Two traditions, one origin, and a morning on the Algarve where they end up on the same terrace.
Yoga and ayurveda are usually met separately. One arrives as a class on a Tuesday evening, the other as a word on a menu. They did not grow up apart. Both come out of the same body of Indian thought, and both start from the same simple observation: a person is not only a body, and what changes one part changes the rest.
Yoga works from the inside outward — posture, attention, and above all breath. Ayurveda works from the outside inward — what is eaten, when, in what order, in which season. One shapes the day from within, the other sets the table. They meet in the middle, at the same person.
On the Algarve the combination has stopped being unusual. A morning begins with the mat outside and the light still low. Breathing first, then movement, then a long stretch of nothing. Afterwards there is a bowl on the table — warm grain, banana, pomegranate — and the group eats slowly because the hour before made hurrying pointless.
The ayurvedic part is less exotic than the word suggests. Rice, dal, carrots cooked soft, spices warmed in fat before anything else goes in the pan. Food that is easy to digest, eaten at a table rather than standing up. Most of it is what a good kitchen does anyway; ayurveda only insists on the order and the timing.
Ask a teacher who works with both where they join, and the answer is usually the breath. It is the one part of the nervous system a person can take over deliberately, and it is also the part that decides whether a meal lands in a body at rest or a body still running. Breathwork before eating is not a ritual flourish. It is the practical reason the two traditions were taught together in the first place.
Simone teaches both on the Algarve, under the name Sim-Yoga. Yin and yang yoga, somatic work, pranayama, hours built for deep rest, and sessions where sound carries the room. She also cooks: ayurvedic food for retreats and events, and cooking courses where the recipes change hands. In the warm months she teaches outdoors — yoga by the sea, breathwalks, movement in the open.
There is no studio address. She comes to where the group already is, anywhere on the Algarve. A retreat is planned for the end of May 2027 — a new place, a small group; the details are not fixed yet.
Sim-Yoga, in full:
