HONEST review of Beyond Yoga Retreat in Puerto Vallarta | Is it worth it?

Transcript

foreign and today I have something a little different for you guys I just got back from a week-long yoga retreat in Puerto Vallarta Mexico I went to Beyond Yoga Retreat and I wanted to put together a little review what to expect video in case you're thinking of going to This Yogurt Retreat or just any retreat in general I'm in the middle of moving so I'm like recording this from a mattress on my floor so sorry about that I'm gonna start off with what to expect just like what the experience was like in general and then I'll go into some pros and cons of this Retreat specifically and just give a really honest review of my experience and hopefully this gives you enough information to empower you to make your own decision about if this is something that you would like to do for yourself I did a one week long retreat at Beyond yoga and you can also go for two weeks which is pretty much you do the one week twice you redo the same itinerary your second week just with a different group of people and then they also have I think it's like a month-long mental health Retreat that you can do as well which I believe is totally separate from what I'm going to be talking about today the first thing that I noticed from the moment that I contacted Beyond yoga was that they were so organized all the communication before the retreat so structured so organized they sent me everything that I need to know they sent me pictures of who to look for and when I got to the airport for my airport shuttle and once we arrived they had a full itinerary for the week that had the times for everything what all we were doing I just felt very taken care of when I was there every day is a little different but for the most part every day follows the same schedule roughly which is that you wake up in the morning and the first thing you have is a sunrise yoga a meditation session at 7 45 a.m and this is the more energizing yoga flow of the day there's two yoga sessions today so there's sunrise and sunset and Sun someone tends to be more relaxed and gentle whereas the sunrise one is a bit more like Vinyasa Hatha flows more challenging postures once the morning yoga class finishes then it's time to go to breakfast every day is silent breakfast so it's the only meal of the day that's silent you go in there there's a buffet style breakfast that has lots of fresh tropical fruits and some vegan dishes everything that you eat at this Retreat is vegan it's all plant-based and the food is really really good but I'll get more into that later everyone sits in the dining hall area and just eats in silence and the goal of having this is for you to reflect on your food reflect on the morning and have a lot of mindfulness after breakfast there's usually a short break about an hour or so and then either there's two days where you have have excursions which are a waterfall hike and snorkeling and so on those days you head out for those right after breakfast but on every other day there are some workshops in the morning about like meditation mindfulness chakras and those start about like an hour after breakfast you have a little bit of down time and then you go to the workshops then there's lunch and lunch is not buffet style they have like three courses there's like a salad and there's the meal and then there's dessert and that's pretty true for all of the lunch and dinner meals lunch of course is not silent you can sit with whoever you want to and it's just a fun time to chat about the workshops that we did and make plans with other people for the afternoon free time which is from after lunch until sunset yoga starts at 5 45. so it's like three hours or so where you have time to go and get a massage at the spa or you can walk down to the beach walk into Puerto Vallarta proper and go shopping or just stay around at the pool in your Villa and you can Journal you can meditate you can do your own yoga practice really however you want to spend the time it's totally up to you and then Sunset yoga starts at 5 45. this is like the last yoga exercise of the day and as I mentioned before it's pretty gentle and then once yoga is finished it's time for dinner and so you go to dinner and the meals again are so amazing and just delicious and if it's anybody's birthday during your retreat they do cute little birthday celebrations during dinner time too we had a ton of birthdays the week that I was there so it was really fun to get to celebrate everyone's birthday with them and then after dinner there are evening events so it might look like the opening and closing ceremonies the first and last day of the week but there's also Yoga Nidra sound baths there's like a burning ceremony where you try to let go of anything that's weighing you down in life just really nice things like that that were wonderful ways to bond with everyone else that was at the retreat that's what you can expect in a week at Beyond yoga and as I mentioned earlier if you decide to go for two weeks you follow the same itinerary the second week it's just with a different group of people because most of the people that go there are only going for one week now that we know kind of what goes on at The Yoga Tree let's talk about some pros and cons I'll start with the pros first and the biggest Pro of all in my opinion is how amazing the accommodations were I mean I felt like I was living in luxury I went with the option of staying in a penthouse suite at one of the villas with three other women roommates so we each had a twin bed