Hi, I’m Emily Johnson, founder of Wild Thing Retreats. I’ve been practicing yoga for over 20 years, and teaching since 2014. I started teaching retreats many years ago, but it took me a while to figure out why something felt ‘off’ on some of them. The retreats which felt joyful and easy to teach were the ones not set in stuffy mansions or perfect hotels. The retreats where people grew the most, laughed the most, let go of their hectic lives – where they truly stepped into their true selves – they were set in nature.

I believe in the power of nature to heal us. To make us come alive.

I was sitting on a beach in Morocco a few years ago after spending the day scaling rocks along the coast that probably weren’t safe scale, and I had to hurry back to my room to write this:

“When I chant, when I dance, when I feel the ground beneath my bare feet – sometimes my heart soars, sometimes I feel a deep grief. A grief I haven’t always understood. But I’ve come to realise it’s a mourning for my spirit, my spirit that feels trapped.

When I chant, when I dance, when I feel the ground beneath my feet – my heart is cracked open and I am living in a commune, dancing by the fire, chanting with war paint across my body, with a community of people to help raise each other’s children, to help each other, to dance wildly, to scream and sing and roar with abandon.

We live so separately, we cloister ourselves and thus our spirits. We don’t let our bodies explore the space around us. We sit, stand, walk, maybe run, maybe a few sun salutes. We drive, sit, stand, drive some more. Sheltered by concrete walls and metal cars. We don’t move. We don’t let our spirts burst through our bodies so our limbs have no choice but to stretch out and explore the air around us, the air between our fingers, the dirt between our toes. We keep our voices on mute or on a setting that won’t disturb anyone around us. Our tone is always appropriate.

But we have a wild soul deep down in there, somewhere. And it so desperately wants to come out. It so desperately wants to dance, move, feel the ground, explore the sky. So we can. We can move and let our spirits run wild. We can place our cheek upon the floor and roll until our bodies become one with the earth. We can run our fingers through the sand until there is no difference between each grain and our skin. We can roar as our limbs expand into the wild. We can sing. We can shriek and scream and howl and laugh. We can live. We can move and let our spirits run wild.”

Don’t worry… on our retreats there (probably😉) won’t be screaming and dancing. But we will move with freedom. I’m no magician. But one thing I can do is hold space for you to feel. To live. To be.

Love, Emily ✨