Every day is special, unique in its own way.  Every new day is an opportunity to make a difference to you health, your work or even to the world around you.

Last Sunday was just such a day as we held our third annual Charity Bootcamp Day to raise funds for the two charities which The Body Retreat supports, The Eve Appeal and Breastcancer Now.

Our annual charity bootcamp is a day for fitness, fun friendship and fundraising and I think we can say that we nailed all four of those objectives on the day.

First Comes The Fitness and Friendship

We started in the traditional way with Julie leading the group in mixed circuits, boxing, kettlebells and old fashioned circuits put everyone through their paces and got everyone wide awake.  Next we were joined by the lovely and very talented Martine who got everyone on their feet in a very energetic Zumba class.

Then we had a face time call from the lovely Lulu Wisson (our inspiration for the annual event) who was unable to join us as she was in hospital and actually called us just moments before having a blood transfusion.  Modern technology is wonderful when it can bring people together across the miles and it was wonderful to have Lulu with us in the room.

After lunch we were outside ..unfortunately due to the foggy conditions we were not able to get out on the Olympic lake as we did last year, but we had a back up plan…. School Sports Challenge!!  Oh yes indeed.

Julie explains the rules of Bean Bag racing to Gene

Not sure these two are taking this 3-legged race seriously :-)

Julie demonstrates Hopscotch The Body Retreat way

Time for Some Artistic Fun

Of course all this fitness needed to have some balance…and this year that came in the form of the Love Hug and artist Steffi Goddard.  Steffi was moved by Lulu’s story and volunteered to join us and help us to create a piece of art history at this charity bootcamp day. The idea being that we could all donate to paint a heart or two or three on the canvas.  It was strangely addictive and it turned out that we had some massively creative people in the room.  The finished work is being donated to The Eve Appeal.  (I’ll have an update on that next week)

Ready to Paint

Amazing Support for Fund-raising

We had fantastic support for our Raffle… the prizes just kept on coming.  The table was literarily groaning under the weight of the prizes.  From docking stations, back packs, bottles of fizz and gift vouchers and of course the mandatory teddy bear :-)

Then for the first time we had our charity auction.  There were two prizes in the auction, Firstly a weekend for up to 8 people in a fabulous villa in Cannes and then a Weeklong Retreat at any Body Retreat in 2016.  We had bidders inside the room and bidders on the phone and we were joined by a professional auctioneer who did a tremendous job of keeping the room in check. It was so exciting as the bids went up and up and up.

The Scores on the Doors

We were so delighted that our day raised in excess of £4000!!!!  And the total is still growing thanks to Steffi and her Love Hug.

So you see a day really can make a huge difference.

Thank you so much to everyone who supported us at this event, either in person on the day, giving a prize, baking a cake, bidding in the auction.  Your support for us and the charities which we support means so much to us so a massive big thank you from us both

XXXXXXX