and we shared a bathroom and the space was just beautiful I mean wrap around windows floor to ceiling we had a massive balcony and we looked out over like a cute little river well it was kind of dry when I was there but it's probably like a little river there it was just a really amazing space to be able to come back to at the end of every day and I was really lucky I had chosen to be in a room with three other women we were all solo traveling I had never met any of them before we were so lucky because we all got along so well and like really hit it off and their friends that I will have in my life for a very long time so it was just so amazing to have that experience there are couple Cons with the accommodations which I will get into in just a little bit but overall really I was so impressed the next Pro is the food the food is so amazing I was shocked at how good the food was like I was not expecting the food to be that good when you book The Retreat all three meals a day are included so you get your breakfast you get your lunch you get your dinner and then you also get a snack that's put in the kitchen of your Villa every day the meals are vegan they're plant-based and they're also very allergen friendly I have a few food allergens that I have to be careful with and they were so wonderful about it they like memorized my face and my name the first day that I was there and they would let me know if there was anything that I shouldn't be eating and there were a ton of people that also had like gluten intolerances celiac disease pretty much like everyone had some kind of dietary restriction and they were so amazing about catering towards everybody so I was so impressed with that and the new meals were delicious I mean so incredibly good I was like pretty much begging the host to give me some of the recipes before I left and unfortunately they couldn't share them with me it just felt so good to feel so nurtured inside and out the next amazing thing about this Retreat is the people so both the staff but then also the people that I shared the retreat with and I won't go too much into detail on that because of course if you go there will be other people that are there with you you won't have the same group that I did but I made some really amazing amazing bonds with the group that I was with I just like fell in love with everybody there it was just everyone had such amazing energy and was so sweet so supportive and our group just really meshed together and there were like 30 of us I feel like it's pretty rare to have a group that big and not have people kind of break out into different groups but really everyone was so cohesive and it was just so amazing but really what I want to talk about here is how amazing the staff was all of the instructors were so kind so sweet and the hosts Michelle Heather and Jerry were just amazing I mean they were on top of everything and if you had any questions they could always answer everybody really went out of their way too to make sure that you felt really safe and included and there were a bunch of different yoga instructors that would come throughout the week and also for the workshops too you got a lot of diversity and the teaching styles and the classes that you were taking which I thought was really wonderful and part of what is so amazing about having great hosts like that is that you feel so safe both physically and mentally so physically the resort is a private gated Villa Community they have people that are working through the night and through the day everybody is so friendly and if you need to go anywhere then they have people that will get you there so you don't really have to worry about coordinating Transportation or anything on your own which is wonderful and that area Puerto Vallarta also just felt very safe even as a solo female traveler I didn't feel uncomfortable walking around by myself and the last Pro that I'm going to touch on today is the spa services which were so amazing when you book The Retreat you get one massage that's included and then you have the option of purchasing additional spa services if you want to and I ended up booking a second massage after my first one because it was the best massage of my life like it was so amazing the masseuse was Carly I got her the second time too the quality of the massages and the sponsors that they offer is really wonderful so if you go I highly recommend taking full advantage of that now we'll get into the con so while this was an amazing experience there were some things that I had a hard time with and I wish that I knew about before I had gone I'm gonna share those with you the first one is that it was very loud on the website it seemed like this resort was like in the middle of the Jungle and it was going to be very secluded and quiet and that was not really the reality of it it was a bit of a ways outside of Puerto Vallarta so it wasn't nearly as loud as if we were like at a resort in Puerto Vallarta but we were in a more residential area and there were constantly people using like weed whackers doing yard work they were like construction sounds and we could hear the sounds of the highway very clearly all day and all night it was a bit hard for me it was difficult during meditation and yoga because all of the yoga classes and meditations are Outdoors so sometimes we'd be in the middle of our meditation and then like a weed whacker just starts up and everyone's just kind of like okay and the other thing touching on this is that within this gated Villa Community that the resort is in it's not just the resort