Quiet Mind--Busy Life

I didn't realize quite how jangled my mind had been until I began to feel it relaxing in a 2-hour yoga and meditation session. Sometimes if we are lucky--and I think that I am--the answers find us before we have even quite rolled up the question. The yoga teacher was in the hotel and we chatted and she said come along to her class. I knew that she had taught a 5am class and demurred on that grounds, but when she assured me this class started at 10 am, I thought it was just what I needed.

Despite, or perhaps because of, the big changes I have made in my life already, I am reluctant to find new places and to meet new people. I am still a shy person. The shyness gets papered over with practice but is never really far from the surface. It was dangerously near the surface as I looked for the Youth Club. I followed footsteps in the snow up the wrong ramp and then out of the corner of my eye saw the open door to my left.

And again as I have discovered here in Caithness, the class members are very welcoming. One woman suggests I move closer to the instructor since I am new--excellent advice as it turns out because many of the moves are altogether new and others only vaguely recalled from a time so long ago that I moved too quickly to enjoy the slow stretches.

At my age moving too fast is rarely an issue. The teacher told us first--convincingly--that you should do only what feels right for you. It is not a competition like some of the exercise classes I have attended with a front row populated by a cult of "shiny leotards" seeking the adulation of a drill sergeant instructor. I lose my anxieties about performing and just begin to enjoy the luxury of stretching and breathing in a quiet but structured way.

By the end of the session I felt more alive than I have for weeks. I realized that every part of my body--including eye sockets and fingers and toes-- had been given a gentle workout. And during the meditation I was reminded of what I know but so often forget--creativity, whether knitting or writing or living--grows out of the quiet mind.