I’m looking forward to breathing again. It’s been a few weeks since I took some deep, relaxing breaths and I know it. My trip to Europe took the wind out of me, and all the smoky venues just ripped my lungs to shreds, so my breathing became very shallow and week. Then my damned computer set my mind on fire. I feel myself holding my breath as I write, then pressing “save” and quickly exhaling stale air from a few paragraphs before.
It didn’t help that the night before my husband and I got to “The Ranch,” we had a pretty intense night of disagreeing about stupid stuff. We’re both so stressed that we took our tension out on each other. So, here I am, the first full day in Tecate, Mexico, settling into the routine of healthy living, healthy learning, and relaxation.
Since we arrived things have been wonderful. The staff is super-duper friendly, and all the guests are way nicer than I expected. I never know what to expect at spas, I’ve been to some that are full of fat, bitter women, and others brimming with prima donnas sporting a full face of makeup in the weight room. Here, everyone is really chill, and most of them are return visitors.
When we first arrived off the plane, they gave us a list of our booked treatments in the fantastic week-long day planner, complete with hour slots we could fill in with the classes we wanted to take. Because our bus to the ranch was stuck at the Mexican-American boarder for an extra two hours, I had time to fill it out at San Diego airport. The classes I chose sounded great! Samba, All That Dance, Cadio-Challenge, and the list goes on.
Getting up at 6:00 to hike was not on my agenda today. That was way too much work. So, I slept in, strolled over to breakfast as the hikers returned glowing from their morning on the mountain. Breakfast was out of this world. That’s the other tricky thing about spas, you never know what the foods going to be like. And the food here is dee-licous! So much so that I have to watch what I eat. I think it helps that we’re in Mexico, so there’s lots of great spices and wonderful flavors.
I spent the day skipping from one great work out to another. I started at 9:00 am with a heart-racing Samba class, that was followed by Circuit Training, next came Yoga Flow. I took a break for lunch and caught up with Tim, who was doing a completely different set of classes. The afternoon I learned how to strip tease (watch out Vegas!) then I toned it down with some Feldenkrias (you got to look that up yourself!) and I ended my classes with a course on hypnotherapy.
After all that work, I headed to the spa, where I got an Ayurvedic massage. I spent some time in the steam room, and sauna, took a shower and charged off to dinner. Dinner, like breakfast and lunch were spectacular. We ended out night with a great talk about folklore by Rabbi Michael Zedek. He’s a pretty special man, and I’m so glad that I’m here the week he’s speaking. His other classes are Miracles of the Ordinary and Stories for Leaders.
