Yoga & Pilates Retreat Sahara Morocco

Practising on sand changes the practice

Every floor you have practised on is flat, level and predictable. That is what makes a studio teachable: the ground gives the same answer every time.

Sand does not. It moves under load, it is never level twice, and it exposes every compensation the body has learned to hide. A warrior pose held on a dune face involves muscles that a studio floor lets you skip. Nobody finds this out by being told; they find it out in the first ten minutes.

This is not a gimmick. It is the reason instructors bring groups here rather than somewhere with a nicer studio.

The temperature decides the timetable

Practice happens at first light, usually starting between six and half past, when the sand is still cold and the air has not arrived. This is not a style choice: it is when the sand and the light are at their best.

A second session at dusk works well from October to February. In the other months it moves to the lounge tent or the shaded terrace.

What the camp provides

A prepared flat area on firm sand, levelled and swept before each session, large enough for twenty mats. It is set away from the tents so the group is not practising in front of an audience.

Mats, blocks, straps and bolsters. Bring your own mat if you are attached to it, but you do not have to.

A lounge tent with a level wooden floor for sessions indoors. It takes twelve comfortably.

Sound, if you want it, and complete silence if you do not. Erg Chegaga has no traffic and no neighbours, so a silent practice here is genuinely silent.

For instructors bringing a group

You lead. We handle everything else: transfers from M’Hamid or a helicopter from Marrakech, all meals with dietary requirements taken seriously. Most instructors take the whole camp, and when they do, no other guest walks through the session.

The camp has eight tents, each with its own bathroom, and takes from 2 to 18 guests, up to 20 with extra beds. Groups of eight to sixteen leave room to breathe.

We do not take a cut of your programme and we do not put our name on it. You are renting a venue that happens to be in the middle of the Sahara.

The rest of the day

Between sessions the desert does the work: walking with nomads, sandboarding, bread baked in the sand, a camel ride timed for the light, and a Bortle Class 1 sky with a telescope on one of the nights.

There is no signal for a phone to find anyway.

How to come

Three to seven nights, September to June, with the whole camp if you want it. Tell us your dates, your group size and whether you need reformer space, and we will send the programme and the terms in writing before anything is paid.