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@yia.mas

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🏺Inspired by Greece’s land, folk traditions, ancient wisdom, & mysticism
🌿Retreats, workshops, writings, dance classes!
🧿 DELPHI RETREAT OCT 4-10

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You’re invited: OUR 5th GREEK GRACE RETREAT IN THE CYCLADES 🌊 🧿 Registration is live to join @lulusoni and @kristinadelphi July 24–31, 2027 for a week of peak summer practice and joy.

We can’t wait to return to Amorgos (also Kristina’s summer home), where your days will include movement and breath practices, taking it “siga siga,” dreamy dips in the Aegean, local culture, and, as always, an incredible crew.

☀️This retreat is timed with Leo Season: the season of the heart, of expression, and feeling very alive. Expect joy, playfulness, and a deep nervous system reset.

Throughout our week together, we will weave daily movement practices with the land and pace of island life:
🏺Intentional movement: Daily yoga, Somatics, Katonah Yoga®, breathwork, Greek dance, all in open-air shalas overlooking the sea.
🏺Ancient paths: Walks through historic villages and along stone trails to a cliffside monastery hanging over the Aegean.
🏺Culture: Greek cuisine, exploring Aegean herbs, and local festivities and traditions.
🏺Shared meals: Long, unhurried meals of fresh Greek/Mediterranean food.
🏺The Big Blue: Amorgos feels raw and timeless. Swim in the waters that inspired the cult French film Le Grand Bleu. 
Note for teachers: Lulu and Kristina are certified Katonah Yoga® teachers; all yoga practices are bankable towards your certification hours.

🐚EARLY BIRD PRICING IS LIVE 🐚This retreat sells out every year. Give yourself yourself something to look forward to and take $200 off: use code EARLYBIRD for (valid through October 15).

You know the deal! Link in bio for more details and inclusions, room options, and to reserve your spot.

Photo 4 by past retreater @toryrust 💙🧿 taken in Amorgos , Cyclades-Greece by @yia.mas

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20 days ago

YIA MAS! The podcast is LIVE 🧿⏺️🏺Welcome to our new space for longer-form conversations with our brilliant friends and collaborators, as well as solo episodes - more on that below.

She’s not perfect, and there’s no intro music yet. For now, we’re excited to simply release this into the world and fine tune as we go. You can listen to our first two episodes now on Spotify and YouTube, AD FREE and for free 🧿

A few things you can expect from these transmissions:
🧿 A combination of solo episodes and engaging guests
🧿 Diaspora Dialogues on a broad range of topics, even the difficult ones
🧿 Travel in Greece: insights, tips, and more
🧿 Rants and reflections on the state of the wellness industry, social media, AI, and, well, the world. Yes, things unrelated to Greece or Greek stuff!
🧿 Actual practical episodes on how to live better as inspired by Greece’s land, ancient wisdom, and folk practices (aka the entire ethos of Yia Mas since 2018).

We recorded an incredible episode on Greek Folk Magic in the digital age with our friend and guest teacher @nikokatos. Niko is an educator and cultural researcher who learned folk practices directly from his grandparents. He has also guest taught several amazing classes on the mati and folk magic for our online classes. This is a treat to listen to and a great way to kick off our guests.

LISTEN NOW FOR FREE! And please follow the show 🏺 I am notoriously bad at asking for support, so here we are. 💙 taken in The Internet by @yia.mas

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RETREAT RECAP 🌾 They say Delphi is the ancient center of the world (the navel, or omphalos), but I’m convinced it may actually be somewhere between Mount Giona and Vardousia, at least that’s how it feels for me.

Our Reclaiming Our Roots retreat combined tactile craftsmanship with deep immersion in nature and culture. From our incredible weaving workshop and bread ritual in Athens to several days high in the mountains, this one really left me in my feels. Deepest gratitude to the women who joined us, including our ancestors whose presence was honored and felt throughout.

🏺From hiking an ancient spiritual path from Delphi through ancient olive groves, to learning how to tend to bees… from the dark depths of Pan’s cave to the sweetness of a shared altar… from imagining how many hands wove their futures from a young age, to singing the folk songs women sang to prepare for weddings (and holding space for the candid, less savory sides of that history)—this retreat covered a vast amount of ground while remaining deeply grounded. Rizes, indeed. Earth, you’re the best.

There is something profoundly moving about sharing the place where your roots lie. I finally got to share mine, and it won’t be the last time. Who’s in for next year?!

