Yoga

Your hand opens and closes and opens and closes. If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralysed. Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as bird wings.- Rumi

First time here. The classes are held in a martial arts centre and our room is huge with pink, squishy rubber flooring and strange pieces of black padded equipment along the walls. An air conditioner whirrs somewhere behind me. It is needed today; the weather is warm and ominously humid. On my right a young woman lies on her back, relaxing. Further over a grandmotherly type talks to her neighbour. I count heads: two men and fifteen women, all shapes and ages.

Susanna, the teacher, reminds me of an oriental dancer; her tiny frame is curvy and muscular and she exudes grace and competence. I introduce myself, something I seem to be doing a lot these days. We talk about my physical condition. I tell her I'll be fine.

This yoga differs from that of the Sivananda tradition, the one I know best. Here the postures flow into each other, almost like tai-chi. I have to concentrate hard in order to coordinate breath and movement and a couple of times Susanna comes over and gently adjusts an arm or a leg.

Let me tell you, it’s an emotional business when the body reawakens, when rigid muscles are asked to stretch and release. I’m awash with frustration at my own awkwardness and can't shake an illogical sense of having lost something irreplaceable during the months of inactivity. Tears aren't far away. What keeps me here is a belief in the power of the asanas, these tools for expansion and contraction.

It's simple. They return me to the body. To an awareness of living muscle, sinew and breath. And if I'm looking for deepest presence, this is where I start.

****

The path home after the class leads past the cathedral. Groups of teenagers sprawl on the grass beneath the lime trees and the sweet yet slightly acrid scent of the blossom hangs in the heavy air.

Paperweight

Illness. It's been like living in the paperweight. I'm getting better but it's a slow process.

Back soon I hope.

Fish

The river sweeps out into a wide curve as it leaves town. On the longer, southern side the water is deeper and there are more shadowy, hidden places. The steep bank here is bordered by a line of grey-green willows and overgrown with tall, impossibly lush, grass. There are clumps of nettles too, and elder, and foaming meadowsweet.

Early morning stillness can be deceptive. Fish, dozens of them and some quite large, gather beneath the overhanging branches of one of the willows, away from the midstream tug of the current and safe from human intrusion.

Spreading circles on the surface provide the first clue. Then, an occasional splash.

And you peer down through the grass and nettles to where the delicate branches of the tree touch the river. In the water smooth cold bodies, dark and mysterious, weave and glide around each other in an unchoreographed dance, their shapes refracting in the ripples then reforming.

Another world. Beautiful and a little disquieting.

Snapped

Lately there seems to be so many news reports of children. Lost children, injured children.

The one that I can’t get out of my head is the incident of the City high-flyer who has battered his two year old child to the brink of death. She is on life support with her mother at her bedside, he apparently is on suicide watch. The news bulletins say that he and his wife lived in a million pound apartment, that he is reported by his colleagues to be friendly and sociable, that neighbours say that he doted on his little girl. Other colleagues said that he had been under great stress recently. Something snapped.

Over the years as a London temp I worked in international financial organizations where I got to know many men like him. The new Eurocrats, young, multilingual, ambitious, driven. Often, though not always, charming, seemingly nerveless. I envied them sometimes, their lives of seeming confidence and financial ease.

So this hits home. I think of Georges and Pierre from Belgium, Anders from Stockholm. And many others.

We live in a society that worships the outer. It's hard not to be seduced by this false religion and I'm obviously as prone to judge by appearances as anyone else. But we don't know the truth - the vulnerability and the fragility - of other people's lives, we really don't.

We can't pass judgment.