Is a Life Coaching Holiday Right for You?

Marcia's group at The Skyros Centre

Skyros holiday participant, Marcia Piciotto, recently joined facilitator Kate Daniels for one of Skyros' renowned life coaching holidays at the Skyros Centre in Greece. 

With encouraging and expert facilitators, and a charming island location, these holidays are especially welcomed by solo travellers. They offer inspiration, encouragement and support for all those who would like to move towards positive change in any aspect of life, whether personal or professional.

So, what exactly is life coaching? And is a life coaching holiday right for you? 

This inspirational piece from Marcia will help you decide if a life coaching holiday is right for you!

Marcia: I came across a book about holidays that change your life, at a time when I was looking for a different kind of summer holiday. The minute I read the description about the Skyros Village Centre, I knew I had found the perfect solution. The location was enchanting – a Greek island no less – and the focus on community was very appealing to me. Added to that was that fact that it attracted solo travellers of all ages.  

Not just coaching, dancing too!

I considered both the Writers' Lab and the Life Choices programmes and carefully read the details of all the courses. However, as soon as I read the description of Kate Daniels course, it resonated.  Quote: “Let go of outdated patterns, old fears and self-consciousness ….”  It felt as if the course had been created just for me and where I was in my life.

Cabaret: Marcia sings

Despite a little nervousness and sense of vulnerability on the first day, I soon realized that it was the best decision I could have made. Kate is warm, nurturing and respectful and creates an environment where it felt safe to be vulnerable and to express my feelings, thoughts, fears, needs and challenges. She was extremely supportive when I needed my hand held, while also being very encouraging when I was ready to challenge myself and take steps forward.  

I learned so much about myself in those two weeks, being able to see myself and appreciate myself for the first time as others did. I came home with renewed self confidence, the courage to try new things (which I did – I even sang in a cabaret!) and so many wonderful memories and friendships that still sustain me. I had such a wonderful experience that I went back to Skyros again a couple of years later! I can’t encourage you enough to treat yourself to a Skyros experience.

Marcia Piciotto

Life coaching holidays take place at The Skyros Centre in Skyros island, Greece between June and August 2013. Prices start from only £595 for a one week holiday including half board accommodation and courses.

For more information visit www.skyros.com, call us at the Skyros office on +44 (0)1983 865566, or email us at office@skyros.com and our friendly staff will be happy to help. Ready to book? Use the online booking form or call Skyros on +44 (0)1983 865566.


If you would like to join Kate Daniels in Skyros, her life coaching course, Transform Your Life, will run from Saturday 10 – Friday 23 August 2013. The price, £1,245, includes 13 nights' half board twin share accommodation, life coaching tuition and early morning yoga. Single upgrades available. Find out more

Bring Your Characters to Life with 3 Writing Exercises ...

The Skyros Writers' Lab, rated 'Number 1 of the World's Five Best Writing Holidays' by The Guardian, is well known for its writerly advice. 

So we thought we'd bring you some wisdom from Sam North, author of over 8 novels, and facilitator of the June Writers' Lab holiday: 8 - 15 June (£595) to be held at The Skyros Centre in Skyros island, Greece.

Bring Your Characters to Life with 3 Writing Exercises

These exercises are a sure-fire way to improve your writing style and bring your characters to life so that they jump off the page!

1. Take one of your characters for a drive. Put him (or her) behind the steering wheel of an old banger, and while he drives you can interrogate his thoughts, his situation. Now write the sequence again, and put him (or her) behind the wheel of a very new, luxury car, of some description. After leaving the material to sit for a while, read both again and measure your own reaction, as a reader, to the evidence of wealth. 

2 Command a character to perform five acts of kindness. Then, make that character even kinder –– until they are kind to a fault. Put them in a situation where their virtue transforms into a vice and that the character's kindness becomes some a weakness it leads to their downfall.

