In May 2026, a group of eight dedicated Iyengar yoga students made the journey from Sydney to Alice Springs to practise yoga with their teacher, Caroline Coggins, upon her invitation “to go into the heart of our land, to sit in her centre…to find the silence within.”

The five-day retreat unfolded between Campfire in the Heart’s retreat centre overlooking the East MacDonnell Ranges, and Corkwood Collective, a short walk down the road where the group gathered twice daily for their yoga sessions, under its blue, domed ceiling. Between sessions, the rhythms of retreat life took hold — shared meals, morning meditations to the sound of ring-necked parrots, walks along the labyrinth, and evenings around the fire, under an extraordinary canopy of stars.  The land, quietly and insistently, did its work.

Caroline Coggins is one of Australia’s yoga pioneers. She was among the first teachers to bring Iyengar yoga to this country, having encountered BKS Iyengar himself during his first visit to Australia in 1983. The meeting was, in her own words, like being “totally bowled over by someone’s energy, clarity, perspective, deep knowledge. You just knew you were in the presence of someone who was the real deal.” She followed him to India almost immediately, and would return to study with the Iyengar family for over thirty years.

In 1984, she founded The Yoga Centre in NSW — now more than four decades old — and has since trained and certified teachers across the country. But Caroline’s path has never been narrow. She trained as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist, became Catholic at fifty after a serious illness reoriented her sense of the world, has been a spiritual director with the Jesuits since 2013, and for the past four years has served as a chaplain at Kempsey prison. Her enquiries move fluidly across Yogic philosophy, Christianity, Buddhism, and Jesuit contemplative practice. She is currently working with a Jesuit Zen master in India.

“I love the desert,” Caroline said, “because it’s where pilgrims come. The land and the earth is very strong here. It guides you.”

We look forward to welcoming Caroline — and her students — back next year.