Cathy Dillon goes the full stretch on a yoga holiday in the sun
A dawn sky casts its light on the tiles. A gentle breeze blows. We sit, cross-legged, silent, savouring the wind, the gurgle of a small fountain, the cry of a peacock. Then, I feel something nuzzling my foot. A little black cat is settling on my yoga mat, looking to be stroked. Bibi has come to join our class again.
I'm at Villa Isis in Lanzarote, a handsome white-washed, split-level house perched on a hill in the village of Tias, with a panoramic view of the ocean and the island of Fuerteventura. Directly below - five minutes' drive but a world away - is the tourist resort of Puerto Del Carmen. Villa Isis is the home of Holistic Holidays (HoHo for short), run by Stuart Forster and Lynne Oliver, an English couple who, five years ago, left London with the intention of setting up a holiday company with a difference.
Lynne, a yoga diva with a glamorous past (she was once married to racing driver Jackie Oliver and later to Bruce Welch of The Shadows), and Stuart, an affable former businessman with a wry sense of humour, met when Stuart was selling a house in London and Lynne came to view it. At the time, both were still married to other people. Two years later, both single again, they met up, and bonded over their holistic interests and a shared love of classical music. Both were looking for a new life and Lynne's decision to take her yoga class on a sun holiday proved a turning point. Now, each Thursday, a group arrives at the villa jittery from smog and stress and leaves a week (or two) later, supple, sun-kissed and much more serene.
The day starts with two hours of yoga, followed by breakfast al fresco. The levels of experience vary within each group - ours included one person who had never done it before - but Lynne and Alan, the other instructor, managed to find a middle ground.
The approach is gentle and non-competitive, with an emphasis on the subtleties of the discipline - how flexing a foot, say, or adjusting a shoulder slightly can change a whole posture. Peeking under your outstretched arm (or leg) at the person beside you to see who is doing a "better" asana is definitely not encouraged. Lynne, who has almost 30 years' experience as a teacher, is not a fan of the currently fashionable power yogas, saying she has had guests who have damaged limbs as a result of over-zealous Ashtanga classes. Sessions are held either on the terrace beside the pool, in the carefully cultivated "grass circle" in the landscaped gardens, or, in high summer, at a nearby beach.
Lanzarote is a UNESCO biosphere reserve: the air here is as clean, or cleaner, than anywhere else in the world, which makes outdoor yoga, with its emphasis on breathing, a supremely healthy prospect.
The accommodation is more spacious and comfortable than most yoga centres, and the décor is tasteful. There are two single rooms and a number of doubles, as well as a more luxurious suite. Communal spaces include a large, bright sitting room with sofas for lounging on, video, stereo and lots of books, magazines, CDs and videos to choose from.
The atmosphere is friendly and laid back - this is no New Age bootcamp. The food is wholesome, with lots of salads, chicken and fish dishes - but as well as fruit and yoghurt at breakfast there is coffee and croissants, and wine as well as water is supplied at dinner.
After breakfast, you can just slouch on a sun-lounger by the chlorine-free, palm-fringed pool, take to a hammock in the garden and read, or rent a car and explore the island. Lanzarote gets a bad rap because it's a Canary island. But it is, for the most part, unspoilt, and it's well worth exploring away from the main resorts. A volcanic island, its spectacular, crater-dotted landscape, and science-fiction style vegetation (cacti the size of trees) made it an ideal setting for B-movies in the 1960s. The Lanzarotian artist and architect César Manrique - a contemporary and friend of Picasso and Warhol, and a pioneer of eco-architecture - has left a fascinating legacy of buildings, including his own house, designed around a series of volcanic bubbles in the hillside near Tahiche.
On Saturday, Stuart rounds up a gang and takes us to visit a crater. The inside, he explains, is a kind of sacred space, and while it's up to us, it might be a good idea to observe silence so we can savour its atmosphere. Not one for po-faced hippie-isms, he adds: "It's enormous, a bit like being in Lansdowne Road."
He's right. It is enormous. And special. From the outside it is a classic, comic-book volcano - a gargantuan upturned cone with a jagged top. We traipse around the side and gain access to the inside - a perfect black cindery bowl. Massive plugs of rock sit where they landed when they were spewed from the centre of the earth. They still look molten, rippled like cake mixture. We each find a space and sit or lie in the baking sun. A bird hovers above in the unending blue. I find a shell, a crisp, spiralled periwinkle. How did that get here? Stuart gestures me over and points at a large rock, split right down the middle. In the centre is a perfect circle of glittering green crystal peridot.
After an hour or so, we pile back into the cars and drive through the edge of the volcanic fields of Timanfaya National Park to Playa Madera, a series of coves on the west coast. The royal-blue sea flings itself against the black rocks in rolling waves. It's too rough to swim off the beach, but I persuade Shiva the Alsation in for a paddle. Crashing lava-shingle pings my feet.
Afterward we drive to Lagomar, a restaurant in a Manrique house set into the side of the hill at Nazaret, once owned by Omar Sharif, who apparently lost it in a card game. It is typical Manrique - the bar set in an open, cathedral-sized cave with funky 1970s Mick 'n' Bianca décor, a series of tunnels frosted with thick whitewash connecting it to the dining area beside a turquoise pool. We dawdle over lunch and it's after five when we start back to the villa.
The days slip by - morning yoga, sunbathing, afternoons by the pool or, for the more energetic, trips to the beach or to Puerto Del Carmen for raids on Zara or the perfumeries. We all try at least some of the therapies on offer at the villa, which range from shiatsu and deep tissue massage to osteopathy, crystal healing and transformational breathing, the latter a variant of re-birthing in which a breathing technique is used to dissolve emotional and physical blockages. This sounded a bit intense for a relaxing yoga holiday, so I opted for a massage with Peter, a six-foot-plus German, whose gentle demeanour hid a ferociously thorough massage technique. So thorough that the vertebrae at the top of my neck and the base of my spine were slightly tender the next day, a "sweet" pain more than compensated for by the fact that my stiff computer shoulders felt loose and light for the first time in years.
In the evening, we head up to Tias to a stylish tapas bar. We have plates of sizzling garlic and chilli prawns, aromatic lamb kebabs, baked aubergine with mozzarella and red peppers stuffed with creamy crab, a slice of crab and tuna tortilla, a couple of beers, a couple of vodkas and Sprites. The bill comes to €15 each.
Most people come to Villa Isis alone, though some come with partners or friends, and mother-daughter combinations are common. Groups are never more than 10. We were six - all women, though men sometimes come too. There was a hairdresser, a graphic designer, a dental receptionist, a legal secretary and another journalist. Two were on their second visit. One was on her third. We got along well for such a disparate group. I had hatched plans to escape by myself if necessary, but I didn't need them. You could, I suppose, be unlucky and get stuck with a bunch of people you didn't like, but even then it shouldn't be too hard to carve out your own space.
If the very mention of food allergies, chakra alignment or "finding your centre" makes you want to reach for a revolver, or if your ideal holiday involves consuming large quantities of alcohol and Sky Sports, then this is not the place for you. For the reasonably open-minded in search of a sunny, safe, stress-busting break though, Villa Isis is pretty close to perfect.
Holistic Holidays, Villa Isis, Tias, Lanzarote (0034-928-524216), www.hoho.co.uk