Add a Little Yeehaw to Your Namaste: A Conversation with Margaret Burns Vap of Big Sky Yoga Retreats

When I was curating our Top 100 Wellness Experiences and Spa Escapes, Big Sky Yoga Retreats stood out immediately. Something about the combination of yoga, horses, and the wide open landscape of Montana felt different — no wellness buzzwords, no forced epiphanies. Just a genuine belief that women deserve space to come back to themselves. The more I researched Margaret Burns Vap and what she has built in Bozeman, the more I wanted our community to know her story. 

I’ll also be honest about something else. It’s been many years since I’ve been on a yoga mat. I keep telling myself I should go back — not just for the flexibility and mobility that I know my body needs in my 50s, but for the slower pace of it. The centering. The act of actually doing something just for me in the middle of a full and busy life. Margaret’s story reminded me why that matters. I hope it does the same for you. Here’s our conversation. 

SCE: Take us back to the beginning. What’s the story of how Big Sky Yoga Retreats started?

I once jokingly described myself as a former city-girl fashionista transformed by yoga and motherhood into an outdoorsy Montana cowgirl who still loves a latte. Now I’m stuck with it, because it’s proven true.

Long, long ago in a galaxy far away — NYC — I had a corporate job and needed to slow my life down. Yoga was a much-needed wake-up call. It helped me put things in perspective, and eventually became my life’s work. After 9/11, we moved from New York City  to Washington DC, where I opened a yoga studio. I adored my yoga community and the shift in my lifestyle. My husband, who is from Montana, told me for years that I should do yoga retreats there. In 2007, my family decided to move to the Treasure State. I jumped right into  my second venture as a yoga entrepreneur and started Big Sky Yoga Retreats. I wanted to share the healing power and potential of yoga, horses, and nature with people. And the rest is history: the city girl became a cowgirl yogini.

SCE: Cowgirl Yoga is your signature retreat — what is it, exactly? 

Let me define Cowgirl Yoga, because it’s not what people think. Cowgirl Yoga cultivates the horse-human connection and highlights how yoga deepens it. You can go somewhere that offers both riding and yoga — but how many places truly connect them, so you can experience how much they complement each other? That is the essence of what we do.  

Each day on a Cowgirl Yoga retreat is unique, but the themes are recurring.   It’s always about nurturing the horse-human connection and connecting what we do on the yoga mat to our time with the horses.  Every day has yoga as well as horse time, and each practice feeds the other. 

On the yoga mat, we prepare our bodies for riding — but also our hearts and minds, to be open and receptive to the horse’s energy. We bring back the emotions and sensations from our horse interactions to our mats, for processing in new ways. It’s a cycle with a beautiful rhythm that encourages unexpected personal discoveries.

And what inspired it?

The woman who inspired me to create all of this? My daughter. She doesn’t know this, but she is the co-creator of Cowgirl Yoga. Becoming a mother was like a lightning bolt to my motivation. I wanted her to have what I had so deeply longed for in my own childhood — horses. 

When she was born, yoga had already done so much for my well-being, and with owning a yoga studio in Washington DC, I already had a toe dipped in yoga entrepreneurship. With my family’s move to Montana when she was not even 2 years old, I went after my childhood dream and dove into horses, not quite knowing where it would lead. 

And voilà – shortly after, Cowgirl Yoga was born. 

Photo Credit: Larry Stanley Photography

SCE: What surprised you most about starting a women’s retreat company?

It didn’t start that way — we actually had a few co-ed retreats. But I saw how women can be different with their partners present. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it wasn’t what I had in mind.

Like so many women, I had a vision of tapping into our power and potential. Of giving women the opportunity to experience how self-care is non-negotiable, and the amazing things that can happen when you honor that. 

I knew that women coming together to take care of themselves — through yoga and horses — was going to be good.  But what I didn’t expect was how mind-blowingly good it would be. As one of our repeat retreaters put it: “I can’t unknow what I know now, and therefore have to keep coming back.”

What has actually happened has been over fifteen years of women meeting on our retreats, navigating life’s twists and turns, showing up on their yoga mats, getting back in the saddle, laughing and crying, and always searching for ways to become the best women they can be. How lucky am I that I get to witness this, over and over again?

I recently saw an article about the new trend of menopause retreats that stated what I view as the obvious: what price can be put on a group of women who have come together to focus on wellness, to share stories and feel seen and listened to? Just add yoga and horses. This is the kind of gathering that men have feared for centuries. 😉

Photo Credit: Harry Hough, DvG Creative

SCE: Can you share a story of transformation from one of your retreats?

