women’s yoga and meditation retreat
january 17-27, 2009 • chiang mai (mae rim), thailand
with sara avant stover & ouyporn kournkaew

Step out of your roles as mother, wife, sister, daughter, partner and/or business woman and replenish your spirit.  Over the course of these ten days you will deepen your relationship to your yoga and meditation practice—and, most importantly, to yourself.

By immersing ourselves in yoga, meditation, community, silence and nature we will awaken the innate intelligence of the body, quiet the mind and arrive at home in our hearts — where insight, clear intuition and compassion live in abundance.   You will leave feeling full, refreshed and ready to permeate your daily life with your blessings.

All levels are warmly welcome.

About the Retreat

We will greet each day in silence (which will begin at sunset each evening and last until after breakfast).  Ouyporn will lead the morning and evening meditations in the Buddhist tradition, inspired by Thich Nhat Hanh and others.  She will also lead sunset walks each evening.

Sara will lead yoga classes in the mornings and afternoons. Morning sessions will be dynamic, in the Anusara Yoga® tradition, and targeted to aligning the outer body with your heart’s deepest longings.  This will simultaneously strengthen and soften you, giving you the courage to live a life as a more authentic YOU. 

In the afternoons we will engage in a variety of practices together—from Yin Yoga, to Yoga Nidra, to group sharings and other practices and rituals to celebrate the sacred feminine.  We will also watch a film or two, and  on the final evening we will enjoy a celebration together.

All yoga sessions will be held in the earthen guesthouse where all of the retreat participants will stay.   Meditation sessions and dharma talks will be in an earthen, mud temple.

During breaks there will be time to rest, bicycle or walk through the village, get a thai massage on the premesis from local village women, browse IWP’s inspiring library, nap, write in your journal, or simply stare at the sky while listening to the sounds of nature.

This is an exceptional opportunity to get grounded, back to the basics and reconnected with the elements, within and without.

Remarks from Past Participants

Yoginis from 2007 Retreat “Sara, thank you so much!  Besides Madonna, you are now my role model!  You are by far the best yoga teacher I’ve ever met and a beautiful, shining, inspiring spirit. I feel all women for the first time in my life.  I feel deep love for life and for myself.  I feel a responsibility towards life being and expressing that I am a woman, in all possible ways.” Claire van der Poel, filmmaker, Amsterdam “Overall, the women’s yoga retreat was an enriching experience at every level.  The yoga and meditation were nourishment for the soul.  Thank you, Sara for your excellent teachings and for showing me the goddess within.” Elise Ramsey, student; Australia “Sara, your approach to yoga is inspiring, beautiful, serene and safe.  Thank you.  A week of being surrounded by love, supportive women in a safe haven, gave me an opportunity to step inside myself and honor myself for who I am with total self-acceptance, compassion and an open heart.” Mel Campbell, Yoga Teacher; Chiang Mai, Thailand “This course is a potent opportunity for healing and an opening to love.” Mali Jarvis, Massage Therapist; Ashland, Oregon, USA. “Sara is a great yoga teacher, and excellent at the way she guides us to just shine our beauty and light out into the world. I feel very grateful for the opportunity of being able to touch and experience the feminine face of Life and God through this retreat and will continue to channel it in my own life!  Thank you so much Sara and Ouyporn.  I will definitely come back to the retreat next year!” Lydia Tan, Creative Art Therapist; Nong Khai, Thailand “I fell much more in touch with my body and feel very strong.  I learned deeply about acceptance and love in new and profound ways.”  Ginger Norwood, IWP co-director; Mae Rim, Thailand “Sara is a wonderful yoga teacher who teaches and inspired me to practice with love.  She helped me to believe in myself.”  Edwina Morgan, Australia “I wasn’t sure why I came, but leaving I can only hope more women will attend because by coming I feel enlightened on a brighter path for my well being.”  Claire Edwards, Geologist; Western Australia “The program is and was outstanding.  Sara, you rock! I have been blessed by you and your gifts.  Thank you.”  Jill Dorsing, Oregon, USA

About the Retreat Center 


Meditation Temple at IWP

Run by Ouyporn Kournkaew (Thai) and Ginger Norwood (American)  and located in a rural village 40 minutes north of Chiang Mai. International Women's Partnership for Peace and Justice (IWP) www.womenforpeaceandjustice.org is a spiritual based feminist organizaton working to support grassroots women's groups in South and Southeast Asia. IWP is guided by principles of nonviolence and grounded in the integration of feminism, social action and spirituality for sustainability and transformation at the personal, community and society levels. In close cooperation with local partners in Thailand, Cambodia, India (Ladakh), Tibetans in exile and with people of Burma, IWP organizes and facilitate trainings for social change. IWP's current programs include Buddhist Peacebuilding, Active Nonviolent Resistance, Gender and Diversity for trainers, Leadership for Social Change, Retreats for Activists, and Global South and North Women Allies for Action.

