about us
vision
Kärlingesund Retreat Center is a place that holds both modern and ancient wisdom and a home for exchanging knowledge and experience. A place protected and nourished by its powerful surroundings, where nature provides the soil on which physical and mental growth can flourish. We are a convivial learning destination where energy, discovery and creativity thrives. A place that allows us to make a sustainable and responsible contribution to our community both local and worldwide. Last but not least we are a place that enables us to learn how to better achieve an independent work-life balance that benefits mind, body and spirit.
We celebrate diversity and equality and welcome everyone. We believe that activity, food and laughter is both medicine and love.
sibylle & andrea
We are soulsisters and our common path has led us from the Swiss mountains to the beauty of this nature reserve by the sea. Kärlingesund Retreat Center is our joint soul project. We can take over what Åsa and Kåre have lovingly built up and expand the range of courses while they continue their course activities at Kärlingesund.
Andrea has worked for many years in public education and in the sektor of integration and also as a life coach. Sibylle has realised various worthwhile projects, based on what was closest to her heart. We both have grown-up children who are now ready to be responsible for their own lives.
Yoga and Ayurveda have been our passion for more than 20 years and with our experience, knowledge and empathy, we offer a caring, committed and creative environment, and are open to individual needs and ideas.
Our motto is: „Let‘s support each other, learn from each other and grow together.“
history of the place
The recent history of Kärlingesund 1978-2016
Mats´and Sigrid´s creation, Kärlingesund Course Center, has a history marked by importunity, creativity, a certain amount of human madness in combination with the wish to leave an imprint on earth. Below you can read their own story about how the course center came to be.
Once upon a time there was an old barn with leaking roof, rotten floors where horses had left both this and that and a hen house where the hens and the rooster had mucked about the way these birds do and finally been eaten by fox, marten, mink and other henloving creatures on four and two legs. There was hay and straw from the fifites that hardly would make any cow happy even if cows generally are easy to please. This was what it was like. It didn´t amount to much.
In one part Mats created a place to build boats where he built five different wooden boats in the eighties. At that time he insulated the workshed with old hay and straw since that was to be found in abundance and it was free of charge. Since we human beings are endowed with a certain mental block that prevents us from knowing ahead of time what we are embarking on and so can take on quite hopeless projects which we did in 1995 when we happily started to transform the barn into something quite different. We dreamt about having a business at home so that we would not have to go away to work. It probably sounds a bit pathetic, but we love this wonderful place so much. Alas – it was time to start. Mats sketched, built, and swore while Sigrid traveled around the country giving art classes to finance the building process. Together we threw out all the hay and straw and suffered for a long period of time from hay fever.
These were tough years. But our happiness was great when we finally had a working course center in 1998. Since Mats had worked as a boat builder, he hated simple solutions. Early on he had thrown away the set-square and even the beds refused to submit to 90 degrees so that they would enhance the cosiness. He created features that nobody had ever seen before. Thanks to the stubbornness of a man från Småland even the wood boards were put diagonally in order not to make it too simple.
And to be sure it was far from simple.! Much was built in oak since there was quite a lot of that left over from the boat building period.
From then on we continued building. The part that was the cow shed became 5 double bedrooms. The old concrete floor needed to be lowered and what a terrible work that was to hack it away. Not to mention all the gigantic stones that had to be carried out. To be on the safe side we dragged in a huge oak stem that became really smooth and soft after two weeks of persistent polishing.
Then there are all the windows. When the surrounding nature is so amazingly beautiful, all the spaces between windows are in the way. Since we do not have a conservatory it seems that somehow everything is in the way. And yet – it is rare to find a course center where the light flows in so generously and where wherever you are you can enjoy the beautiful nature that Kärlingesund is right in the middle of.
Sigrid who was educated in the spirit of the Gothenburg colourists is a working artist. Her amazing sense of colours and her well-founded knowledge mean that anything is possible. Her technique with rags, sponges, toothbrushes and even ordinary paint brushes is incredible. The result is something you did not know existed. However, when you see it, it gives you the feeling that this is the way it should be. Everything is painted with egg oil tempera that is not only one of one of the sturdiest paints but also very eco-friendly and remarkably beautiful
Beside art the gardens are Sigrid´s big passion. There is the old garden with its gnarled fruit trees. A new garden has also taken form. We have stopped counting the different species of roses and everything else that grows so generously thanks to the horse manure that Sigrid has dragged in. In the summer of 2010 we laid out 200 m2 of flagstone in different patterns on paths and on open areas.
