Where Backpacking Meets Yoga: The Science and the Soul Behind Trailbound Yoga’s Backpacking Retreats

outdoorscommunity

Jul 31

Ella Spillane is the founder of Trailbound Yoga, a nature retreat that combines the adventure of backpacking with the mindfulness of yoga. Through nature, movement and environmental psychology, she's helping people reconnect with the presence, belonging and human instincts that have guided us for thousands of years.

Story by Tommy Corey
Photography by Tommy Corey

There's a curiously primal reason some of our most meaningful human interactions happen around a campfire. For much of human history, fire was a necessity, providing warmth, protection, light, a way to cook food and a defense against predators. While it remains a practical resource in the backcountry, the modern day campfire has also become something more communal: a place to gather, share stories and forge connections.

Our fascination with fire isn't much different than watching birds soar through the sky, wildflowers sway in the breeze or a creek carve its way through a forest. Environmental psychologists Rachel and Stephen Kaplan identified these effortless moments of attention as part of Attention Restoration Theory, suggesting that nature captures our focus without demanding it—and in doing so, helps restore our ability to concentrate once we return to everyday life.

For yoga instructor and backpacking guide Ella Spillane, these aren’t just theories buried in psychology journals–they’re the foundation of every trip she leads for Trailbound Yoga, a community-driven retreat company that blends the mindfulness of yoga with the adventure of backpacking.

Through this blend, Spillane created Trailbound around one simple belief: the wilderness can be more than a place to escape—it can become a place to belong.

Since 2025, Spillane has led six retreats to Catalina Island, just off the coast of Southern California. Each trip hosts 8-12 guests—primarily women—and is often accompanied by her father, Michael or partner Ryan, who support the trips.

While her father and partner aren't the only men to have joined a Trailbound retreat—as she does lead coed trips as well—Spillane says the all-women trips hold a special place in her heart. By creating a psychologically safe space to ask questions, develop outdoor skills, or make mistakes without judgment, she hopes to give women the confidence to eventually venture into the outdoors on their own.

"I think there are a lot of women who are seeking that: 'I want to go and be able to do these things on my own or with other women, but I need a little help getting started and to feel safe to take that first step,” Spillane says, describing the commonality among many of her guests. The confidence she now helps instill in others is something she once had to find for herself.

In December 2022, before she had the idea for Trailbound, Spillane was living in Los Angeles and navigating the end of a tumultuous relationship. In her search for clarity and healing, she embarked on a solo journey through Europe, retracing an itinerary from a family trip she had taken as a nine-month-old; a vacation her mother had won by calling into a local radio station.

Although the trip felt out of reach financially, Spillane booked it anyway. Soon after, she received a work bonus for almost the exact dollar amount of her plane ticket—a coincidence affirming her decision.

The journey abroad became an inflection point, motivating Spillane to seek other forms of healing practices when she returned–that’s when she found yoga.

“Before we're moving into full meditation, we're honing in our directed focus. If we really want to enhance that, then going out into nature where it actually replenishes our ability to have that direct focus, I theorize that it allows us to get into that state more deeply–so moving into meditation becomes a bit more effortless.”

*Ella and guests on a Trailbound Yoga retreat to Catalina Island.*

Upon returning home, the resonance from her trip abroad remained, however, so did her complicated feelings. Rather than turning to yoga for exercise, she enrolled in teacher training to better understand herself and the practice.

Frequent solo backpacking trips coincided with her yoga training. Slowly, she started to make a correlation–there was something familiar about practicing yoga, similar to the calm and stillness she felt in the backcountry.

For Spillane, the impetus to start Trailbound was an accumulation of those quiet moments found during backpacking trips and the reconciliation with her complex inner emotions.

“It was out of a desire to find those answers and tools for myself. I wanted to find a more sustainable way of experiencing the world with a more internal and peaceful state–and so it was doing the yoga teacher training to deepen my practice. And then, taking that yoga out into the wilderness,” she says.

