Off to a yoga retreat

It’s the long weekend – what do you have planned?

I have decided to escape for the weekend and head to a yoga retreat with my friend Emma.

With the excitement of moving, my energy levels have been all over the place the last few weeks, so I have been looking forward to two days of stretching and rest to balance myself out again.

After we booked and paid for said retreat, we made the mistake of going on trip advisor for tips. These reviews are just too good not to share.

Wish me luck.

Not entirely sure I will come back balanced so much as hungry…

"For Drinking they only served tan water and some tea. We got sick and our tummy hurt a lot. The pool is full of leaves, the spa is dirty as hell and the rooms for your personal comforbility like the massage room and the tea rooms seemed like they have not been used for ages. The tea room seemed to be used as a cat litter pan and the terrace was a paradise for spiders and other insects."

"It was hard to get along with Swami because she was telling the same stories all the time and if you wanted to say something she would not let you."

"An exercise I’ll always remember was walking around a tree on rough gravel without shoes. It hurt but overcoming that was very calming and a bit addictive."

"Swami casually mentioned on our last day that she hadn’t known anyone was coming."

"The cooking was appalling, varying from bland to weird tasting. No desserts, no coffee, some nice herbal teas though. We were even asked to do the dishes on one occasion!"

(image via pinterest ) 

A post about moving

The removalist trucks are about to roll in. We're really doing this.

I want to go. We need to go. I want us be healthy and I can't look at my husband, exhausted, bags under his eyes, no energy, any longer.

And I am tired. Oh to sleep in until 7am on a work day. To be able to have a life after work...hobbies, exercise, I don't even remember what that looks like.

And I want the adventure. The adventure that is fun and challenging but brings you closer together when you realise as long as you have each other you have home and everything will be ok. That feeling that only comes when you push yourself out of your comfort zone.

But I can't help but feel just a little emotional about leaving our home.

The little two bedroom unit we bought together when we were 23 years old, with glimpses of the ocean and a beautiful sea breeze. We fell in love the moment we saw it and over the years and have made it our own.

It's the home where we learnt to live with each other and look after each other. The home where we brought Paris the cat home and slept on the lounge room floor for two days to help her adjust, and played Angus and Julia Stone when left the house because when it was on she seemed to stop crying. The home where we planned a wedding and learnt to cook and watched storms over sav blanc on the balcony, and had Christmases and talked and cried and argued and loved.

I adore the walls we painted, the bamboo floors we laid and the new kitchen we put in last Christmas.

It's the home we have returned to after trips around the world.

It's old and it's not fancy but it's ours.

(Image via observando )

Alcohol free zone

Did I mention I am going alcohol free for a month?

Now for the record I do not require alcohol to function in my everyday life.

But I do fancy a glass of wine (red, wine, sparkling- as long as it is quality and comes in a long stemmed glass). I fancy a glass when I go out, when I am catching up with people, when I have had a stressful day at work. And because we are among friends I don't mind telling you that the frequency of those glasses tends to increase depending on my stress levels at the time.

And herein lies the problem.

So I have decided that in the interest of New Year health, and in response to the fact that wine is not and should not be the solution to all that is wrong or scary in the world, I will spend January alcohol free to prove to myself that I can. And as a bonus I hope to also promptly farewell my Christmas kilo.

I am one week in - including New Years Eve - and I won't lie, it has been a little tough. But I am starting to feel the physical benefits of my self-prescribed alcohol detox. I will keep you posted on my progress. I just wont tell you all about it over a glass of chilled Rose....Oh Rose....

(Image via pinterest) 

Sitting with the yuck

I go back to work tomorrow. Not overly impressed with the idea, particularly because I feel like I didn't really get a good break.

I was lucky enough to have nine days off work. It should have been amazing.

I wanted to feel healthy and rested and ready for the New Year. But mostly I felt stressed- about work, about moving, about not feeling amazing. And I cried. Not because I was exceptionally sad, just because it was an emotionally charged week. And I didn't get much sun, and I didn't read a book and I didn't do great things.

And because I felt out of sorts and didn't want to feel that way, I spent the first week running and keeping busy to feel better. Christmas and drinks (there was too much drinking) and dinner and busy-ness. But I still felt yuck and time was running out and I was going back to work soon and why did I feel like this? How could I make it go away!

And when I could do no more, I had to face up to the fact that I could not control this nine day break. I could not control the way I felt and what I needed from this time. I obviously just needed to feel a bit shit, and this time was obviously going to be a bit stressful and emotional because let's face it, Christmas always is, and we were combining that with needing to pack up our home for the move and sort through stuff and throw stuff away. 

This is one of the lessons I am trying to learn. It's hard, I forget, I need to keep reminding myself. It's ok just to feel yuck sometimes, for things to not always be wonderful, and you don't always have to fix it or run away from it. There is great value in sitting with it, feeling uncomfortable for a little while, to find out why you feel like this in the first place. Or maybe to find out there is no reason, you just feel this way and it's ok. It's ok to feel whatever you need to feel. Just sit with it. Sit with yourself. It will be scary at first but it will get easier.

I will keep trying. 

(Image via pawleys island posh blog)