The retreat sounded lovely: early morning meditation, yoga asana and pranayama, chanting, nature walks, lots of time to sit and just be.  I live simply and though once a hard-core backpacker, I faced that boxy room with its holey, hard, single mattress on an unswept floor and the fist-sized hole in the wall with faltering equanimity. It was the vegetarian `dinner’ of thin soup that tipped me into prickly aggravation. read more…

Lisa Mitchell