Recharging the Batteries (So to Speak)

This sum­mer I was too busy bal­anc­ing work with leisure activ­i­ties to have time for blog­ging. Instead I enjoyed yoga, sail­ing, kayak­ing, tan­dem bik­ing, some great books and movies — and social­iz­ing with peo­ple I care about.

Per­haps it’s a char­ac­ter­is­tic of Boomer women — we’d rather inter­act with friends and fam­ily in the real world than spend all our time online. (I’ve heard this from many of my Boomer friends.)

This sum­mer it was cer­tainly true for me: when not work­ing, I spent lots of time with old friends, new friends, and fam­ily. In Wash­ing­ton State, New Eng­land and Provence.

Not to men­tion the Toronto area, where new friends and cur­rent clients are located.

Just imag­ine: yoga in a gor­geous medieval hill­top vil­lage in south­ern France…

Yoga in Provence

I was lucky enough to expe­ri­ence my first-ever yoga retreat — in Provence, of all places — with some girl­friends from Apple. (We worked together at Apple 20 years ago, on the early Mac mar­ket­ing team.) Five hours a day of yoga, for one week… I did­n’t know what I was in for.

We were joined by their friends from a Bay Area yoga stu­dio, their favorite Anusara yoga teacher, and some adven­tur­ous Euro­peans who found the web site pro­mot­ing Jane’s yoga retreat in Provence.

Here we are, for­mer Apple mar­keters, posed beneath a stone entrance to the medieval hill­top vil­lage of Vai­son-La-Romaine in south­ern France. (Let’s not talk about the chal­lenge of dri­ving a can­tan­ker­ous French SUV up the nar­row hill­top streets or through por­tals orig­i­nally designed for pedes­tri­ans, horses and small carts…)

My friend Jane orga­nized the yoga retreat and our won­der­ful lodg­ings and group meals. (She’s also a gourmet cook and fran­cophile, so she researched all the best places to eat, with some­thing to please every bud­get.) Jane was the brave per­son who wres­tled our SUV through this por­tal — with­out scrap­ing any walls in the process.

Our yoga stu­dio was a mile away, down the hill and along a river — quite a trek in the sum­mer heat and intense sun­shine of June in Provence. We made that trek twice a day, for a week.

It was June, so the laven­der fields were in bloom. And it was incred­i­bly hot the whole time we were there, with tem­per­a­tures well into the 90s. The down­side to stay­ing in these charm­ing, pic­turesque stone vil­lages is that they don’t cool down at night…

Anusara Yoga — A Treat for Boomers

The par­tic­u­lar style of yoga that was taught at our retreat was Anusara yoga. Anusara bal­ances core val­ues from the yoga spir­i­tual tra­di­tions (such as open­ness and the light within) with a real focus on align­ment prin­ci­ples.

It cel­e­brates the heart, and wel­comes peo­ple of all abil­i­ties. Even begin­ners like me. (Some­day my asanas will be as grace­ful and pow­er­ful as the woman in this photo.)

One rea­son why Anusara is great for Boomer bod­ies is that its focus on align­ment is poten­tially less dan­ger­ous than yoga vari­ants that empha­size the flow between the poses. As our instruc­tor pointed out, most of the injuries occur dur­ing tran­si­tions into and out of poses…

Now that I’m back in Seat­tle, I’ve signed up for some local Anusara classes, in hopes of find­ing and nur­tur­ing that bal­ance within.