welsh hills again

My first ever yoga retreat started in the week I turned sixty two.  I found yoga about five years ago, roughly at the same time that I gave up my frantic London job.  Probably not coincidence.  I had tried it a couple of times in my thirties and forties but it was always too slow or too hard.  I would lie there, surrounded by people apparently relaxing, my head whizzing with work and home and my juggling, plate-spinning life.  So no surprise perhaps that at the same time that I decided to step back from that life, to downsize and to spend my time and energy on different things I found a great yoga teacher and a great anchoring class.  Yoga was part of what kept me steady in the heaving seas of the last couple of years as my parents died.  I can't imagine life without it now but I am very, very new to it and very stiff. I think the idea of a retreat emerged in January when I was musing about reflection and adventure being the themes for the year....

I have always been inclined to bite off more than I can chew.  Having too much to do if you get it right is energising and exciting and gives your life zip and zoom.  Having too much to do if you get it wrong is overwhelming and exhausting and makes you want to hide in the lavatories and have a quiet weep.  Mostly I used to get it right.  Then for a few years I tried to do way too much and had a constant battle to keep any kind of balance between my work and my family life and found that niceties like a social life and time for myself disappeared out the window.  Now having given up my job I supposedly have all the time in the world. This is never the case of course.  You just do lots more of the things that you choose to do, and if you are a person with a tendency to load a lot on your plate, you carry on doing that, just different and perhaps more self indulgent things.  Now, however, I think I should admit that maybe I ought to be getting to the e...