"I wasn’t an Om-ing, meditating, Namaste-ing yogi when I first went to class; I was a caffeine-fuelled, adrenaline-filled party seeker, & borderline workaholic
Yoga should not iron out our loveable kinks. I am happy now; I was also happy 5 years ago. But I lived & worked through a blank acceptance of stress. It was ‘normal’ to be tired all of the time. My brain buzzed with the constant low-level hum of fragmented distraction
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Over those first months of clumsy practice, something strange happened: time bent; the minutes shifted. The clock stopped ticking at the same relentless pace. I was released, by something I hadn’t realised was holding on to me
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The time-bending power of yoga reminds me of Phillip Pullman’s The Subtle Knife: a magical blade with a point so sharp & delicate, it can find tiny chinks in the fabric of reality & open up a portal into a parallel world. Yoga is that – a way of peeling back the layers, stretching time & finding a calm, spacious landscape hidden amongst the chaos .
At work, when the seconds stacked up one after the other with no gaps in between, I held onto my time-bending discovery, the knowledge that time could pass in healing slow-motion, that I could stretch it out with my breath. For the first time I noticed the day gliding along around me, instead of being ripped out from under my feet. This simple thought, that there is always more space than we first fear, transformed my life
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Yoga is often seen as a method for self-improvement. It is sad, and lacking somehow, if this is as far as it goes - Our own life is a miniature landscape, & an incredibly limited area to work things out in. The transcendent beauty of an earnest and dedicated yoga practice, is that it takes you far beyond who we are as individuals. By helping us to understand & accept what we are, that whole conversation stops being a priority. We are free to engage with the world
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We realise we don’t matter much, in the loveliest way. Not detachment – just perspective. Relax. We are specks of glitter. Bright & sparkling, but tiny
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What a relief: I’m not really that important after all
