I am running a five day queer retreat for queer people to come together to rest, heal & connect. The daily reality of being in a marginalised body is exhausting and so often it is the very people who need practices like yoga the most, who find themselves feeling unwelcome to yoga studios & spaces.

Queer people are more likely to be living with mental health conditions, lower financial means and experience social isolation. We are also more likely to be living lives which confront social norms (e.g. different ways of creating families, polyamory, neurodivergence, gender non-conformity) which are both joyful AND can make the experience of day to day life mentally, physically and emotionally tiring. As a community, we also have specific experiences of grief & trauma in relation to coming out, loss of community members, family disconnection etc.

For all these reasons, it is so important that opportunities for queer people to come together in community to heal, rest & simply be. The practice of yoga offer such a breadth of practices to support this process and I am extremely passionate about increasing the accessibility and inclusivity of all kinds of yoga offerings.

I know that retreats are financial inaccessible for so many members of our community. I ran this retreat, Spirals & Cycles for the first time in May 2023 and again in 2024. It was incredible to witness the transformational power of the space we co-created for everyone who attended. The idea to create a bursary pot came emerged from the 2023 group in order to make the retreat accessible for queer people on lower incomes and/or experiencing further intersections of marginalisation due to race, ability and gender. In 2024, three people were able to attend who otherwise would not have been able to access this retreat.

Depending on how much we raise and the demand, the total sum will either be used to fully fund a place or partially fund multiple places and/or go towards massage treatments. The total sum will be increased depending on your donations!