I’ll let Kathy Nolan tell her own story. Kathy has attended many retreats over the last few years and now co-teaches our Cowgirl Yoga Argentina retreat, where she leads a horses and mindfulness program.

“Fifteen years ago, while flipping through Yoga Journal, I came across an ad for Jade Yoga mats. The photo was of a young mother and her three-year-old daughter riding a horse together with Jade mats tied to the western saddle. The fine print identified the woman as Margaret Burns Vap, owner of Big Sky Yoga Retreats in Bozeman, Montana. I thought to myself: I am going to ride with her someday.

Many years went by and I kept that memory locked in my mind, thinking to myself, ‘When the time is right, I’m going to go on a retreat in Montana.’ At the end of 2020, after six months of caring for my father as he suffered with cancer, he passed away. The strain and heartache of that time left me feeling depleted and in need of something to bring me back to life. The time had come.

I contacted Margaret about attending an upcoming retreat, and I knew right away that she would become an important person in my life. There were so many commonalities in our lives. Margaret shared with me some writing she had done about yoga and grief and the loss of her brother; her brother and my mom had both passed away at the same time. Margaret and I have the same birthday — although ten years apart. Our common love of horses and yoga and travel were immediately apparent, and all of that was clear before we even met.

At the time of my arrival in Montana I was dealing with some extremely upsetting circumstances revolving around one of my sons and his mental health. At the retreat, both on the yoga mat and off, I was frequently in tears and found Margaret and her co-yoga teacher, Caitlin, to be incredibly supportive and compassionate. Margaret encouraged me to feel what I needed to feel, and also made me feel that the retreat was exactly where I needed to be at that moment. It was a very healing time for me, and a powerful experience for the other attendees.

And then came my experience bonding with the horses on that retreat. Margaret led us through exercises with the horses that I use to this day: deeply connecting and breathing with our horses, sharing calming energy with them. And the work in the round pen — one-on-one with a horse, learning to move him with our own energy and intention, and then experiencing a sense of mutual respect and trust between horse and human as the human releases pressure on the horse and the horse comes willingly to the human. Thinking about that experience of joining up with that horse, even now, brings me close to tears. The human/horse connection had never felt so real to me before. I left that retreat knowing two things for sure: that I needed to bring horses back into my life, and that Margaret and I would ride together again someday.

Upon returning home, I immediately sought out and began volunteering at an equine therapy organization near my home. I began leasing a horse at a stable nearby, started taking riding lessons again at a local barn, found horses close to home and shortly thereafter, bought my first horse, an Icelandic mare named Tulpa. All of this a direct consequence of having attended my first Cowgirl Yoga retreat with Margaret.”

In fact, quite a few women who I first met on our retreats now lend their talents to what we offer. I think the fact that they choose to do that — continue to explore their experience with me in a way that allows them to shine — is proof of transformation.

SCE: What’s the most unexpected way you’ve seen yoga, nature, and horses transform a woman?

I believe that in order to bring about positive change in other women, I had to first experience it myself. The things that have made me feel most connected to my world have been yoga, meditation, being outdoors, and animals. Specifically, horses. When I can combine these — for example, meditating outdoors near my horses,  my energy shifts significantly. 

This is what I wanted to share with people. These are the key elements of my yoga retreats — spending time in nature and with horses, practicing yoga and meditation. I can teach you yoga indoors on your mat — but what elevates the practice to a higher vibration is taking what we do with yoga and connecting it to how we interact with horses as sentient beings.

Horses give humans wisdom beyond words. They reconnect us with a deep inner knowing that we’ve lost touch with over millennia of becoming more “civilized.” These intuitive animals are authentic and live in the moment. 

Yoga teaches us to be in the present, not obsessed with the past or worried about the future. Horses do that too. Horses don’t accept emotional incongruity.  Think,  pretending you’re not afraid of them, when you are. As prey animals, hiding what you’re feeling is perceived as a threat to them — it doesn’t smell right and they will tell you so. They create an invaluable opportunity for us to be authentic and emotionally honest and to transform on multiple levels. I call it the mind-body-horse connection. 

I believe in this alchemy, because I experience it myself — but I have also been fortunate to see it happen for many others as well. That ongoing validation of “magic” has been an unexpected gift.

