Therapy.

On the weekend I ventured through a portal to a parallel universe......with 220 other scantily clad Bikram Yoga addicts who pushed past racks of  gold lame mini shorts and bandana tops in the foyer to converge in the ballroom of a nondescript hotel on the periphery of Melbourne's CBD. Rajashree Choudhury was in town.....she's Bikram's wife who has helped him to create the world wide phenomenon that is Bikram Yoga.

Don't worry, I'm concerned about what managing to acquire a two day ticket of leave from my family and the resulting military precision of organisation involved says about me.....that I would choose to spend one day of my freedom in a packed room, short of oxygen and high on sweat and complex yoga poses, says about me. But I loved every minute of it.

Rajashree's focus is on the emotional side of yoga....she believes that everything manifests from the mind and the pollution of the mind and sees specifically that yoga can balance the human body's energy which impacts not only disease but also on the connection between the body, the mind and the spirit. For Rajashree, yoga is therapy. She says '....The woman runs the house. The woman takes care of the family. But no one really looks after her. We put less priority on ourselves and focus on everything else. We physically and emotionally deprive ourselves. And then suddenly it's mid life and the time to enjoy is over and it leads to depression'. Scary.

At this point, I started feeling a frisson of excitement.....it all started to make sense and fall into place for me. Forget that today in my first Bikram Yoga class since the seminar, my monkey mind flirted with such subjects as what I was going to write about in my blog/next article for 'Tasmanian Style' magazine.....and of course the eternal dilemma...what was I going to cook for dinner. Still it was not. Obviously, I have an excruciatingly  arduous road ahead of me taming my mind, training it to be still, yet I'm seduced by what it would be like if I can....so I'm headed back to the hot room for another class tonight......after I've dished up dinner service (spelt pasta with a fresh tomato and vegetable sauce, in case you're wondering).

Don't despair, my weekend away wasn't all yoga mats and coconut water. The rest of the time I felt like Linda in 'The Pursuit of Love' when she was surrounded by the chatterers, as the friend I was staying with and I indulged in endless, endless chat. And dinner at Cumulus Inc:

And lunch at Bistro Guillaume:

And maybe a spot of restorative dress trying on:

And now the timer's going so had better get dinner done and dusted so I can hit the mat......needless to say I came home feeling throughly restored.....even though my family saved up three loads of washing for me in my absence.

Rx