I was messing about in a hotel hot tub recently. No, not that kind of messing about…I was at the Emerson Resort & Spa in the Catskills for work (writing a review). Persistent ice rain made it impossible to go for a hike or ski, so instead I decided to meditate in the outdoor hot tub.  The setting couldn’t have been more agreeable; the little steaming pool was next to a fast moving creek, surrounded by silver birches, a beautiful grey-mauve sky and misty mountains on either side.  While messing about I discovered that when I quietened my thoughts, my body started to float and I became weightless and then when I started to think again, the weight of my thoughts seemed to pull me down and sink me.  What an extraordinary metaphor I thought. I tried it in the bath afterwards and it worked there too.  Perhaps one day soon,  I’ll able to let go of my thoughts, levitate off the meditation cushion and float away.

Unfortunately on that chilly day at the Emerson, I was so  busy congratulating myself on my floating skills and  how I had managed to skinny dip unobserved, (I hadn’t packed a swimsuit), that I didn’t notice a whole big wall of windows looking down on me from the hotel ‘great room’ where a bunch of stall holders were setting up for a fair. I can’t imagine what they thought was going on when they saw a gray-haired woman floating face down in the nude in the hot tub. That evening I had some of the staff in stitches about my skinny dipping exploits. One mentioned that I had also missed the huge sign by the pool that says ‘no nude bathing’.