3. Stand your characters next to each other and list in which ways they are similar and in which ways they are opposite to each other, both in terms of their physical attributes, their characters and their deep, unavoidable character traits. It makes a difference to put a rich person next to a poor person, a person with good table manners next to a sloppy eater, a brave person next to a timid person. Once you have made these lists, swap them around, play God. And watch out for any nuggets of a story, of incident, that come to mind as a consequence of this exercise. Make a note of these incidents.

More exercises and advice can be found in the 'Five Analogies for Fiction Writing' by Sam North, now available at The Book Depository. Or, you can follow Sam's 'Five Analogies for Fiction Writing' on twitter: https://twitter.com/fiveanalogies

Writing at The Skyros Centre

Join Sam North at the Skyros Centre on the picturesque Skyros island in Greece for his course 'The Art of Writing Fiction': 8––15 June 2013. Sam's course will explore the large-scale challenges of writing fiction, and then narrow its focus to look at the 'voice' of a novel and style. Only £595, the course includes tuition, shared accommodation, half board meals (usually breakfast and lunch), and morning yoga classes.

For more information on Sam's course, or the many other inspiring writing holidays available, check out the Writers' Lab programme of courses at: http://www.skyros.com/wl_atsitsa_program.htm 

Top 6 Reasons to Laugh More Often...

SKYROS, the renowned holistic holiday is featuring a really fun and also enlightening course this July and August on the Greek island of Skyros. It's called The Power of Laughter with Ailon Freedman (www.ailonfree.co.uk) See: www.skyros.com.

Most of us love a good chuckle, and that's exactly what Ailon's course aspires to achieve –– you’ll play comedy games, not to turn you into a world class comedian (although you never know!) but to keep you nourished and enlivened through the great healing power of laughter.

On the course, there’s no aim or performance goal other than to help you develop your emotional and creative laughter muscles.

Check out Ailon's Top 6 Reasons to Laugh More ...

Physical: A good belly laugh massages your internal organs, your belly, your heart and your lungs.

Emotional: Laughter diminishes fear, it transmutes anger and dissolves tension. You’re much less likely to stay angry at someone if they are smiling at you sincerely. And once we stop being frozen in fear or anger, many other emotional realms are possible for us too. 

Psychological: Laughter stops you going mad. It allows you to embrace duality; the collision of two incongruous thoughts at the same time in the brain. That’s what a joke is. In an effort to process the incongruity, the brain convulses with what we call 'laughter'.

Social: Not only does laughter help you cement friendships with people you know, it is the best ice-breaker with people you don’t know. A well-timed simple joke allows other people to see that you are someone in a healthy emotional and psychological state.

Communication: The most natural public speakers are often comedians. Why? Because they have learned to befriend their audience through laughter and non-seriousness, to show that they are 'a good bloke' or 'gal' who can just have a chat about 'this and that'. A sense of humour is the best way to bring informality and naturalness to your presentations and speeches.

Spiritual: According to the Eastern Religions, life is 'Leela' – a divine play. When we remember this and are in tune with it, our lives can be more harmonious and manageable because we become more realistic about our expectations and impositions about 'how life should be'.

So if you’d like to access more of the Power of Laughter, get laughing and join Ailon in Atsitsa Bay, Greece from: July 20th – July 27th 2013 and / or July 27th – 9th August 2013. The price, from £645, includes accommodation in unique twin shared huts, three delicious meals per day, and a wide variety of courses and activities including the Power of Laughter, windsurfing, bodywork, yoga, music and much more.

We wish you many happy giggles,
The Skyros Team 
www.skyros.com

For more information visit www.skyros.com, email office@skyros.com, or call the Skyros Team on +44 (0)1983 865566. With so many courses and activities to choose from, there's something for everyone!

