Mindful Movement Retreat in Portugal

I am passionate about movement and was looking for a movement retreat to join that wasn’t just yoga. Don’t get me wrong, I love yoga, but there are more ways to move than that. I found a group offering a retreat in the Algarve in Portugal in spring of 2023 so I jumped on board. I had never been interested in going to Portugal before, but this looked like the perfect retreat for me.

Not to mention I was training for a half marathon and the cross training, and gentle rolling hills of Portugal appealed.

It wasn’t long until I had purchased a one way ticket to the Azores (also part of Portugal) to begin my adventure. I’ll keep that blog post separate since this is about the movement retreat, but suffice to say, I have wanted to go to the Azores for probably close to ten years, so it worked out perfectly to visit both places.

MINDFUL Movement retreat 2023

I’d love to one day offer a retreat like this, a combination of adventure and movement.

We met in Lisbon and the hosts arranged for a shuttle to drive us to the Algarve. It was around a 3 hour drive from Lisbon, during which time I saw herons nesting on electric towers near the highway. Weird!

We arrived and met our cabin roommates. I was partnered with a lovely woman named Jennifer.

The retreat was attempting to be mixed level, but I found that it was far too easy for me, because they were trying to accommodate older and less fit attendees. I did my best to adapt the exercises to my level, while remaining inclusive to activity partners who were more fragile, and less agile.

The retreat covered a range of activities from agility training, tai chi style slower mindful movement, swimming in the ocean, hiking along the gorgeous shores of the algarve pictured), kayaking the famous rock formations at Lagos and in my case borrowing a bike from the resort and cycling to the nearest town. As I was training for my half marathon, I also went on several trail runs in the area along the cliffs. There were opportunities to surf as well.

The retreat was overall very well planned, with daily movement activities, journaling, and time to explore the area.

I was excited to attend since I will be hosting movement adventures in the future, and I was curious to see how they handled the mixed levels. In some instances the activities were too difficult for the older people, and too easy for the younger ones, so this could have been handled better in my opinion, by pairing similarly fit people together.

It was a bit cliquey, as the organizers and their friends spent quite a bit of time getting footage of themselves for social media, rather than including the rest of us. They seemed only interested in having the young beautiful people featured, and maybe who can blame them. As a photographer I was looking forward to being in a few of the photos or videos, but I was in none of them, not being in the target demographic. This left me feeling like I wasn’t their target market, and as a result I would not return to another trip they offered.

I was very glad to have attended, and I will certainly continue attending movement retreats. The concept is amazing, and was very close to being executed with top marks!