What was I thinking?! 

After two solo holidays last year, which proved to me beyond any lingering doubt that solo holidaying was not for me, this year I stepped into the definition of madness for the third time and googled ‘solo yoga retreat for 50+ women’. 

Faced with the vagaries of a woman’s brain, logic recoils and assumes a foetal position. 

A myriad of options jumped out at me from my computer screen, gyrating in front of my over-excited eyes, tempting me with asanas and realignment, finding purpose, intentions, and meditation. 

The choices were seemingly endless, the locations included all the usual suspects; the Greek islands, Bali, Thailand, and Tenerife. I spent several hours weighing up the options, the cuisine, and the amount of mindfulness jargon I was prepared to endure. I settled on the Pink Palace Yoga Retreat in Corfu as my top favourite. 

I pencilled in some provisional dates for the last week of May. 

And then I remembered that my youngest daughter was coming home from university for the summer sometime in the last week of May. 

I messaged her and asked her if she knew when she was likely to be back, as I was planning to book a yoga retreat. 

She responded enthusiastically that she would love to come to a yoga retreat with me and that she was available any time after the 20th. She thanked me for thinking of her and repeated that it would be a brilliant way for her to wind down after her exam season. 

I couldn’t possibly tell her I was only asking for her return date, because I did not want to be in Corfu when she came back to London, as I had not seen her for a couple of months and was missing her badly. 

Anyway, to cut this rather long introduction short, here we were, together, at the very pink Pink Palace at Argios Gordios. 

We left London in the morning, and I cannot begin to put into words how absolutely awful it would have been for me to arrive here solo, as originally planned. 

The EasyJet flight ritual took most of the day and we landed in Corfu after 6pm. The Pink Palace shuttle bus picked us up from the airport and we arrived at our hotel just in time for dinner. I looked around the room, full of fellow yoga retreaters. Had I stuck to my original plan, I would have been sitting there alone and miserable, help myself to a large plate of salads and meats, avoiding eye contact and conversation with strangers. 

What on earth was I thinking. 

Whatever it was, I narrowly avoided the agony of an awkward solo week by the gorgeous Ionian Sea, for which I was thanking my lucky stars. And my daughter. 

Stuffed to our eyeballs with food, we retired to our room, just in time to catch the last shades of pink post-sunset sky, before they faded into the navy-blue darkness.

The next day, it was down to the 8am first yoga session on a roof by the beach. 

We Ommmed and we Shantied, we stretched and balanced and massaged our internal organs, we were mountains, triangles, eagles, and cobras. I failed to cradle my bended leg to my bosom like a baby, but that’s okay, because, as one of our newly met classmates commented afterwards, it’s not about touching your toes, it’s about touching your soul, which would have been pure cringe, had she not said it in a self-mocking way, so that was fine. I have adopted this as my personal yoga motto for the week. 

An hour and a half session, or as it’s referred to in the asana business, practice, was relaxing and challenging in equal parts. The next session at 6pm framed the day perfectly.  

Day two. This morning yoga was mostly challenging with a small addition of relaxing at the end. 

What was I thinking?

Why on earth did I think 3 hours of yoga a day was a good idea for somebody who does 3 hours of exercise a week in a good month. 

Day three. 

We played truant, and skipped our 6pm yoga session. It felt like I was back at school and had done something moderately naughty for which my teacher was going to give me a disapproving look the next day. 

We split the day between the pool and the beach, with a break for a mandatory Greek salad and chicken gyros for lunch.  

During my week-long Corfu Yoga retreat I learned a lot about yoga.  

I learned that my favourite yoga pose was called savasana, the corpse pose. It was the final pose at each practice, and I was looking forward to it from the first cross-legged Omm. The corpse pose did exactly what it said on the tin. We lied down very still on our backs, eyes closed and we did not move a muscle, playing dead. The only sounds were the waves splashing against the beach below and a chatter of birds above. Bliss! 

The teacher encouraged us to ‘relax your body, relax your mind’. I had mastered the former within seconds, but the relaxing of the mind might need to wait until I reach a real corpse stage of my life. 

I learned that my second favourite yoga pose was called balasana, a child’s pose, the curled up in a ball version, head down on the mat, eyes closed. Beautiful. The only thing was, the teacher always asked us to unfold from it much sooner than I was ready to. 

Most importantly, I learned, or was reminded, that there was the whole wide and beautiful world out there, and that I want to see as much of it as possible, and I cannot wait to start. So for my next trip…