I had a really busy working day yesterday and needed to plan my day carefully to get pieces of work done by their deadlines. This postponed running and yoga to the evening and I could only allocate about 90 minutes to both in total.
The plan was to run to yoga as a warm up.
The run, just a short 1.25 Km, with a bit of walking before and after, was fine; except for the newly discovered irritation of running with a backpack full of yoga kit. It was flopping and bouncing around and highly annoying. I’m sure there are better tools for the job and I suppose those people who run commute must manage with the kit they have. Any expert opinions would be gratefully received.
A hot 60 minute power class was on the agenda and instead of tucking myself at the back of class I made a decision to put myself in the front row. When I started Bikram yoga several years ago, 2009 to be precise, the etiquette of the studio was that you would only step into the front row if you had enough energy to help drive the class. You don’t have to be super flexible but you would be expected to help build momentum in the room through leading by example, following to the teachers words and demonstrating good alignment. Over the last several months I haven’t had the confidence to be on the front row, but last night I did.
Our teacher asked if at the start of class she could read and exert of my blog to the class. My blog! What a lovely thing.
How wonderful that my words touched her enough that she wanted to share them. The paragraph was from Day 9, about the yoga class and people championing each other.
It was surreal to sit there as she read it, to realise these thoughts I’ve had and written down can be read, can be heard, can be shared. Words. We can choose them to hurt and harm ourselves and other people or we can choose words that help and support. We speak thousands of words a day. What would happen if we only spoke words of compassion and kindness to ourselves and others?
If more people made this their intention I’m sure the world would be a kinder, nicer place.