Skyros is the leading provider of learning holidays in Greece, Thailand, Cuba, Cambodia and the UK. With a wide range of courses including yoga, windsurfing, sailing, life coaching, creative writing, music, salsa and so much more, there’s plenty of options. Ideal for solo travellers, with good food and great company – it’s a winning combination! www.skyros.com

Yannis' Trilogy

Yannis Andricopoulos, Ph.D., formerly London correspondent of Athenian dailies, editor of i-to-i magazine, and co-founder of the renowned Skyros holidays, is author of several books on Greek and European twentieth century history. His trilogy (The Future of Past, The Greek Inheritance and In Bed with Madness), have been published in both the UK and the USA by Imprint Academic. 

These books explore the Judaeo-Christian culture of faith that followed by the capitalist culture of profit stifled the earlier Greek culture of joy. The books, very important in the context of our contemporary search for a better future, ask the question whether a return to the roots of the West’s philosophical tradition can give an answer to the problems of our day. This trilogy is for you, if you are looking for a book that will make you think.

In Bed with Madness: Trying to Make Sense in a World that Doesn’t
Globalism endowed us with McDonald’s, ‘the world’s local bank’ and English football teams without English players. It has also given us an irrepressible desire for more as enough is never good enough – the blanket is always too short. Meanwhile, our personal world as much as our social and political realities seem to have blithely surrendered to the madness of a civilization which views anything from corporate greed and global warming to military adventures and religious fundamentalism as normal as a door banging in the wind. The destructive capabilities of our age, Yannis Andricopoulos holds, have run too far ahead of our wisdom. However, the process is not irreversible if our thinking can postpone its retirement. In Bed with Madness is ‘a well-argued, powerful and profound indictment of contemporary culture’, stylishly and humorously written – a reviewer said he would have bought it just for its wit! Buy it now on amazon

The Greek Inheritance: Ancient Greek Wisdom for the Digital Era
The culture of ancient Greece, a culture of joy, was replaced by the Judaeo-Christian culture of faith and then by the capitalist culture of profit. Yet, it is the only culture worth fighting for if we want a world run by humans rather than theocracies, nanotechnologies or private equity funds. Yannis Andricopoulos views the Greek culture as the front line of the battle against individualism, materialism, authoritarianism and religious extremism. In a world turned into the corporations’ playground, this is also the battle for human values, civic virtues and an ethical society. The Greek Inheritance traces the conflict between the Greek values and those of the repressive, religious or capitalist order throughout the millenniums. The book is challenging and well-written with a light, humorous touch. Buy it now on amazon

The Future of the Past: From the Culture of Profit to the Culture of Joy
Universalism in its old forms has, just like door-to-door milkmen, gone for good. But the search for some universally accepted ethical standards cannot be abandoned – values are not colourless as the wind and odourless as thoughts. Looking into our world from the classical Greek point of view, Yannis Andricopoulos wonders whether we cannot place Justice again at the heart of our morality, look forward to the happiness of the individual rather than the upgrading of his or her consumer fantasies, and endeavour to create, not more wealth, but a just and honourable world. The Future of the Past, noted for its elegance and humour, is written in ‘a lively, challenging style guaranteeing to stimulate debate on the most pressing issues of our time’. Buy it now on amazon

‘This is one of the most thought-provoking books I've read. It is the sort of book that makes the works of Oliver James, Deepak Chopra or Tom Hodgkinson fade into insignificance. Why more people haven't heard of this guy is beyond me. Seriously. You've got as far as the Amazon page. I highly recommend you get it’. O’Neale

‘This is basically a breathtaking whistle-stop intellectual and cultural history of the Western world, where to adapt Pythagoras, not ‘Man’ but Ancient Greece is the measure of all things. Certainly whetted my appetite for Greekness’. Rodger Kibble

Copies of the trilogy can be bought from various online retailers including amazon, imprint, waterstones, and Barnes and Noble. They can also be bought in person by visiting us at Skyros offshoot The Grange by the Sea on the Isle of Wight. For more information or to request a book signing, feel free to drop us a line at office@skyros.com. We look forward to hearing from you.