Get out of town.
2.10.10
Let’s talk about a super diversion when the blues come calling: a spa trip! Actually, depression is optional. I cannot think of anyone who wouldn’t benefit (fellows, that includes you) from a visit to a resort focused on exercise and pampering. I’ve just returned from my first experience with such a destination. Another first was being on holiday with a girlfriend. Of the 10 women in our group I think I was the only virgin on both counts. No surprise; always been a late bloomer.
First, let me clarify… I was not pampered head to toe (as my envious mum imagined), though I might have been. Instead I logged well over 20,000 steps daily, danced, stretched, swam, rode and listened… to lectures, travel companions, music and that voice inside me that said, “do this more often.”
I admit it. Since starting this blog with the intention of grabbing life, I had fallen head first into “situational depression,” I just didn’t have a two-word tag for it until Judith (my Tulsa roommate) mentioned it recently in conversation. Jud is one of my inspirations, a woman ahead of me on the journey of becoming single after a long marriage.
I Googled the term, AKA “adjustment disorder.” Didn’t need a doctor to confirm it is what has ailed me recently. Check it out: http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/mental-health-adjustment-disorder Good news is it tends to run its course in six months. Summer 2010 is now in my sights and I feel better already.
Back to Red Mountain Spa in St George, Utah. If you can reach Las Vegas, it’s a scenic shuttle ride ($25 each way on the St George Shuttle 800.933.8320) well worth the stretch on Interstate 15 built in the 1970’s at a cost of $1 billion per mile.
We arrived well after dark so the resort – unfamiliar and cloaked in darkness under a cloudy, starless sky – seemed massive. The light of day revealed a charming, intimate collection of buildings the color of the surrounding, stunning sandstone and gardens exquisitely landscaped.
I was slow to change gears. The first day I was quite content to hike in Snow Canyon, show up for meals, spend time struggling with a WiFi connection in the business center (determined to be productive on the work front), participate in a Chi ball class and attend a lecture about the seven chakras. The word “chakra” is Sanskrit for “wheel.” The chakra system was developed in India in the middle ages. I drifted off to sleep that night resolved to tackle my yellow or Solar Plexus Chakra imbalance (Jud – my roomie – tells me I talked “a mile a minute” in my sleep that night).
Toward that end, the next day I hiked further into Snow Canyon, took my first yoga class in nine years, sweated and giggled through a Zumba class (shaking your body to Latin music that leaves you completely drenched and very happy) and managed not to drown in, yes, my first water aerobics class by a fancier name before returning to the outdoor whirlpool to emerge myself up to my ear lodes in warm, bubbling water.
The third day brought yet another experience – riding to the south end of the canyon on horseback. I was hoping my love of animals would give me a leg up; I last remember being introduced to riding at age 8 on holiday in Hawaii. All I really needed was our guide’s introductions: “Tits in the air, upper back arched, lower back relaxed and moving with the same motion as making love.”
ALL this on one shopping bag hanging on a coat rack in the window of a salon on Marshall Avenue. Who’d have thunk?! Answers can be in unexpected places.
