Giles Brown
LIVING up in my humble casita, surrounded by nature, visitors often remark that it would be the perfect place to open a yoga centre (they also suggest a residential rehab facility, but that’s a different story).
My health and fitness regime, and yes, there is such a thing, consists of mad dashes up and down the mountain track, throwing free weights around and letting most of my aggression out on the punchbag.
It’s very high on testosterone and done to the sound of straining, grunting and the Foo Fighters booming out from the stereo.
Many of my friends do yoga, and it seemed a more tranquil way of staying in shape, so when the lovely Margaret Buchanan invited me to take part in a beach yoga class just in front of The Boardwalk restaurant in Marbella, I thought I’d give it a go.
It is actually not the first time I’ve done a class with Margaret, who also teaches Hot Yoga, where she put me through my paces so thoroughly that I was on the verge of throwing up and passing out.
The appeal of a morning yoga session next to the Mediterranean lured me back, however, and I duly found myself spreading out a mat on the beach.
A real cross section of people, I was glad to see that I wasn’t the only guy in attendance that day. Along with some healthy looking Scandinavians of indeterminate age, there was also a pregnant woman, so I didn’t think that the class would be overly challenging.
How wrong I was. An hour later I was both physically and mentally exhausted. Margaret had carefully taken us through a series of yoga moves that had subtly worked out seemingly every muscle in the body, including some fiendish balance postures that left me wobbling like a drunken flamingo.
But as I walked back to the car I felt great for several reasons. The cost of the class included a donation to the Positively Pink Breast Cancer Charity, and I could actually feel my core muscles.
And now I have yet another excuse to spend even more time on the beach.
