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Tranquility du Jour

Tranquility du Jour #399: Creating Big Sky Yoga Retreats

Tranquility du Jour

Kimberly Wilson

Health & Fitness, Education, Self-improvement, Mental Health

4.6 • 554 Ratings

🗓️ 26 June 2017

⏱️ 37 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Creating Big Sky Yoga Retreats with Margaret Burns Vap. We discuss her move from a corporate career in NYC to starting a yoga studio in DC to forming Big Sky Retreats in Montana. You'll learn the hardest and best parts of running the business and how her practice has evolved over the years.

Direct download: Tranquility du Jour #399: Creating Big Sky Yoga Retreats 


 

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Upcoming Events

Writing in the Woods in West Virginia: October 6-8

Yoga, Mindfulness + Creativity in Costa Rica: February 17-24

Yoga + Art in West Virginia: May, 2018 TBA

Featured guest: Margaret Burns Vap

Margaret is the founder of Big Sky Yoga Retreats and creator of Cowgirl Yoga™. Her relationship with yoga began more than a decade ago, when she began attending Jivamukti Yoga and took up the practice in an attempt to balance her hectic New York City lifestyle and corporate career with cosmetics giant L'Oréal.

A few years and several hundred down dogs later, she traded in her designer duds for yoga pants – and moved to Washington DC to open her own studio. She combined her business background and passion for fitness to create Georgetown Yoga, which soon became one of DC's most popular studios.

She practiced at Jivamukti London, when her family relocated to the UK for six months, and studied Ashtanga Yoga under Richard Freeman, David Swenson, and Dave Oliver. Margaret also completed a 200-hour training program with renowned California/New York-based Yoga Works and traveled to Hawaii for Baron Baptiste's Level 1 Teacher Training Bootcamp.

Margaret's students have included celebrities and DC luminaries to wheelchair-bound seniors, beginner yogis to other experienced yoga instructors – and everyone in between.

Her belief that yoga can benefit anyone was part of what excited Margaret when her family relocated to Bozeman, Montana in early 2007. Alongside her husband David, daughter Morgane, and two Boston Terriers, she quickly embraced the laid-back-yet-vibrant town, its outdoor fitness focus, and breathtaking 360-degree mountain views.

It wasn't long before Margaret felt called to combine her love of yoga with her new-found love for Montana. Her fresh approach to teaching and natural gift for creating nurturing, safe spaces for people to practice yoga inspired the formation of Big Sky Yoga Retreats. With the help of her close-knit team, especially her first Head Wrangler Janice Cartwright from Montana Horse Sense, Margaret developed a one-of-a-kind retreat experience that welcomes women to enjoy calm, refreshing, and vigorous yoga with an unforgettable Montana backdrop.

Big Sky Yoga Retreats has been featured in numerous publications and has received impressive press coverage since its inception. 

Margaret earned her B.S. from Georgetown University and her MBA from Thunderbird, the American Graduate School of International Management. She speaks French, Spanish, and un po d'Italiano and has traveled extensively across the U.S. and abroad.

She and David make the most of Montana's endless outdoor activities and love watching their daughter Morgane grow up on the ski slope and on horseback. She's also proud 'mom' to English Mastiff Lili and her equine herd – Dude Boy and Java.

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Transcript

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0:00.0

Tranquility DeJure, June 26, 2017.

0:09.0

Hello there, this is Kimberly Wilson, and welcome to the 399th edition of Tranquility

0:16.6

DeJure.

0:18.0

Today's episode is Creating Big Sky Retreats with Margaret Burns VAP. So we discuss her

0:25.0

move from a corporate career in New York City to starting a yoga studio here in Washington, D.C., to

0:31.4

forming big sky retreats in Montana. So you'll learn the hardest and best parts of running this business and how her yoga

0:39.2

practice has evolved and helped over the years. Now before we hear from Margaret, I wanted to say a

0:45.9

thank you again to everyone who has been sending ideas for our next episode, which is the 400th

0:51.9

episode. So that'll be coming out in two weeks. And if you do have a

0:56.2

suggestion or something that you'd like to hear more about, please drop me a note, Kimberly at

1:00.3

Kimberlywilson.com, because we're pulling everyone's together and working to come up with a really

1:07.2

fun episode for you in two weeks. So that will be July 10th. And also a big thank you to

1:13.6

those of you who came out and supported yoga and the animals. So I have a link in the show notes

1:18.1

to a blog post I did about it, but it was last Saturday at Burley Manor Animal Sanctuary. We had

1:23.9

almost 30 people. We raised $1,500 for that sanctuary and then $500 for our nonprofit.

1:30.1

Trangle Space Foundation, and we have just launched the Pigs and Pugs Project.

1:34.5

You can find out more about this in the show notes also or at tranquilspacefoundation.org.

1:39.2

And basically, our mission is to give microgrants and support the work of pug rescues and

1:46.8

pig sanctuaries or farm sanctuaries that have pigs. So there's some information on our two

1:51.9

microgrants that we've done so far to help with two rescues. And I'm really, really excited

1:58.4

about this work and the development of this. As we transition, we started in

2:02.2

06 with tranquil teens, and so now we're doing a transition to animal welfare. So you can find

...

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