there are people that privately own some of the Villas and people that use them as vacation rentals so there's a good number of people that are walking around around the grounds and they could be your neighbors and they're not there for the yoga retreat we got really unlucky and while we were staying there there was a group of people that were renting the Villa next door to us and they were there to party hard for spring break or something I don't know we really struggled because some of the Nights from like midnight until 6 a.m non-stop they were blasting music they were screaming there's pretty much no noise cancellation inside of the Villas because the walls are glass and so even when we closed it we could hear everything and none of us slept it was really hard and we did talk to the host about it she was very apologetic and she did end up talking to the property manager of that Villa and it didn't happen again which was good but it was still really hard not get any sleep and then go straight into a full day of yoga and excursions I wish that there was more that they could do about that of course because they don't own all the Villas they don't have total control over what these you know people choose to do when they're there so I would recommend bringing earbuds if you can the next thing is the bugs and Wildlife which are a pro and a con of course being kind of in a more jungly environment you're going to see some Wildlife that you want to see and some that you don't really want to see the first one is the mosquitoes so in the lunar Studio which is a studio that's downstairs one of the Villas it's actually downstairs The Villa I was staying in the mosquitoes were so bad you would pretty much get eaten alive during class we would all leave and we were covered even though we were spraying bug spray all over us and the instructors would be lighting incense to try and get them to go away but it was really difficult there were some days when students would leave the classes like halfway through because they were getting bit up so bad definitely bring bug spray and I wish that they would put up Nets or something around the studio to keep some the mosquitoes out and the other thing is the Mexican raccoons which are total troublemakers if you have food in your Villa they will break into your Villa and go through your stuff they will absolutely wreck the place us and two other Villas have like a raccoon infestation in the middle of the night you know each on different days one of the girls in my group she had her wallet kept in a bag that had like a couple treats in it and the raccoons broke into their Villa went through all their stuff they stole her wallet they stole her backpack they took like all this stuff out of their room and they like poop everywhere it was like a total nightmare and then the last night of their cheat our Villa got broken into there were like dozens of raccoons running along our balcony and then they got into the kitchen which was on the floor below us they went in there they knocked over vases they went through like everything and just made a total mess so it was funny like the whole thing I thought was like very comical but it's also really inconvenient especially like like if your stuff's getting taken by raccoons that's just not a great experience so definitely be careful about having any food in your bags and make sure you put all your stuff away and make sure the doors and the windows and everything is completely closed when you leave your Villa and the last con that I'm going to talk about is the portion sizes of the food so most of the time the portion sizes were good but there were a few meals where I just felt kind of underserved and there was one night when I had to ask the kitchen if they could give me like another dinner because I was like nowhere near being full by the time dinner was over and they did accommodate that they were super great but that was kind of an ongoing thing is just feeling like a little bit hungry during the retreat I know me and my uh group that were my villa we would get so excited when they would put the snacks in the fridge before dinner because we were like so ready to eat again so yeah I wish they had larger portion sizes we would all kind of stock up on breakfast because that was like you can help yourself to all the food and you can eat as much as you need to but the other meals are a bit more restricted so all that being said was it worth it to go on this Retreat and I will say 100 000 million percent yes I would do it again and again even if I knew about these cons I listed about beforehand I still would have made the same decision to go even if nothing changed I still would go I just had one of the most amazing experiences of my life I met so many amazing people I learned so much about myself and about yoga and it really was just what I needed so I highly recommend it and if you're looking for something like that then I think you should totally go for it but if you're looking for some more like alone time finding yourself I would maybe look elsewhere because so much about this Retreat is very group oriented but there is still time for self-reflection and journaling yeah I just I loved it I had such an amazing time so if you have any specific questions definitely feel free to leave them in the comments below and I will do my best to address them and if you end up going or if you have gone then I would love to hear about your experience so please just let me know thank you for listening to my little monologue and I hope this was helpful [Music]