04Open-Air Yoga Shala
Yoga in Phuket,
under open skies.
Open-air yoga in Thalang, Phuket - breath, movement and stillness before the island wakes. All levels, all bodies, with mats and props provided. Gatherings in fermentation and slow craft are announced through the season.
The practice
Breathe first.
The rest follows.
Every class starts in the same place - sitting, counting the breath out longer than in. Not as ceremony. It is the quickest way to get a morning off your shoulders.
Then movement, and then stillness again. No mirrors, and nothing to look at but a working farm on three sides of you.
The sequence
From the first breath
to the last.
A class is built rather than improvised. It centres, it warms, it climbs to one hard thing, and then it walks you back down - and every part has a name a teacher will use out loud. The rings grow and close with the arc, so the marks alone tell you what you are walking into.
01CentrePranayama
Mats, blocks and bolsters are already out, and nothing starts until the room is still. The breath is counted first - longer out than in, until the drive here has left it.
02WarmSurya namaskar
Cat, cow, and the first salutations. The spine remembers what it can do before anyone asks it for much.
03BuildStanding sequence
Standing sequences, held long enough to matter. Hands arrive to move a hip an inch, which is the whole difference between a class and a video.
04CrestPeak pose
Whatever the practice reaches for that morning - a balance, an inversion, a bind. Take the version your body offers today.
05UnwindCounterpose
Back to the floor: forward folds, a twist each way, whatever undoes what the peak just did. Nobody is sent into stillness still switched on.
06RestSavasana
Flat on your back under the cloth for as long as you are given, then one breath sitting up together. The one pose everybody can do, and the only one anybody wants to stay in.
The shala
Cloth for a ceiling,
garden for walls.
- Open on three sides
- Glass to the garden, the greenhouse and the hill behind it. No mirrors, and nothing to look at but where you are.
- Cloth for a ceiling
- Layered strips of cream canvas that move all day. They soften the light, drop the heat, and are the first thing you see lying down.
- Everything provided
- Mats, blocks, bolsters and straps, and cold towels all morning. Bring water and nothing else.
- One class, many versions
- Every shape in the room has three ways into it. First mornings and thirty-year practices share the floor.
Coming up
Find an hour,
hold a place.
Leave a name and we’ll hold you a mat - no account, no deposit, nothing to pay until you arrive.
Gatherings
Off the mat,
into the season.
The shala is the biggest covered space on the farm, so it does more than hold classes. A few times a season it becomes a workshop, and the subject comes from whatever the rest of the place is busy with.
Fermentation
Kraut, kimchi and hot sauce, made in the kitchen that serves them.
Slow craft
Working with grown materials and dyed cloth, at the pace the material sets rather than the one you had in mind.
Make a day of it
Most mornings here are a class and then a long soak, and the two come together - the spa is open to you all day once you have practised. The month is on the booking page, gatherings included.
The shala is at 39/6 Moo 7, Thep Krasatti, Thalang, Phuket 83110. How to find us.