Thought I might share a little of what it's like to practice in Fiji. We run week-long retreats at a very friendly resort called Daku, which is in Savusavu Bay. The average day goes a little like this...

Up at 6.30 – best time of day: sea as flat as a glass table, sun creeping up over the mountain behind Daku and touching the mountains on the far side of the bay, roosters crowing, a few freshly laundered schoolkids walking down the road to town. This is the time when I like to walk from Daku to the end of the road – 5k of dirt road which ends at the glamorous Jean Michel Cousteau Resort. Then I catch the local bus back to Daku in time for breakfast and the rest of the day.

The meditative part of yoga is ideal for a Pacific paradise. The mind’s eye is imprinted with the blue of the sea and the green of the landscape, and the noises reflect a pace of life far, far removed from Sydney’s hustle. The kitchen staff are chopping up the vegetables for dinner; the girls in the laundry call out across the pool, and there’s always the intermittent gleeful high-pitched laughter that is typical of Fijians.

An hour and a half of a Vinyasa yoga practice and I’m sweating hard. Downward dog has the drops pooling into my eyes and even the warrior pose has me glistening. The stretches at the end are a relief – but then we stop and cool down and feel the energy flowing back into us. And 20 metres away the pool is waiting.

Lunch under the shade beside the pool; salad and chicken today. I’ve booked a massage for 2.30. Amelia has magic fingers of incredible strength. She’s found a nerve in my arm that she works up towards the shoulder; by the end my neck is looser and softer than its been for weeks.

Ommmm finishes off each session – and Bula starts each day. Bula for hallo! Or health! Fijian is a deep, rumbling language; during the welcome ceremony at the start of the retreat the exchanges surge back and forth like a comforting background drum roll. We are welcomed to Fiji, and to Daku, where Keni promises us we will live like family for the week we spend here. And his family is so much a part of it – Mereoni his wife who shows us how to make masi (bark cloth) and decorate it to make tapa (decorated ceremonial bark cloth); Johnny and Seru who sing with him in the evening; Kara who dances with a shy smile – and Apete who clowns around if he can be coaxed out of his teenage reticence.

‘Be gentle to all living creatures’. Yoga reminds us of our part in the world. We see the creatures on the reef when we snorkel – hurricanes of tiny darting blue fish, gliding pairs of graceful yellow angel fish, the seemingly immobile progress of the translucent trumpet fish. Back on land, it’s mainly birds – kingfishers, parrots, herons – noisy in the mornings and comatose in the afternoons. Me too. I switch on the fan and sleep till tea time.

--jo