Dear Yogi's,
It's amazing how quickly 2 weeks of attempting to communicate in another language can sap ones energy! It seems like I learned French in a far-off other worldly distant memory. Oddly I remember being fluent in French about 20 years ago, even dreaming in French. Well, it sounded a bit like Hungarian in my dreams this time...
On a brighter note, all I had to do was cycle to and fro, and remember to hang up my towel at the end of the day, I really didn't have much of a list, or even wear my watch, I checked that the teens were watering my plants, and they were also still alive, which they reassured me they were and they were. Super.
So cycling for 2 weeks, ok, really it was cycling for 2 days and 2 days lying on some glorious beach, or walking a coast path, so the legs did start to feel a bit of a different shape, there was one point when my knees refused to bend properly, as my quads had been hoiking me up hills all day on the bike.
Yoga was a simple affair throughout the fortnight, and often piped up unexpectedly; on the ferry for example, or when we climbed a castle turret, the knees demanded a bit of a break. I turned to somatics for simplicity and ease, which worked a treat. Very similar to Feldenkreis, it uses the brain to body connection to reset habits in the body. Yoga appeared randomly, sometimes a Yin like set up for a few minutes, unplanned. And occasionally first thing in the morning on the beach with my feet steadily sinking into the sand hopper infested ground-up white and pink granite beaches surrounded by massive boulders -and so much space. Glorious!
I think, and I'm not the only one, that little and often is such a good idea. Instead of thinking of yoga as a chore or as something that one might want to put off, and then suddenly attack it to get it over with.. This is one of the horror stories behind self practice. But there are other versions that help us choose bite size chunks to nibble on with our relationship with yoga.
Oliver Burkeman, a super writer talks about in "Meditations for mortals"(opens in new tab) (yes, holiday reading) a woman trying to write her phd thesis has a massive block and stops completely. Luckily, she has someone to talk to who asks her how about choosing a manageable amount of time each day to write, say 3 hours? Horrified they whittled it down to 15 minutes, which might seem laughable, but it worked. I think the same could be placed upon Yoga, it's not that you don't enjoy it whilst you're doing it, just like the student above, who loves writing, it's just the looming monster of "Im going to do an hour of yoga today" that leers over everything you do till you do it or fills you with guilt if you don't.
It needn't be so.
-A delicate quiet moment to yourself near a gate, the foot rises to the highest rung it can easily reach and lean body weight forward... try the other leg..?
-Cycling up a hill, gazing down at the pedals, not at the never-ending-road. Seeing the blackberries in the hedges, relishing the moments in the shade, being in the moment... the hill vanishes.
I think this is magical everyday ordinary yoga.
Namaste
