Yoga Retreat, Latvia

Client: Private

Status: Planning Stage

Location: Latvia

Yoga Retreat, Latvia

Relaxing & Rural

Practise energising yoga and meditation in the ancient woodlands of rural Latvia, enjoying restorative candle-lit dinners in the timber-beamed stone barn before retiring to the calm of your riverside sleeping chambers.

Yoga Retreat, Latvia

Connecting With Nature

The main emphasis of the Centre is the development of a deeper sense of self, finding balance and harmony within your body and mind, and connecting with the nature around you.

Every aspect of your well-being has been considered in the design of the site, which provides a beautiful, clear sanctuary away from the toxicity of modern city life.

By interweaving heritage, nature and architecture, we have created a haven where indoor and outdoor, nature and architecture are harmoniously integrated to revitalise, rehabilitate and energise you on a spiritual, mental and physical level.

Yoga Retreat, Latvia

Idyllic Latvian Countryside

The Stone Barn Meditation Centre is only 2 hours drive from Riga – yet it feels a million miles away. A total escape.

A perfect place for a Yoga Retreat weekend. Set on a private farm-holding, in the idyllic Latvian countryside, the site is surrounded by acres of ancient forest and farmland with an abundance of local wildlife.

You really get to see the changes in the seasons with the arrival of new lambs in spring, bluebells in May and nightingales singing in early June.

The Stone Barn Meditation Centre is run as a small farm with an established vegetable garden which provides many of the ingredients for our home cooked tasty meals.

Family Townhouse

Sense of Community

The heart of the site and main social space is the carefully restored, 19th century stone barn, which operated as a sawmill until the 1990’s. With beautiful beams and a log burning stove, the open plan, dining area is the ideal place to relax, connect and restore.

Sleeping accommodation is spread along the river bank, following the topography of the site and offers single, double or triple occupancy rooms in individualised sleeping cells.
These sleeping cells provide a private retreat space for guests, with integrated bay-windows presenting the ideal surroundings for personal meditation and reflection.

In order to encourage a sense of community and connection while maximizing the usable floor area of the site, all the circulation between the sleeping cells is in the open air, under the one large roof. Each unit has its own entrance from the timber colonnaded cloister, creating a layered threshold with the private retreat space of the sleeping cells.

Yoga Retreat, Latvia

Sustainable Sanctuary

The site has the capability to live off-grid using a hedonistic combination of renewable energy sources, from solar to hydro, geothermal to biomass.

Along with this, we’ve decided to stick with traditional methods of managing our meadows and pastures. This means cutting the hay later in the year to allow the wildflowers to set seed and taking our time harvesting so the bumblebees and other pollinators don’t find their food sources have disappeared overnight.

We’ve committed to keeping our skies dark, reducing artificial light around the farm so our nocturnal species don’t find their feeding and breeding patterns interrupted.

This affects all creatures – like the female glow worm, which uses the contrast of her glowing light against the dark sky to attract a mate.