Zen in the Cave

In the 1930s, Perth’s wealthiest families would drive an hour north of the city, enter Yanchep National Park, and descend into a limestone cave for an evening of dinner and dancing that nobody discussed in daylight hours.

Nearly a century later, we use this same cave for yoga. And it works extraordinarily well, for reasons that have everything to do with what the place does to you and almost nothing to do with the poses.

Zen in the Cave is a 2.5-hour experience that begins with a 3.5-kilometre guided hike through Yanchep National Park on Whadjuk and Yued Country. The route takes you through the Jarrah and Tuart woodlands of Boomerang Gorge, past Loch McNess, and along the Koala Boardwalk, where a resident colony demonstrates, with their entire bodies, that rest is a legitimate life strategy.

After a cold-pressed juice at the transition point, you descend into Cabaret Cave for a 45-minute beginner-friendly yoga and meditation session in one of the most acoustically extraordinary places in Western Australia.

The sequencing matters. The hike is the mechanism that makes the cave session land in a way that no studio class can replicate. By the time you step underground, your nervous system has already been unwound by an hour of walking through the bush. The teacher says “let go” and your body actually can, because the place has already done the work.

Cabaret Cave is not open to the general public. This experience is one of the very few ways to get inside, which is worth knowing, because exclusivity was the entire founding principle of this place, and some traditions are worth honouring.

No yoga experience required. If you can lie on the ground and breathe, you have all the prerequisites sorted.

Bring your team underground

We run Zen in the Cave as a private experience for corporate groups, teams, and private gatherings. If your people spend their days in fluorescent-lit offices and back-to-back video calls, consider what happens when you walk them through the bush for an hour and then put them in a limestone cave. Nobody has ever come back from a conference room feeling restored. Plenty of people have come back from this experience wondering why they don’t do it more often.

Enquire about a private experience →