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Clear Yoga Retreat

Name: Clear Yoga Retreat
Start: 2027-04-08
End: 2027-04-11
Location: Menla
Rating: 4.81

4.81107 reviews

Phoenicia, NY 12464, USA

April 8 - 11, 2027

About this Retreat

Your Guides

Jessica

Details of this retreat

The power of practice, patience, and the radical acceptance of change.

Join Jess for a 4 day retreat of Iyengar Yoga, pranayama, and meditations.

This retreat offers to nourish the many levels of our being from the powerfully physical to the quiet space within. Each yoga asana session will build upon the previous session logically and sequentially. Each evening has an optional session to quieten your mind for the night. In between, Menla offers a magical array of mountain walks, delicious food, supportive company, and the quietness of your own self care.

The power of practice gives us the agency to keep showing up, whatever obstacles we encounter. Showing up for practice is, ultimately, showing up for ourselves.

Practice requires and cultivates patience. Patience is not simply a state of mind; it is an embodied experience—a physical, mental, and emotional pause. It is a slowing down that gives us space to observe what may be holding us back and to recognize the conditions we place on ourselves before allowing deeper understanding to emerge.

Patience is not passivity. Rather, it is a radical and transformative acceptance of where we are, while creating space to move through the challenges of our stressful and busy lives.

Iyengar Yoga uses yoga postures (asana), breath practices (pranayama), and meditation to cultivate patience, agency, and self-reflection.

Jessica is a senior level Iyengar Yoga teacher with 28 years of teaching experience. She teaches in the Hudson Valley, in the North East, and abroad in the UK and Europe. Jessica works with methodical detail that builds awareness of movement and form. Her classes are playful, challenging, and healing. She is well practiced in Iyengar Yoga therapy as an effective tool to help injuries and other conditions. This is her sixth year hosting a retreat at Menla.

Schedule

Thursday April 8th

3 - 7 pm Check in
4:30 - 6pm Welcome and Yoga class
6 - 7 pm Dinner
7:30 - 8:30pm Restorative and pranayama practice (optional)

Friday April 9th

8 - 9 am Breakfast
9:30 am - 12 pm Yoga class
12:30 - 1:30 pm Lunch
4 - 5:45 pm Yoga class
6 - 7 pm Dinner
7:30 - 8:30 pm Evening Chanting with Leslie Freyburg (optional)

Saturday April 10th

8 - 9 am Breakfast
9:30 am - 12 pm Yoga class
12:30 - 1:30 pm Lunch
4 - 5:45 pm Yoga class
6 - 7 pm Dinner
7:30 pm - 8:30 pm Q and A by the fire (optional)

Sunday April 11th

8 - 9 am Breakfast (and check out of rooms)
9:30 am - 12 pm Yoga class
12:30 - 1:30 pm Lunch
1:30 pm Departure

*Please note this schedule is subject to change.

Getting Here

Menla, Phoenicia, NY 12464, USA

Accommodation

Deluxe Queen

Deluxe Queen Room with Queen Bed and Private Bathroom Free Phone and Hi-Speed Wifi Internet Access Available Air Conditioning All Rooms in Lhasa are Handicap-Accessible, Including Four Rooms with Wheelchair Accessible Showers. Deluxe Queen Rooms are Available in Lhasa Inn and Kathmandu House * Please note that rates include meals and accommodations

Deluxe Double (Shared Room)

Deluxe Double Room with Two Full Size Beds and Private Bathroom Free Phone and Hi-Speed Wifi Internet Access Available Air Conditioning All Rooms in Lhasa are Handicap-Accessible, Including Four Rooms with Wheelchair Accessible Showers. Deluxe Double Rooms with Private Bathrooms are Located in the Lhasa Inn * Please note rates include meals and accommodations. This booking is for one bed in a double shared room: We May Assign You a Roommate if You Do Not Register with One.

Standard Single - Shared Bath

Menla Private Queen Room with Queen Bed and Shared Bathroom Public Phone and Hi-Speed Wifi Internet Access Available This lodging type is not ADA Compliant Private Queen Rooms with Shared Bathroom are Available in Thimpu House, Panther Cottage and Potala House * Please note that rates include meals and accommodations

Standard Double Full - Shared bath (Shared Room)

Deluxe Double Room with Two Full Beds and Shared Bathroom Free Phone and Hi-Speed Wifi Internet Access Available Air Conditioning This lodging type is not ADA Compliant. Please note that due to the stairs we recommend that guests with mobility issues book other accommodations. Deluxe Double Rooms with Shared Bathrooms are Located in Thimphu * Please note rates include meals and accommodations. This booking is for one bed in a double shared room: We May Assign You a Roommate if You Do Not Register with One.

Commuter

Commuters Menla Encourages Members of the Community to Participate in Our Wonderful Programs! Includes Meals, Public Phone, Public Computer, and Wi-Fi Internet Available in Lhasa Inn. Accommodations Fee Includes All Meals.

