Workshops, boat trips old friends and a trip to Volos.

Two successful workshops have been and gone, and my fellow teacher Becky came with her family to visit me from Cape Town.
She and I trained at the same time, so come of age together – 18 years - this Thursday. It’s always good to talk of old times and discover how we’ve grown, how life has developed. She teaches singing and has had a lovely child Rouane who is tall and 14 now. Her husband Paul is also a teacher but does muscle relaxation therapy too. He used this on Costas at Paraport, their favourite tavern. He saw him limping and recognised immediately where the trouble was and had him face down on a bench (there weren’t other customers at that time) giving him deep massage in the lower back and showing him how to do it for himself. It was much relieved and his mother gave me a spinach pie to give to Mo.

First workshop was dogged with changeable weather, our last session under the canopy of ivy leaves on my pergola was just possible as the raindrops fell. The boat trip was an experience of waves and rain and sunshine and calm – sunny for us to have a nice lunch at the fishing village of Kalamakia and a snorkel across in Peristera, before the clouds arrived again. But much learning and joy in the work itself.


Second workshop boat trip was great and we saw three dolphins on the way back. We searched for a wreck on the Two Brothers but didn’t find it, just some debris of guard rails. And we visited Skantzoura and walked up the top of the hill to the abandoned monastery. So peaceful.

In the morning walks down to Mikros Mourtias, snorkelling was preferred to help rid us of pulling the head back as we swim, and for one anxious swimmer, a way of breathing more easily. With my small knowledge of Shaw Method, having watched both Jan Jordan and Stephanie Dutton teach beginners, I was also able to give some sound advice to June to not hold her breath when floating, but breathe out as she gently let the water take her and breathe in as she came up. It was a revelation and by the boat trip was confident to be happily snorkelling about - with her better half keeping a watchful eye and towing when needed.


I have also been helping a Dutch yoga teacher for a couple of weeks. She was getting terrible neck pain after practising so we were really playing with her not trying hard! Her new iphone sadly stopped working whilst she was here, and the greatest story is that she discovered our local priest is a whizz at modern technology and mobile phones! But sadly even he couldn’t fix it. I think sometimes the universe speaks to us very loudly and clearly to stop and let go. The island is very good at this.


A long term resident is having a few lessons in return for doing some washing for us (we have no washing machine). I am so happy as I know she has had a lot of back pain in the past and at last I can give her some help. A doctor recently diagnosed a herniated disc in the thoracic spine, and suggested AT might help. So far so good, and her head is turning more easily in both directions now and she has a smile on her face.


The other big event is taking my partner off the island yesterday to go the Volos hospital to get an infection checked out at casualty. It cost a return flight from London to Athens to get us both there, but well worth the relief of knowing all was well, and the antibiotics should do the trick. There is a medical centre here, but it is limited.

Last time Mo had septicaemia he left it very late to go to Volos and it left him with two months in a UK hospital, three skin grafts and a bad foot. So we don’t take chances anymore.

And it was very good for him to leave the island. He has lived here for nearly thirty years. I took him away for five when we first got together, but in the last 12 years he has left the island once for an overnight in Athens, three or four times to get his IKA card in Skopelos and to make a will, and now this. It wakes the brain up to have new surroundings and I enjoyed travelling with him- particularly on the way back when we were no longer anxious.

Our lovely dog Spiros was a very good boy without us. He did howl from the balcony (sorry neighbours!) for about an hour or two now and then apparently, but Cathy and Simon, two of my students who are dog lovers, looked after him for the day and took him for his usual morning walk and wade to Mikros Mourtias.