SCE: Why do you think yoga in nature — and with horses — creates such powerful experiences for women?

I recently read something about therapists having sessions with their clients outdoors and in local parks. And I wondered what’s taken this long. Nature is therapy. We’ve lost our connection to it in so many ways, but it’s easy enough to fix. Just go outside.

Moving to Montana reawakened my soul on this level, and I realized how powerful combining getting outside with yoga could be. Every retreat combines yoga with an outdoor activity — horses, hiking, stargazing, taking time to notice your surroundings instead of focusing on the plan, the schedule, the goal, all those things in our daily life that nature gives us a respite from. 

The beauty of yoga and meditation is that you can do them anywhere — but how soul-shifting is it to meditate in the presence of horses? That is what creates a powerful experience.

SCE: What do you want every woman to carry home after a retreat?

My mantra is that self-care is non-negotiable. And it’s amazing how much impact one week can have on that. My goal is to give women self-care strategies that they can take home. 

When a retreater goes home and ups her yoga game or finds a place where they can be with horses, that’s what we consider a true success story.

Our retreats emphasize that it’s important for women to make time for themselves, because that makes them better mothers, partners, friends, and people. Come on retreat to honor yourself and your potential for good health — and then take those values home with you and apply them to your life. What better gift to give yourself?

Our retreats give women time and space to dedicate to self-care, without the usual distractions they have at home. It sounds so simple — yet can be so, so difficult. 

Somehow our culture has shaped us to believe that the last person we should take care of is ourselves. And we all have so many demands on our time that taking care of ourselves can feel like a luxury.   I firmly believe that it’s a necessity.  Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. 

How many other things suffer if we don’t start with ourselves? It has a ripple effect. Don’t feel guilty about taking time for your wellbeing.  Go to a class. Get outside. Sign up for a yoga retreat.

SCE: Where are you taking women next?

Considering this question made me realize that most of my retreats are already my dream trips!

I’ve been obsessed with Spanish horses and their history — so earlier this year I started researching places in Andalucia. By March, Cowgirl Yoga España was born and will debut in Spring 2027.

 I recognize how fortunate I am to pursue a personal dream and make it a business reality. I love that I get to share my own passions with my clients  that is what truly makes them come alive for me. I know that women respond to my unbridled enthusiasm, especially when it comes to horses. 

So: Olé y Namaste. The next dream trip is Spain.

SCE: Who is a good fit for Big Sky Yoga Retreats?

If you answer yes to these questions, you are a good fit for Big Sky Yoga Retreats:

Are you alive? (Non-negotiable.)

Do you want to be your authentic self?
My yoga retreat philosophy is authenticity. The goal is to provide something truly unique that wouldn’t otherwise be discovered on your own — whether it’s a deep understanding of how to move in and out of a certain yoga pose, or riding off into the wilds of Argentina. 

We don’t fake unicorns and rainbows, or force epiphanies in the yoga or horse departments. The less we work to “make something happen”, the more often it does. And the truest source of our retreat magic? Being your authentic self. That is what good solid yoga can do for you, and that is what the horses like best — the real you.

Do you want to learn about yoga and horses?
I have been telling people this for years: one of the reasons why I believe that yoga and horses are so appealing is that you’re never done learning with either. There is always something new to discover. And truly, isn’t this the human condition? We should never be done learning. Learning is growth.

I love that our retreats are always a wide blend of women. We get all ages on every retreat. One of my favorite things these days is seeing “older” women — which include me — taking care of themselves and fully enjoying themselves. 

I think we get better at both as we get older. I used to work in the beauty industry, and one of the reasons I quit is because what that industry is mostly selling is looking young, forever. That is physically impossible and psychologically unhealthy. What we need to buy into is that every age is beautiful for different reasons. I also believe that feeling healthy and happy is the ultimate, lifelong beauty goal.

And this brings me back to yoga and horses. I love the recent trend of anti anti-aging. We need to teach our daughters not to fear aging, that every stage of their life is meaningful. The goal is not looking younger, but being healthy and feeling great, so you can do the things that make you happy at any age. (Like yoga and horses).

If Margaret’s story speaks to you — if somewhere in you there’s a woman who’s been waiting for permission to slow down, get outside, and do something just for herself — Big Sky Yoga Retreats might be exactly where you need to be.

You can learn more and explore upcoming retreats at bigskyyogaretreats.com.

And whatever you do next, follow Margaret’s mantra — add a little Yeehaw to your Namaste.