Finally, a huge thanks to @dorian_paths and @panos.parallevar for not only getting us around safely, but for providing the local intel that helped me put the perfect finishing touches on the first retreat I ever planned myself.

Hiking the sacred trail to Delphi

We all took home our woven creations 💙

Bread making ritual 🌾 with @alexandra.mitsiou

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Persephone’s fruits

Save the bees 🐝

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Stunning Galaxidi

Discovering local lore

@dorianwines organic wines = the best

Learning the old methods of making wine 🍇

Village dinners 🥹

Workshops in our dreamy retreat cocoon

More weaving traditions

St George

Our people 💙🧿

The cave 🌀🌀🌀

Our altar taken in Δελφοί (Delphi) by @yia.mas

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Some paths lead you to beautiful places. Others bring you closer to yourself and the people around you. 🌿✨

A day on the trail, shared laughter, meaningful connections, and a little space to slow down and reconnect. The best retreats are the ones we experience together. 🤍 @yia.mas

#RetreatInNature #HikingAdventures #ReconnectWithNature #SharedExperiences #DelphianPaths taken in Delphi, Greece by @yia.mas

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KALO MINA 🏺 Καλό μήνα! Welcoming October and our ancestral women’s retreat with a look at the threshing floor. 🌾 Last month, we hiked to my husband’s family’s ancestral alonistra (threshing floor; here used interchangeably). I’ve always been fascinated by threshing floors, but standing there on those sun-baked stones, I felt an instantaneous connection, joking to myself that nothing brings out my inner pagan quite like an alonistra. We need to host a gathering here in the future!

Slide through to explore how this seemingly simple stone circle became a sacred portal for winter fertility rites, the birthplace of ancient Greek theater and dance, and a key point of connection to our ancestral ways (and literal survival). taken in Amorgos , Cyclades-Greece by @yia.mas

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Across Greek islands and mountain villages, women wove and stitched protection spells, ancestral lineages, and cultural influences directly into the cloth. If you want to learn more about the WHY and what this language reveals, something is coming. 🧿

And yes, I consider our ancestors artists for this, even if it was “required” “craft.” Keep an eye on this space 🧿

Anyone else?

Cretan pattern

Image from @thebenakimuseum 💙 women’s clothing from Pontos.

Cretan embroidery

Cyclades

FDF 2023 wearing Kosti, Thrace. Thank you @mrskivetos 💙 by @yia.mas

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17 days ago

BELONG NO WHERE, I BELONG EVERYWHERE 🧿 PODCAST EPISODE 🏺 On diaspora longing, nostgalia tripping, why AI ruins the process, and peak internet fetishization of Greece by influencers and brands such as Zara.

In this solo episode, filmed in a full emo puddle a few hours after my parents left, I speak to the emotional tug-of-war of growing up in the Greek diaspora. Specifically, I dive into that tricky, bittersweet feeling of belonging to more than one place at once, asking us all to dig deeper than the typical “we’re not American /Australian/whatever enough there and not Greek enough in Greece.” If you’ve ever felt stretched between cultures, homes, or identities, and/or if you’re craving a real conversation about how we relate to land, place, and culture in the digital age, this one might resonate. 💙 Sorry for saying “like” so much - I’m a millennial; it’s a bad habit.

I also muse on how social media is slowly ruining the mystique of Greece by making it “always available” through content, turning the land into an always-on aesthetic and slick marketing tool.

Note! This episode has been fixed: Thanks to my folks who listened when this dropped this earlier this week, I’ve re-uploaded the video so the missing ending has been restored. No clue what happened there…

FINALLY: perhaps it’s called be-longing because we always be longing ;) jokes aside, I invite you to reflect on your relationship with your roots. I think being diaspora and/or severed from ancestral lands correlates with a desire to connect and define oneself by said land. For most of my Greek friends and family, there is no obsession with being Greek or celebrating it - they simply are. They are modern people going about their lives! It almost seems like an “other” ness is required to put all of this on a pedestal… but that’s a conversation for another podcast. Stay tuned…. We’ll flesh it out. 💙🧿 by @yia.mas

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19 days ago

RIP ANNIE DILLARD. An ode to brilliant American writer who inspired Yia Mas and accidentally brought Heraclitus into my life. 🏺Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, which is, IMHO, better than Walden, opens with a quote from the pre Socratic philosopher Heraclitus. This is how the philosopher entered my life as a college student: via a book written so poetically and spiritually about nature in, of all places, my home state of Virginia. Synchronicity!

🏺I recently saw that Dillard passed and felt the internet didn’t make enough of a fuss over it. I cannot suggest her writing enough. If you love Mary Oliver, Robin Wall Kimmerer, and/or Walt Whitman, Dillard needs to be on your list.

This personal discovery of Heraclitus was one of the earliest seeds planted for Yia Mas. I read it around the same time I read the Tao Te Ching, and it was one of many small “aha” moments revealing that a lot of what I was seeking in Eastern philosophies and spirituality could also be found right there in my own lineage and culture. I just had to dig deeper and broaden my POV.

I loved learning that in 2001 Dillard retired from teaching at Wesleyan, and in 2007 she decided to stop working entirely. She was tired and wanted to spend the rest of her time reading, painting, and enjoying life. “I’m tired,” she told New York magazine. “I worked so hard all my life, and all I want to do now is read.” Highly, highly relatable, Annie. 🫠🥹
 Most of the writing is longer than IG-friendly quotes. But I’m sharing a few snippets here. Dillard’s ability to zoom in and out of macro/micro perspectives is extremely wise and, frankly, very psychedelic.

Sending gratitude to Annie’s body of work, a smooth passage to her spirit, and wishes that she may rest well on the other side. 💙🌾 First two images are from the Fokida region which we will visit on our upcoming October retreat - beyond excited to reconnect with my ancestral lands. Next is Andros, then Ikaria, and finally, Milos. All are places where I’ve felt profound, consciousness shifting connection to nature. taken in Mount Giona by @yia.mas

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Ancient wisdom ⚖️ modern applications. We are welcoming the fall equinox by juxtaposing some of our favorite ancient thinkers with relatively modern perspectives.

🏺We think a lot about how to find balance between timeless wisdom and how to live in our increasingly digital, fast-paced world. As the equinox is a seasonal threshold and a time where the light is balanced; I see it as an opportunity to reflect on where we’ve been *and* where we want to be. It’s also the beginning of Libra ♎️ Season! No coincidence that Libra’s symbol is a scale, and the sign is associated with justice, balance, and harmony.

after many years of teaching, a workshop literally called “Ancient Wisdom, Modern Wellness,” it’s fun to visually pair the old with the new.

Swipe through to explore the pairings 🌾🧿 taken in Katápola, Kikladhes, Greece by @yia.mas

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22 days ago

SIGA SIGA ISN’T JUST FOR SUMMER 🌾🏺🧿 As the season of slowing down and savoring life comes to an official end, I’ve been reflecting on what all this “slow living” and “Siga Siga” talk is all about. A question I find myself asking repeatedly when fed with the inevitable deluge of European summer “slow living” content is this, “is it slow living, or are you just on vacation.” Notably, this type of content, often featuring older folks, is being used to market myriad products - but that’s another topic altogether.

🏺Here are some thoughts on how to carry this mantra through the busier seasons of life… because the truth is, life gets BUSY! And our ancestors (nobility excluded) weren’t simply lounging around, eating grapes, either. Most Greek peasants hard worked to sustain themselves. Many things about their way of life may seem appealing now, especially in an age when many of us are disconnected completely from the land. But we can acknowledge what we’ve lost in modernity *and* how we have it a whole lot easier thanks to, say, the washing machine. We can acknowledge how the endless scroll is damaging our brains! *And* try to find the good in our yearly routines, which make the sweet summer pause even sweeter.

I have more thoughts on this, perhaps it’ll become a substack? To be continued… by @yia.mas

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GREEK FALL MAGIC IN ARACHOVA 🏺 The fall equinox looms - and so does our October retreat. It’s fitting that we’ll spend time in Arachova on this journey, a town known for its weaving traditions and hand-woven flokati rugs. Nestled on the slopes of Mount Parnassus, autumn is a magical time to experience this picturesque place before the winter ski crowd descends.

Arachova’s history is deeply woven into the landscape. In antiquity, these mountains were revered as the home of the Muses and the domain of Dionysus. Local folklore even holds that the town’s legendary weavers were blessed by Athena herself.

Beyond these mythical ancient tales, Arachova played a role in modern Green history, notably as the site of a pivotal victory during the Greek War of Independence. It’s also always been a pit stop for my family on our drive to our village, Lidoriki.

With stone architecture that has a very “practical magic” vibe, crisp mountain air, and rich artisan heritage, it’s a seasonally perfect destination for fall and a reminder that Greece has so much to offer beyond the coastline. 🧿 ONE ROOM LEFT TO JOIN US! by @yia.mas

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