SIn City - Yin City

I'm home after a lovely long weekend vacation with my husband. It was a-mazing! We don't travel a ton, most times he takes off work are to travel home to Wisconsin (where both of our families live between a 5-7 hour car ride away), which is always fun and enjoyable, but doesn't exactly feel like a get-a-way what with packing, driving all day, staying in our old bedrooms with our two kids sleeping in the same room as us... you get the idea :)

This time, we went to Las Vegas, which, apparently is the place my patients would universally vote as, "the place they'd least likely suspect me of vacationing!" Yes, it is an unconventional choice, for someone in such a granola career path, but the truth is, my husband and I were excited to go! It was someplace we could go for a long weekend and someplace we don't anticipate ever wanting to bring our kids. And since we travel infrequently, we try not to go to the same place more than once... so many places, so little time!

But enough about where we went and onto this post's point! I value YIN... you know if you've read this blog much... yin is down time, NOT doing, quiet, still, dark, the opposite of multitasking, achieving, lights, action, etc.

I've established we don't travel much, that we only plan on going to Vegas once, that we had just 4 days. That combined with the fact that IT'S LAS VEGAS would probably make you suspect that we wanted to cram every possible thing in and that this trip was bound to be Yang, Yang Yang!  But oh, no!  We had a Yin City experience!  (To be honest, I think that might officially be the cheesiest thing I've ever posted, but there it is!)

Two of the three afternoons we were there we went back to our hotel room and... drum roll please... napped!  King size bed, white sheets, fluffy pillows... aaaaaaaah!  For like 2 hours!  Then we lazily played card games... in our hotel room!  We're talking UNO games!  We slept in, I took baths, we came "home" early and watched a movie in our room... We didn't rush to anything. It was fantastic.

Did I feel a little guilty? You bet!  Was it enough to make me stop, no way! We did two shows, ate great food, walked a bunch, people and place watched, and gambled (less than $20 but when in rome!) We had cocktails, we indulged in dessert. We went from hotel to hotel looking at all the "vegas-ness" of it all. It was a perfect mix of yin and yang. Sure, I didn't get to see every single thing I wished I could have. I had to trade doing certain things for not doing anything at all, but the trade off was BALANCE!  I came home really recharged and rested and even though I technically could take a nap for two hours on any old weekend in my own home, I usually don't and when combined with all the new fantastic things I did actually do, it was a near perfect mix.

Whether it's in your day to day life, your next vacation, or anything in between, try to add a little yin into your routine. I can't say it enough, it isn't a waste, it's an essential part of being a moderate, healthy, balanced human being. Your body and mind will love the vacation from all that Yang.