HeartsEase Painting & Yoga Retreat, South of France
Saturday 13 – Saturday 20 September 2025
Le Rouzet, Cazouls-lès-Béziers, Languedoc, South of France
£1400 – £1750 per person
With tutors Kate Pryor and Marianne Ryan
Come and join us at Le Rouzet for our fabulous HeartsEase Painting and Yoga Retreat in the South of France – it’s the perfect place, and offers exactly the right environment for our painting and yoga week.
Message from Kate
A retreat:-
In my mind, a retreat should be exactly that. Step away from life’s rushing about, take yourself somewhere calm and peaceful where you can eat well, and sleep well and take gentle exercise. Press pause and find ways of rebalancing and making changes to your ever-evolving precious self.
Marianne and I are combining Painting and Yoga to help bring about these changes.
In layering up yoga, then painting, then yoga, then painting… the effect is you can stay for a whole week in a calm state of mind. Your nervous system will feel smoothed and settled and this will have a profound effect on the whole body, your mind can become uncluttered and you can feel free of all life’s ‘stuff’.
The yoga I teach is Raja and Hatha yoga, I have been trained in the Satyananda system, to be found at Bihar in India. I teach one Asana at a time, which gives the body space and time to soften into the practice. We will be exploring Pranayama, giving us teachings about the breath, and Yoga Nidra, enabling us to discover how to deeply relax.
Yoga is eminently practical, it is a science. The teachings I have been given are thousands of years old, and have been carefully handed down through the ages. We can absolutely trust them to work.
The way Marianne teaches changed my experience of painting completely. No longer did I feel cross and grumpy trying to produce something that l wanted. Rather, it feels really calming, much more akin to the feeling of doodling with a purpose (and bliss is listening to her art history teaching as she shares all her amazing knowledge of art and architecture).
Treating yourself to this beautiful yoga and painting experience will give you the perfect tools to step away from life, whenever you want and need to, and to settle back into the calm space to press pause again and again.
Message from Marianne
Painting for pleasure
I love teaching abroad, it’s such a wonderful chance to explore the light, the atmosphere and the special qualities of different places. And the South of France, where our retreat is based, is even more special in that respect, loved by many artists over centuries, and full of life and nuanced colour.
My many years of teaching experience have taught me that everyone can draw and paint once they have the skills, and that is what I love to teach – with a gentle approach, never too ambitious but addressing each individual need as it arises, helping define the purpose and the possibilities of each page of your sketchbook, and celebrating all the wonderful and diverse ways of expressing your ideas.
By the end of the week you’ll feel confident and proud of your achievements – and your newly acquired skills will last forever, to call on whenever you want a change of pace and a break from humdrum routine!
This is going to be a wonderful holiday; by the end of the week you’ll feel both relaxed and refreshed, with a deep sense of wellbeing. We
have named our retreat HeartsEase, to reflect the harmony and delight we think you’ll experience.
Spectacular place
Le Rouzet is a lovely traditional wine-grower’s house, beautiful and deeply comfortable. It’s got lots of large bright rooms, a heated saltwater pool, a spacious yoga room, a really charming garden, and is quiet and secluded. The couple that run it are wonderful hosts, and extremely good cooks into the bargain!
On top of that our painting locations are extraordinary: picturesque villages perched on hillsides, dramatic scenery, fantastic mountains, spectacular rivers, gorgeous views and vineyards galore, plus plenty of opportunity to sit in the garden and sketch. Being in the middle of the little town of Cazoul-lès-Béziers, it’s easy to go and find the local cafés, sample the patisseries, drop into the weekly market or do some shopping.
At ease every day
Our teaching is gentle and sensitive, and it doesn’t matter how much or how little experience you have, either with painting or with yoga, you’ll find yourself at ease within the group.
Starting and ending each day with yoga, you’ll be in the perfect mood for a morning of painting or sketching, carefully designed to enhance and develop your skills while giving you well-deserved satisfaction. Afternoons are free for you to relax and do what you want – more painting, lounging by the pool, reading your book, or maybe exploring the town. Each evening (accompanied by an aperitif!), you’ll have the chance to share your day’s efforts if you want to and to get some feedback from the rest of the group. And, of course, after that, there’ll be a delicious meal to look forward to.
Spectacular location, wonderful food, small friendly group, lots of fun with painting and drawing alongside top-quality daily yoga
Treating yourself to this beautiful yoga and painting experience will give you the perfect tools to step away from life, whenever you want and need to, and to settle back into the calm space to press pause again and again.