Stepping onto the Mat

A few days ago I crossed the water, returning to a city that, when I think of it, I cup my hands as if I were holding a moth or a butterfly. I don't want to damage those dusty wings as I transport it from the house to the garden.

I was born in that city yet never lived in it until last year. And whilst there, for nearly nine months, I think some little parts of me died and some other parts seeded.

This trip had quiet intentions. The outward expression was a three day yoga workshop. Some thoughts on yoga: how private and individual and bizarre one's relationship is to yoga practice. How my own practice of this moving meditation is an undulating passage. I now understand it as a creative practice that will frequently shift over my lifetime like cello practice, writing practice and walking my dog practice. Like all of those, it will dip and snare and run amok and yet, regardless of absence, will always be present. For, what I learn and re-learn, is that it doesn't matter. More often than not, persisting with doing what you will with some kind of intention, when you can and will and desire, causes something to happen. More often than not, the something is intangible. And yet, with enough frequency to keep you interested, whilst you're walking from one room to the next, from a glass of water to the shower, rolling up your mat, wondering whether to eat bread with peanut butter and banana or a lone apple, your brain slips along a smooth patch of thought - you reflect. Something is different. You thought your practice-head was all full of clutter and weird ordinary thoughts and yet, now that you have finished, and you are off the mat, you realise, shit, I was actually in whilst on the mat, more than I ever knew.

At the moment I am thinking of sitting meditation as a step into the core of one's mind, whilst yoga is the stepping back into one's body, head and brain included.

So, there I stepped, back onto the mat, back into my body, my brain shut up for awhile, and amongst other things, I ate salted soya beans and drank green tea on Smith Street, peeled prawns with my pal Scott, drank unfolding tea with Richard in Little Collins, and sat alone and happy in busy restaurant on a Friday night, reading whilst I stuffed my face with brown rice and tamari.