Last week I learnt how to sit back and relax. Yes, my friends will think I’ve gone completely mad but it’s true, I did, and after a while I even started to enjoy it!

Last week I spent 4 days in Tuscany with a good friend in a health spa resort doing some research. Now it’s true, my idea of adventure certainly isn’t sitting in a health spa ‘relaxing’, in fact it’s possibly one of my worst nightmares! One of my friends recently said I’m worse than a cat on a hot tin roof, constantly needing to be doing something.  However here I was in beautiful Tuscany, being shown the weird and wonderful spa treatments, about to spend the next 3 days in relaxation!

So off we went, towels in hand, first to the sauna – relax, then a swedish shower (a freezing cold bucket of water over my head – I thought we were supposed to be relaxing!). Then onto the steam room – relax, followed by an ’emotional’ shower. Struggling to conjure up any particular emotions I moved onto the foot spa and then the jacuzzi. Somewhere in the middle of all this we entered the ‘relaxing room’, a room filled with giant cushioned sun loungers, aromatic smells, green teas and relaxing music. My friend was in heaven, and compared it to my excitement at standing at the top of a mountain in the freezing cold!

After repeating this process a few times I did actually begin to relax, and even started to enjoy the swedish shower! Sat in the jacuzzi I looked outside at the immense typical Italian afternoon storm passing over and had the feeling that maybe sometimes it is good to stand still, stop chasing the next adventure for just a few minutes and relax…

A friend said to me her idea of adventure is trying something new, and she’s right, for in trying something new we constantly discover things we didn’t know about ourselves, and through this we can grow.

So even though I’m not about to give up the adrenaline rush of standing at the top of a mountain, or the exhiliration of speeding downhill on a mountain bike, this week I have learnt that there is also adventure in relaxation, and occasionally I might just stop and relax…

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