Wow, what a month! The world opened up just enough to allow our yoga and conscious cooking retreat to go ahead. My theme was Open to Receive, and boy oh boy, did we ever. The weather was perfect, the people divine, and everyone found exactly what we had intended, a bit of radical self-care.

Held at the magical Domaine de Hongrie in Lupiac, this was my richest experience ever of holding space for a retreat. The three French women who came all said that their friends and family had warned them that it sounded like a cult! We laughed about this, but I don’t disagree. A cult is described as a group of people defined by a devotion to something. Well, my cult is compassion and I am devoted to helping people practice this, towards themselves and others.

Part of my practice of self-compassion and self-care following this heart- and mind-blowing retreat was to do something just for me. With my dear friend, Louisa Hallewell, who provides the conscious cooking on our retreats, we spent an afternoon doing aerial yoga on silks. It was an incredible experience.

For the first time in my life, I felt that it was possible to be strong and feminine. And I managed to climb the silk all the way to the top, something I have never been able to do. My body felt strong and balanced, but also elegant and graceful. It seemed to me that this was something I had been preparing for my whole life.

We came away from flying yoga exhilarated and excited about going again in a couple of weeks. Then I broke my leg – tibia and fibula. Jumping on silage bales with India. I knew I had done something serious so a trip to the ‘urgences’ was inevitable. But even then, my ever-optimistic mind was reassuring me it wasn’t broken. I was eventually x-rayed at 1.30am and told the news, to my great surprise.

Emergency surgery followed, to put in a metal plate to hold the bones together, and I came home with a plaster, which was soon decorated with rainbows, hearts and unicorns. The idea of a static summer would usually be ‘l’horreur’ for me, but, once again, I felt that this was something I had been preparing for my whole life…

Filed under: Happy Coulson

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