Over the last few days I have been striving for an answer … sitting, thinking, mulling, pondering, musing, speculating, cogitating, evaluating, reasoning, rationalising, brooding, stewing … digging … tangling … muddying … sticking …

My question – “What do I want to do … with this blog?”

This question mirrors a second one that replaces “this blog” with “my life”; but that’s for later.

Do I want to investigate ethical, delicious, ‘well’-infusing eating? Do I want to concentrate on exploring what brings ‘joy’ in life? Do I want to empower and highlight women? Do I want to incorporate more beauty into my own life? Do I want to offer my creativity an outlet? Do I want to connect, and connect with, like-minds through writing? Do I want to spark change? Do I want to create value?

Yes.

Yes x 8.

… and now … how …

?

And I sat down again … and again … and felt frustration rise again … and again …

And before, Reader, you think that there’s going to be an answer at the end of this particular entry – let me disabuse you of this possibility now – I still have no idea. Feel free to continue … or leave me here …

But tonight I went to yoga; a class that I can’t usually arrive at in time.

5pm – a work-obligated impossibility.

But tonight I was home – and was pulled towards the unknown – teacher and class at the Gertrude Street Yoga Centre.

I am attracted by the unknown … but not to the unknown … an interesting dichotomy.

I’m not sure if I’ve written about this before, but I  have never really liked yoga.

#Confession

I was first introduced at a ‘School’ of yoga – what seems like an aeon ago. I was in one of the first formative years of University, a gym-goer (to lose weight) and looking for something to feed soul as well as body. I decided that yoga was it.

Yoga was not it.

I am a perfectionist by nature. I do things, I do them well. This often stops me from beginning – but it always pushes me to the end, once begun.

This school taught ‘correct’ posture, ‘correct’ breath, ‘correct’ mind emptiness. It gave me an excellent grounding in yoga practice that assists me still – even in the class of today.  But it also gave me something to strive for …

… shoulders a touch further back. Hips a touch squarer. Press palms into the mat, knuckles down. Hips higher. Neck an elongation of the spine … straighter … longer … Heels down. Chest out.

There was a defined ‘perfect’.

Quite the stressor.

And so my long, often stressful, relationship\. I was attracted to the idea of fluid movement, extended body, mind flow … but could never quite ‘accomplish’ it …

But tonight there was a question asked with every pose “Does it feel comfortable?” and the ideas of ‘making space’ and ‘taking space’ that resonated.

I realised that each posture is a way of filling my space. Taking up space. Elongating. Extending. Feeling every muscle …

And I realised that in each posture, comfort was the most important element – but ‘comfort’ in my own skin. ‘Perfect’ was nothing other than that which I …

in the ‘me, my self, I’ /no-one else / just me, context …

feel.

Some days, I know that I want to curl, to hug, to be as small as I can be … to feel as little as possible … and those days I allow my self from time to time … but I also know that they aren’t good for me long term …

And today, I wanted to create my own space – to breathe through movement and to feel every muscle; to let go.

So today – I did.

And today, I ended an hour feeling like molten gold – golden-hued fluidity, enduring, assured that where I was and how I was is perfect.

So – in letting go – I found what I was looking for in my yoga practice. In letting go, I found the sensation that had attracted me in the first place.

And in relation to the blog – and, indeed, my life, I haven’t quite worked out how I can do all of the above … but I do have more faith that an answer will present itself if I stop searching for it and simply make space for it to arrive.