Toronto Yoga Teacher Ashley Dyment Launches Charity-Integrated Wellness Retreat

Ashley Dyment had a children's book in mind when she built her retreat concept from the ground up. The Toronto-based yoga teacher announced The Giving Retreat on March 12, 2026, a wellness-travel model that weaves charitable contributions and volunteer engagement into the fabric of what might otherwise be a standard retreat itinerary.

The concept, as The Globe and Mail framed it, is "inspired by the spirit of the children's book The Giving Tree" and positions itself as an offering for women from Toronto and beyond. Where most retreats treat giving as an optional add-on or a marketing footnote, Dyment's model embeds it structurally, alongside daily yoga, mindfulness, restorative practices and adventure programming.

The blend is deliberate. Rather than arriving at a destination, dropping into asana and flying home, participants engage with volunteer activities as part of the program itself. The charitable contributions are not a donation box at the door but built into the retreat model at the design level, though the specific partner organizations and the mechanics of how funds are distributed have not yet been detailed publicly.

It is worth noting that several details remain unconfirmed in the initial announcement. Retreat locations, inaugural dates, pricing, and the exact nature of the volunteer engagements were not included in Dyment's launch materials. The gendered framing also carries an asterisk: while The Globe and Mail describes the retreats as designed for women, other coverage refers more broadly to "participants from Toronto and beyond," leaving the question of whether the retreats are women-only or open to all genders worth clarifying directly with Dyment.

What is clear is the underlying philosophy. The Giving Retreat positions wellness travel not as an escape from the world but as a way to move through it more generously, with savasana and service sitting side by side on the schedule.