Great expectations and wonderful intentions.

You can tell I have been busy folks as it has been over a month since writing the blog... my belief/hallucination is that a blog is about sharing what you feel passionate about and finding out if other people feel the same... and I feel passionate about Living It Yoga

Venue for 2014's LIYoga week

Five years ago we launched Living It Yoga as a vehicle for learning how to incorporate the principles and practices of yoga into your life and so enjoy your life's journey whatever it brings and however rocky is the road. The intention was to run events here in Scotland as well as taking Scottish people to Italy to enjoy the Italian yoga journey...


It's a joy to comment regularly on the milestones, the sunrises and the sunsets and even a weather forecast or two and combine it with my adventures in Italy. What can I say, I always seem to have them. They are what I now call my "Great Expectations"

I set off on Thursday the 6th March with some trepidation, as I had booked flights for my friend, Grainne and myself  through a third party broker called "cheapoair". Yep the name says it all, however we did have seats on AirFrance planes and we did arrive at our destination safely albeit a trifle tired as we went via Paris's Charles de Gaulle airport!

Villa Brignole

Arriving at Pisa airport late at night and picking up a rental car in the dark was a new experience for me but one that I needed to be familiar with as next month's Living It Yoga students will be arriving late evening and my husband, Andy and I, and perhaps even Kenneth, our son, will be driving south from Pisa in convoy to the most idyllic place called Villa Brignole, just outside Siena.

My recent visit was to firm up any arrangements that we may have overlooked when Kenneth and I booked the venue last July! I had invited Grainne along as she had been Well Connected's very own organiser many moons ago and is now a 5 star organiser of events for Edinburgh Council's Libraries. Needless to say I had indeed overlooked quite a few things but thanks to Grainne's expertise and my halting Italian we successfully confirmed all the necessary arrangements for the two LIY weeks this year... and we had a ball doing it.

Now that isn't to say there weren't hiccups... like when we were stopped at a junction in a traffic jam for 30 minutes not knowing what was happening... and then a train pulled through. Lesson learned, so when two days later it happened again in another town altogether, we knew the score. Or when I ordered what I thought was salami and cheese and it turned out to be cheese and chilli! Another lesson learned!

The visits to restaurants and bars and even shops were full of suprises. We were treated royally as many of the places I had visited before... and guess what, they remembered me! Even staying in the hotels along the way were a delight, but the biggest delight was the Villa Brignole's situation with stunning panoramic views across the fields towards Siena.

Even the visit to the spa at Terme Rapolana, which was in itself fabulous, faded into insignificance when looking at the view on a fresh, sunny, spring morning with the mist rising and the birds singing and a feeling of "all's right with the world" seeping through the air.

Whatever adventures come along, I remind myself of the intention that I set myself... to enjoy life. Sometimes it is enjoying the view while driving through gorgeous Tuscan scenery or sitting, sipping a coffee in a wonderful small Osteria away from the madding crowd and sometimes it is the journey home...

“Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colours. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky