Bee yoga: Inside an unusual wellness experience in south-west France

There has been no shortage of quirky yoga styles in recent years, including on paddleboards, with dogs, spinning hoops and balancing beer bottles.

Now an apiary in south-west France is creating a buzz by adding bees to the mix.

Catherine Ballot-Flurin, founder of the centre in Maubourguet, Hautes-Pyrénées, has been offering yoga des abeilles for more than a decade, attracting participants from all over the world.

“It’s about creating a connection with bees and learning to communicate with them,” Jocelyn Perron, the centre’s head of beekeeping, told The Connexion.

“She created a sort of language with them.”

The experience begins before reaching the hives. Participants walk up a mountain towards the apiary in silence, encouraging them to slow down and become more attentive to their surroundings.

Before approaching the hives, they are then encouraged to greet others in the group “as bees do” – through presence, touch and feeling instead of using names and conversation.

At the apiary, which can contain around 80 hives and millions of bees, a little honey mixed with water is placed near the entrance of a hive as an ‘offering’.

Participants observe the bees and gradually approach them. Honey is also placed on their fingers so the bees can come and feed. Later, honey is massaged onto their body too.

Jay Magarinos, a therapist and trainer, took part in a session in July.

“I thought: this is something you have to experience. You can't talk about it. You have to live it.

“Often we are told that we have to protect ourselves. Here, it was as if that barrier between animals and humans fell away.”

Ms Magarinos had between 30 and 50 bees covering her.

“The vibration of their wings felt like a kind of caress, a breeze,” she said. “And the legs and tongues of the bees create something else again. There were frissons everywhere. But you also have to overcome the fear.”

Mr Perron added that the bees are not forced to interact with participants. “It's up to us to adapt to their reactions and their buzzing,” he said.

“If they are not happy with our presence, we take the participants away from the apiary and sit further away.

“Even people who are afraid of bees generally find that the fear disappears.

“We go gently. It's not suddenly 100 bees coming onto you. There is time to observe them and become comfortable.”

Risk of being stung

However, participants must also accept the risk of being stung.

“The bee doesn’t sting for fun. It may be because it senses a point of tension in us, and it comes to sting there. It’s something to be welcomed as a gift,” Mr Perron said.

Ms Magarinos met her own bee sting with equanimity, describing it as an “initiation”.

Other activities can include sleeping in “bee rooms”, where guests rest above populated hives to experience the vibration of the colony.

“I slept three nights with the bees,” Ms Magarinos said. “It wasn't a very deep sleep. I felt as if I was between wakefulness and sleep. During the day, I still felt as though I was in another state.”

She summed up the entire experiences as a “process of inner transformation”.

“When you return home, you realise there is a before and an after. It has changed your relationship with life.”

Mr Perron said bees can teach us how to coexist differently. “The bees are free to leave a hive whenever they want,” he said. “If they remain close to us, perhaps they have something to teach us…how to collaborate, how to live collectively and not be so individualistic.”

Sessions usually take place in spring and summer, when conditions allow. A typical one-day yoga des abeilles experience costs around €80, while bee-room sessions are charged separately.

Find out more at ballot-flurin.com.