Customer Reviews

4.81 out of 5.0 average rating

Nancy • Oct 29, 2026

5.0

Verified

Cultivating Joy- A Ketamine Assisted Mindfulness Retreat

What a fabulous location and place for this amazing retreat at Menla! The food was great, the grounds were gorgeous and the buildings/ facilities evoked a feeling of peace, honor and tranquility. There is a feeling of spacious stillness at Menla. Look forward to returning.

Anonymous • Oct 28, 2026

5.0

Verified

5 Stars for an Incredible Weekend!

We had a fantastic time at the Autumn Reset yoga retreat at Menla in October! The grounds are beautiful, the trails are perfect, the food was incredible, and the yoga space was stunning. The staff was super attentive and helpful. Our only feedback for next time is to be more timely with the bus pick-up (one of the other students waited at the bus stop for 25 minutes) and we wish there were some comfy indoor spaces to read and enjoy down time that weren't just the dining hall tables. Overall an A+ weekend and can't wait to do it again - we will be back!!! Thank you Menla!

Anonymous • Oct 27, 2026

2.0

Verified

Beautiful but…

I do love the setting & atmosphere at Menla. There’s magic in the air. After 2 previous visits where I stayed in Dragon (which was dumpy) I paid more this time around for Naranda. It was a lovely room, much nicer than Dragon. There is a tiny mirror in an awkward inaccessible place. A larger mirror in a more accessible place would be appreciated. The bathroom stalls could use improvement! One does not lock at all and the way the doors are designed makes it impossible to know whether to push or pull them and they slam loudly when they shut, jarringly so. This could be easily fixed! The showers are extremely small and it’s very easy to freeze or scald yourself if your elbow accidentally hits the temperature lever. The coffee is TERRIBLE! I had a glimpse of the bag and it’s NOT organic or fair trade which is what we are lead to believe. The food is mostly delicious but inconsistent. On our last evening the risotto was extremely undercooked and sometimes things ran out. Lastly, another retreat was happening at the same time and several of my colleagues had no place to sit to eat their dinner as all the seats were taken. No bueno!

Dominique • Oct 24, 2026

5.0

Verified

Let’s Talk about appropriation

My stay at Menla was beautiful as the center itself, staff and guest are just lovely. The scenery and energy is amazing. Craig (fire keeper) and Jill (water pourer ) supported by Ericka ( song keeper) sweat lodge is legitimate and wonderful.

However , I attended the Wisdom Warrior retreat more than once , where the leader Kareema should get one star or less. She uses names like Iylana Vanzant and others big named people to demonstrate her so called authority in knowing what she is doing. Turns out Iylana and her had a falling out.

She pretends to be oh so spiritual when all she does is appropriate. When you go to her retreats she’s expects you to work like setting up etc. She poorly plans the retreat and actually it really is not much of a retreat because her co-partner also had a falling out with Kareema and she did most of the retreat prior where it was fine much better.

Kareema picking up the coordinating , designing and more of the retreat herself demonstrated just how much she does not know what she’s doing. Total incompetence.

Furthermore she throws tantrums when she do not go her way and she is perceived by me to be manipulative and verbally and emotionally abusive. Especially when her poorly planned retreat gets someone sick. She has no saftey measures in place and no one available to support her in necessary situations . Her retreats from my experience is Not a safe space at all.

She’s about to make a professional documentary using yet another persons skills for her credit, on the wisdom warriors where it will be used to mislead people on how experienced she is and what a “Queen” she thinks she is personally.

During the retreat she actually told a head staff what she wanted and that she was going to get other staff to do it because this lead staff told her no.

I felt Menla deserves 5 stars itself but wisdom warrior retreat is a façade meaning, I felt I should state the facts as I see them so people do not blindly believe the documentary or any publicity she used to collect peoples money. That’s what she’s really about cash to cash business so she doesn’t have to claim it probably ?

Anonymous • Oct 23, 2026

2.0

Verified

Not very embodied

Although the description of this retreat emphasized an experiential focus, the first evening and subsequent morning sessions were nearly all theory, with lots of verbalization of concepts, with very little actual body & sensation focus. There were a guided meditation & a body scan, and a brief intro to qigong, but no exercises to facilitate somatic awareness & discernment. And the didactic material was scattered, lots of seemingly random spiritual axioms and theories put forth, some anecdotes, and an incomplete (without any actual experience occurring) description of how to recognize and deal with “incompleted” feelings or emotions, the basis for this theory of (somehow) completing them, and living a sane, happy & fulfilled life.. Instead, it sounds to me like a lot of tumbling around with and coming to some compromise for control with our ego…and again, the sessions were nearly all theoretical, intellectual. Where’s the body? I wondered, and withdrew from the workshop after the first session of the second day, finding the material & presentation not worthwhile.

Clear Yoga Retreat

About this Retreat

Your Guides

Jessica Becker

Details of this retreat

Getting Here