I broke my foot in Tuscany – a personal Journey into Love . . .

It was the first day of my Journey into Love retreat in Tuscany and time to catch the bus to meet Alexander at the Florence train station for the shuttle. Walking near the bus stop, I took a step with my right foot and as I gave it my weight, all of the muscles went limp. It was just ligaments and bones cracking noisily in an intensely painful moment as I quickly shifted my weight to my left foot and took some deep breaths. Then I sat down on a nearby stoop and picked up my foot to assess the injury and remove some of the trauma, just as I had done when the same thing happened with my left hand about a month prior to my trip. With my hand, though it also sounded as if every bone was breaking, none actually did.
 
When I met Alexander at the train station, I shared about my foot while we were waiting for the others to arrive. This is where the magic begins. He looked up homeopathic remedies on his smart phone and within minutes found one that matched my condition perfectly. Then he walked to a nearby pharmacy and found the remedy. Soon we were heading out to rural Tuscany in the van with my very swollen foot elevated on the seat. As I began connecting with my new acquaintances, I had a fleeting moment of wondering what this meant for the week ahead.
 
About two hours later we arrived for a warm welcome at our stunningly gorgeous villa. Marion and Alex, our hosts, quickly rearranged my accommodations to a room on the main floor so I could be close to the center of activities and avoid stairs. That settled, we all sat down for our first of many delicious Italian meals. I already felt well cared for and in good hands.
 
Lying in bed with my foot high on pillows with an ice pack, I asked the questions I often ask in challenging situations, “What’s the blessing in this?” or “What’s the gift in this that I’m not seeing yet?” and I asked my body what message it was wanting to give me. When my body speaks this loud, I can usually look back and see that there were more subtle messages that I had either missed or ignored along the way, and this was no exception. The answer came immediately. I had been moving too fast and furious for a long while and my body wanted to be sure that I got off my “work horse” and took this as a personal retreat. I needed to recover from the intensity of writing and publishing my book. I spent the week cultivating loving connections and sweet relationships, some that will last a lifetime. During that week I broke the stress cycle and returned to my healthy balanced lifestyle, which includes more play, self care and connection time.
 
Though I did lead a bit of poolside yoga, we don’t always need to do standing poses or prescribed asanas to practice yoga. Yoga is the practice of cultivating awareness with breath and loving kindness. We can apply this in each moment, in our relationships and in every aspect of life. To me, it’s all yoga. And bringing loving awareness to our moments as we interact with life and each other is foundational to sharing a blissful journey into love.

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Now that I’m home, my broken foot is continuing to take me on a deeply healing journey. I am making good use of my yoga & love practices, natural remedies and movement therapies for support along the way and even reading my own book to guide me on this journey into love. And most of all I am grateful to my body’s wisdom and my dear ones who are loving me all the way.
In love and gratitude, Tracie