I like chanting at the Pagoda on a Monday
The trees blowing in the park beside us and the sound of the clipper whooshing up the Thames.
The sun September special glinting and rusty on the golden Buddha and the water below.
Every day magical.
The only day ever
New, fresh.
Everywhere was much quieter this Monday morn, the great sweep down which we regularly run was devoid of the crowds that usually tread the same path as us, coming and going… Brightly coloured running kit, bikes whizzing by…
Today the trees lined an almost empty road…
Who knows why? Changing seasons – or just this particular Monday morning…
We chant after handstand practise…
We need longer for our handstands really and truly – we only practise for a few minutes long… I can remember as a twelve year old spending every single break time at school on my hands… Endless practise…
Perhaps we need some dedicated handstand practise – minutes turning into hours – to just muck about as we did as children.
No real goals – just fun – and without realising it the repetition, the practise practise practise, creates miracles…
Everything can be achieved with practise
But if we always make the practise fun then we keep wanting to do it
We keep turning up, day after day, year after year if it’s fun.
To play…
We must always remember how to play, how to giggle and fall about in helpless laughter, how to lark about …
We must remember how to have fun
We must remember to live as we truly want to..
The biggest deathbed regret is
‘I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me
The expectations from others can be so deeply embedded that we don’t even know they are there, which is why it is worth investigating our map, our stories, our pattens and programme and seeing if they truly do suit and support us…
Are we living life ‘our way’, or are we adhering to the rules and ideals of another
Are we living by default…?
There is always time to shed those expectations, to strip them away and to fly free on your own path. There is always time to start to play again…
To practise handstands over and over until they are perfect…
Like those days after school when my sister Rosy and I would play in the garden, racing around without any shoes on, practising high jump and hurdles and handstands as the sun got lower in the sky
Just for the fun of it…!