substitution in my most famous equation.

If instead of E = mc2, we accept that the energy to heal the world can be obtained through love multiplied by the speed of light squared, we arrive at the conclusion that love is the most powerful force there is, because it has no limits.
After the failure of humanity in the use and control of the other forces of the universe that have turned against us, it is urgent that we nourish ourselves with another kind of energy…

If we want our species to survive, if we are to find meaning in life, if we want to save the world and every sentient being that inhabits it, love is the one and only answer.
Perhaps we are not yet ready to make a bomb of love, a device powerful enough to entirely destroy the hate, selfishness and greed that devastate the planet.

However, each individual carries within them a small but powerful generator of love whose energy is waiting to be released.
When we learn to give and receive this universal energy, dear Lieserl, we will have affirmed that love conquers all, is able to transcend everything and anything, because love is the quintessence of life.

I deeply regret not having been able to express what is in my heart, which has quietly beaten for you all my life. Maybe it’s too late to apologize, but as time is relative, I need to tell you that I love you and thanks to you I have reached the ultimate answer! “.

Your father Albert Einstein

Nectar Yoga Retreat Ibiza – Best Moments in Pictures.

I am home from a beautiful week of yoga and awakening. The sun was shining all week and we had many new experiences. From a vibrational healing gong bath to psychic readings to a day at the Balinese inspired spa. Join us for another adventure in September: http://nectaryoga.ca/ibiza-yoga-detox-retreat-september-2015/ Namaste!

Gong Bath Vibrational Healing

Morning sunrise

Raw Vegan Chocolate Cake

Savasana

Raw Pasta

Namaste

Relaxing at the pool

Our villa’s pool

Follow your heart

Soup!

Dining

Raw, Vegan Chocolate Chia Pudding with a Green Smoothie for breakfast

Old Town Ibiza

Life does not have to be perfect to be beautiful.

Ibiza Yoga Detox Retreat

Be Happy!