Against the run of betting, Sylvianne signed up for an extra yoga session being offered on a Friday afternoon, the inducement to do so came from a half price deal and the promise it would be gentle and meditative. Having heaved her way through the Tuesday session of 45 minutes of gruelling Vinyasa Flow poses she had finally sank into corpse pose and laid completely inert, in silent shock. She was sweating like a bull and at some point during the first 2o minutes of bending and swaying had started to feel completely nauseated, but her relief at eventually standing upright was quickly quashed as she felt her thighs shaking alarmingly with the strain of just holding her own weight, as they went through the flow of mountain posing.
In fact there was little in the way of zen being felt by any of the new recruits in that first session if the sweat steamed windows, visceral grunts and anonymous farting that punctuated the holding of the poses was anything to go by; no one was safe from the downward facing dog. So it came as something of a real surprise that on the way home, Sylvianne found herself feeling incredibly euphoric, long and loose. This feeling was more than a little eclipsed by the contracting pain she felt in every conceivable muscle group on the days that followed but nevertheless, despite the perversity of it she found herself looking forward to the next session.
Linda Rice was Gumby Woman, who could lithely slide from one pose into the next.’ Namaste’ she said with a beautifully serene smile as she began each session. However, true to her word, the Friday session was as advertised, restorative in nature, it was an altogether different experience.
There was a lilting bamboo flute floating somewhere just out of reach, and Linda kept up a hypnotic chain of soothing suggestions to breathe and let go, easing the class through the ancient mantra of ‘aum’ – and the rhythmic repetition infused itself through to their very soul. Sylvianne entranced, soaked up the calmness, but found the’ doing’ much easier than the ‘not doing’, as the final 20 minutes slipped in to meditation.
Her mind was wilful. She set herself the task of focusing on to the ‘aum’ – it is, it will be she repeated mentally; thereby emptying herself of all other thoughts, the fact was however, that within nano seconds she was embroiled in an internal conversation that had nothing to do with restoring calmness to her soul or any where else. Within minutes she was castigating herself for veering away from the task, and tried to pull her mind back to nothing. Twenty minutes was too long for her over wrought mind and exhausted body to stay still.
There is something to the actual out load chanting of ancient mantra’s but they lacked any solid meaning to keep Sylvianne’s mind focused. Linda had suggested at the beginning of the session, not to expect too much of themselves, that just like the Tuesday session, the Friday session was going to put their minds through a rigorous workout, and it would take time for the mind to learn. Linda was right and Sylvianne was a mental fidgeter.
She swiped at a stray hair stuck to her face, only then to find her face was itching. She scratched lightly. Resettled. She opened one eye to see if everyone else was composed. Linda was at peace with herself at the front of the class. She quickly closed her eye again so as not to be caught out, she felt like a cheat. ‘aummmmm.’ ‘aummmmmm’ Her hip flexor started to ache and she found the lotus position impossible to hold, and her back had rounded substantially, and she had to force herself back into sitting fully upright; she realised her lumbar area had started to ache badly as the muscles either side of her spine struggled with the unfamiliarity of supporting itself. Stop it! Stop it! ‘aummm’, ‘aummm’, ‘aummm’. As if by frantic chanting she could force herself in to submission.
When thoughts come, they are quick and move in intuitive leaps across subject matter. In seconds the mind has travelled to the moon and back. Stopping them arriving is nigh on impossible, it’s the making them go away that was going to take some training.
As the session wound to the end, Linda Rice invited everyone to think over the week to come about having a mantra of their own, something that would make the meditation at the end of the session more focused and personal. This was met with widespread puzzlement, but everyone agreed they would try.
Sylvianne stopped off at the supermarket express store for fruit. She picked up a bag of Gala apples, she liked juicy and crunchy and she picked over the banana’s, she was particular about banana buying; not too yellow, not too green, not hard not soft. The selection didn’t inspire confidence, the ends were green tinged to be sure. But her two sessions of yoga this week had reinforced a number of issues, not least was the fact that the roll of fat beneath her bra was sufficient to stop all that marvellous breathing Linda encouraged them to do and so Sylvianne decided she ought to start at least trying to do something about it – and like women the western world over, when thoughts turn to a flabby midriff, fruit becomes the snack of choice.
As she made her way back to her car, she had an undeniable bounce to her step and she felt strangely free and energised, so long as she studiously avoided any sideways look at herself in shop windows, she could swear she felt somewhat fitter in her lycra leggings and sports top, and although she acknowledged this was nothing more than a feeling at this point in time, it was a feeling that felt rather good. She turned up the radio in the car as she revved the engine, she had the classic station tuned in and the strains of Mahler’s ‘Titan’ grew in steady intensity and she hummed along happily. Turning in to her drive, she decided just to drop in on Ellen. She felt a need to share her yogic triumphs.
Sylvianne rapped on the side door briefly as, in one movement, pushed on the knob, It was a shock to find the door held. Sylvianne’s body butted against the unrelenting door and she looked at it bemused – that was unusual, Ellen had practically invented the open door policy, her door was always open. Sylvianne peered inside the kitchen window, cupping her hand to her eyes as she pressed up against the window. She could see very little and no one was inside. Standing back she noticed that the curtains were drawn shut to the front. Looking around, she couldn’t see Ellen’s car.
She couldn’t help but feel disappointed that her friend was out,. Sylvianne collected her fruit from the car and went inside, it was late Friday afternoon and she had that happy Friday afternoon feeling; whether it was the effects of the yoga session or whether her mind was starting to unfurl after so many weeks mired in self absorbed misery she couldn’t say; but what she knew with certainty was she was feeling suddenly restless for a weekend to begin and she wanted to do something wonderful with it.
An hour later she was sat in front of the TV with Pride and Prejudice running on the DVD, a small chicken & mushroom pie steaming hot on her plate, and a rather large glass of Merlot Grenache which had been an irresistible offer of £2.49 a bottle, down from £5.79 at the little wine merchant in town, something of guilty secret in the making she felt certain, it was nicely mellow and plummy without any hint of bitterness for a screw top variety plonk.
Despite her evening’s rather home spun nature, no one could sniff at several hours in the company of Colin Firth’s ‘Darcy’ and with food simple and satisfying she suddenly felt all was incredibly well in her world. The wine helped of course, but Sylvianne knew that the overwhelming rightness she felt about herself, and her life wasn’t just a product of her very recent turnabout in how she viewed herself, but was a deeper sense of rightness that she hadn’t actually felt in years and years.
She breathed deeply over the wine glass and breathed in the jammy warmth. It would be too far fetched to believe that a seed of change had somehow germinated from within the deep gloom and was now clamouring for air, but it was true there were changes to the very thoughts she had which were driving new ways of doing things – doing things she wanted, when she wanted to do them and how she wanted them to happen. She was minded to remember Norman Vincent Peale’s ‘Guide to Confident Living’, she remembered little of it to be honest, it was one of those things you always felt you should read, but in very real ways, here she was learning to live her life. The power of that thought hit her for real. That was it. Her life felt like it was waking up, almost like she was a youngster again, she had felt curious about her world, that it was there to experience and enjoy – just accepting that made her feel like a whole new life could be there for her to enjoy and she was suddenly very eager to start.
As she settled back in her chair, a smile hovered. She recalled the famous quote from Peale, and realised she had also decided upon her personal mantra for next Friday’s yoga class, “I change my thoughts, I change my world.”
Island Girl 