Yoga

Halfway through a downward dog, red-faced and breathing a little too hard, a hen stops about 18 inches from my face. It squats, and lifts its a tail a fraction. There is a brief, unmistakable pause. Something warm and biological drops onto the mat beside me. It is not an egg.  From the front of the class, the instructor’s voice calls out, instructing us to inhale deeply.   To my side, another chicken wanders into the danger zone just as a pose collapses and someone nearly brings an arm down on it. The bird emits a short, offended squawk.   How have I ended up here?

“You are suffering from what we call an ‘Alice in Wonderland’ effect,” Dr. Sankar informed me as I climbed out of a rabbit hole. I was late for a very important date to discuss my sleep (or lack thereof). “When you fall asleep,” he continued, “your thoughts race, and you think: What should I be doing? What do I need to do? Where am I? Where am I going?” I had fallen head-first into another wonderland: Ananda in the Himalayas. Located in the foothills of the Himalayas in northern India, Ananda – which translates to “happiness” in Sanskrit – is a world-renowned holistic retreat that towers above the bustling city of Rishikesh and the sacred Ganges River.

Forget Barcelona. Say sayonara to San Fran. And so long, London. Post-Covid, Lisbon has become a hub for the creative, hungry and cosmopolitan. A throng of new restaurants, wine bars and buzzy co-working spots has formed a playground for the young and ambitious.  They’re squeezing every last drop out of their free time, too, joining the tourists in thumping nightclubs before escaping to beautiful  beaches. But plenty of weekend visitors don’t know (or have time to discover) that the city is flanked by bucolic countryside, dotted with world-class hotels and agriturismos. A forty-minute drive can take you to pristine white sands, enchanting pine forests, retro beachfronts and sprawling national parks. Next time you’re in town, tack a road trip onto your city break.

I’m holding a respectable tree pose on a sun-bleached jetty above St. Lucia’s turquoise waters. It’s the sort of place you drift off to mentally when you are midway through a peaceful meditation in a reassuringly mildewed London yoga studio. This time, though, I’m actually here and ready to embark on one of the latest wellness trends: a holistic diving experience in the Caribbean complete with breathing exercises and underwater yoga that will allow me to reach “whole new levels of relaxation” and, one hopes, enough spiritual transcendence to get me out of the water if things don’t go to plan. But there are boat engines roaring, tourists being herded on and off and an unusually aggressive coastal wind is picking up, along with the tide.