This is a sacred center, built on sacred land that shines as a refuge and a homecoming in the hearts of everyone who visits. 

About the Instructors

Sara Avant Stover is an Anusara-Inspired teacher and RYT 500 and teaches at venues in the United States, Asia and Europe. Her primary inspirations include leading teachers of the Anusara tradition, Richard Freeman (Ashtanga-Vinyasa), Sarah Powers (Yin/Yang Yoga), Sofia Diaz (Women's Yoga), Gary Kraftsow (Viniyoga), Buddhist insight meditation and The Wise Earth School of Ayurveda. Her teachings celebrate presence, self-acceptance and kindness. Also a freelance writer, Sara is a frequent contributor to Yoga Journal and Fit Yoga magazines.

"Sara's classes are amazing. It has been a long time since I've taken classes like hers. Sara, you are probably the only goddess I've known. and called, goddess. Your classes reminded me of the goddess in me."
Vanessa Crow
Yoga Instructor; Pure Yoga, Hong Kong

Ouyporn Khuankaew is director of International Women’s Partnership for Peace and Justice (IWP) is a Buddhist feminist trainer who has been working for peace and justice in South and Southeast Asia since 1995. Aside from leading workshops, Ouyporn also writes and translates on the issues of women and Buddhism.  In 2002 Ouyporn founded and currently directs IWP, an international organization that provides training to empower women’s groups in South and Southeast Asian communities to work for peace and justice.

"I loved Ouyporn and her teachings. I find her as inspirational as Pema Chodron!"
Carrie Steele
Yoga Instructor and Bodyworker;  Vermont, USA

Payment & Registration

Nights and mornings can be cool at this time of year.  Be sure to bring a sweater and/or fleece, socks, a hat or other warm clothing.

IWP will provide bedding.  If you are cold-natured, you may wish to bring along an extra blanket or a sleeping bag.  A shawl may be nice to have to wrap around you during morning and evening meditations

Also, bring along your own toiletries such as shampoo, toothpaste, soap and laundry detergent if you plan to wash your clothes.  Bring a torch and some spending money if you wish to have your laundry done, for retail therapy at the IWP shop, or for wonderful Thai massages from local village women. 

Please bring your own yoga mat.  We will provide other yoga props such as blankets, blocks, and straps. IWP will provide meditation cushions; but if you have your own and would like to bring it, please feel free to do so.

About Women Yoga

As women, we are anatomically different than men.  This we can prove.  We have breasts, wombs, wider hips and more body fat.  We have monthly cycles and within us lives the potential to create. 

While modern life offers many of us the blessings that our ancestresses were denied, we are paying the price.  Chemical-laden foods, water and air, as well the as high-paced, stressful lives that most of us embrace often leave us depleted, burnt out, exhausted. When this happens, we suffer from depression, eating disorders, low self-esteem, insomnia, anxiety, infertility, PMS, menstrual irregularities, ovarian cysts and fibroids, menopausal discomfort, or even more debilitating diseases.

Even if we are devout yoginis, a driven and strenuous yoga practice-- when not balanced with quieting and cooling practices-- is just another way that we ask too much of ourselves.  When we do this, we have nothing left to give to others.  And as women, we are the ones who are drawn upon to feed this world—literally and metaphorically.

Therefore, every yogini will arrive, at some point in time, to a place where her Yoga becomes, either as a necessity or as an inner longing, more about un-doing than doing.

Our bodies have attuned themselves through alignment, our intellects have absorbed the scriptures and philosophies.  We have grown stronger, more disciplined and courageous.  And, yet, as women we hunger for something more, something much deeper, something in the fluid, watery, intangible and quite unscientific terrain of the Heart.

Here is where we return to our natural, easeful essence of Yoga.  When we have exhausted the notion that we have something to prove to ourselves or anyone else, we use Yoga’s time-tested technology to unearth our own willingness to be vulnerable to ourselves and others as we are.  We remember to trust and heed our intuition.  We remember that our power surges when we relax into life and the goodness that we already are.  We find the courage and enthusiasm to be women again.

We steadfastly commit to living as the cyclical beings that we are, moving with the rhythms of the Earth and the moon.  Through this, greater radiance and health return.  We shine.   We are fed, down to the deepest recesses of our hearts.  From here our arms are overflowing—we are again ready to feed the world.

Sara’s inspirations in her journey down the path of the feminine spirit include her mother, grandmother, three sisters, Sofia Diaz, Angela Farmer, Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen,  Patty Townsend, Marilyn Heart, Liza Doussen, Jill Satterfield, Donna Farhi, Shantimayi, Kali von Koch, Nischala Joy Devi, Sarah Powers, Indra Devi, Vanda Scaravelli, Bobby Clennell, Jeanie Manchester, Mother Maya, Geeta Iyengar, Mirka Kraftsow, Susanna Nicholson, Sianna Sherman, Desirée Rumbaugh, Gurmukh, Janice Gates, Mirabai, Lalla and the soft perseverance of her own breath.