The impulse to get away on a backpacking trip shares striking similarities with both ancient yoga's practice of retreating from everyday life and Attention Restoration Theory's concept of "being away." In early traditions of yoga, yogis often withdrew from society to pursue their spirituality in solitude. Similarly, ART defines "being away" as temporarily stepping outside the demands of daily life. Spillane sees modern backpacking as a contemporary expression of both ideas—a chance to trade constant notifications, responsibilities and obligations for silence, movement and nature.

Spillane says if nature is already replenishing her students ability to focus, then yoga becomes more than movement–it becomes an opportunity for deeper presence and reflection.

“When we look at that theory through the lens of yoga, one of the eight limbs of yoga is Dharana, single-pointed focus. Before we're moving into full meditation, we're honing in our directed focus. If we really want to enhance that, then going out into nature where it actually replenishes our ability to have that direct focus, I theorize that it allows us to get into that state more deeply–so moving into meditation becomes a bit more effortless.”

That philosophy isn't reserved for just the yoga sessions—it informs the entire Trailbound experience.

Before participants unroll their yoga mat or strap on a backpack, Spillane meets with each of them virtually, walking them through what to bring, a breakdown of how to pack their gear and even a guide to the psychological challenges they may encounter. When the group arrives in San Pedro to catch the ferry to Catalina Island, a small island off the coast of California, Spillane does shakedowns by weighing packs and ensuring they fit everyone correctly. Once everyone is ready, they make their way to camp, which requires an immediate steep incline. Once the tents are set up, the magic of the trip really begins.

Spillane leads yin yoga sessions around the campfire, vinyasa flows on the beach, runner's yoga stretches, the Japanese wellness practice of forest bathing and journaling. While each activity is designed to deepen participants' connection with themselves, nature and one another, the ritual she speaks most fondly of is an exercise the group shares on the final evening of the retreat called Reach Out and Touch Someone.

Sitting in a circle around the campfire, everyone closes their eyes and takes turns gently tapping someone who inspired them, encouraged them or made them feel seen during the weekend. It's a quiet gesture, but for Spillane, it carries a profound message: that each person mattered, and that they were recognized on a deeply human level.

“It's just kind of an additional way to let each individual know that they were seen on the trip and that people in the group noticed these things about each other. And usually there are some tears shed–but you don't need to talk about it beyond just acknowledging it,” she says, describing the retreat’s closing tradition.

Spillane tells me she has spent much of her life trying to appear stoic, often struggling to express her emotions openly. Yet, when she speaks about these special moments on Trailbound retreats—her composure gives way to emotion.

Watching Spillane pause to gather her thoughts, it becomes clear that Trailbound is more than a backpacking retreat. It's the culmination of her own search for healing—and a way to help others find their own.

“I feel like this is an area where I can actually help people. I'm not in the picture forever. I'm not teaching dependence–I'm teaching empowerment and confidence so that they can go and have those experiences that I loved so much, and I needed so much for myself–and knowing that they get to go have those things too is really special.”

“Everyone wants to make a difference in the world and that can look so many different ways,” she says. “I feel like this is an area where I can actually help people. I'm not in the picture forever. I'm not teaching dependence–I'm teaching empowerment and confidence so that they can go and have those experiences that I loved so much, and I needed so much for myself–and knowing that they get to go have those things too is really special.”

Spillane’s empowerment saturates each retreat. For her, it isn’t about trying to land lifelong clients; it’s to instill lifelong confidence.

Trailbound's impact stretches beyond knowledge and comfortability of backpacking and yoga poses. Many participants arrive alone, unsure of who they'll meet or what they'll discover about themselves. What they leave with is far more than what can fit in their backpacks. What they find is something that has quietly sustained humanity for thousands of years: belonging.

For thousands of years, humans have gathered around fire to cook meals, find safety and connect with one another. Today, its glow still has the remarkable ability to bring people together. Trailbound Yoga serves as a reminder that our relationship with nature is as ancient and instinctive as our relationship to one another. In these increasingly rare, undistracted moments, we realize that perhaps what restores us most isn't nature or community on their own, but something as old as fire itself: experiencing nature and community—together.