Tag: Battersea Park

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Dear Diary; A Perfect Start to Another Perfect Day

All night long the rain poured down… I heard it splashing and sloshing on the corrugated plastic roof over the little area where my washing machine lives…

A steady relentless sound, the backdrop to my night, rhythmic soothing too, water gushing from the sky…

At 6am it still came down… Anadi and I had planned to meet at 7am to train in the park together – our circuit session – but nowadays, the prospect of doing burpees and press-ups, dips and jumps, planks and pistol squats in the pouring rain doesn’t feel as much fun as in the sun…!

Suddenly I had a brain wave

The bandstand

I messaged Anadi 

He liked my plan

We met at the end of the road and made our way to the bandstand right in the middle of the park; covered over head – a smooth slate grey floor to perform our exercises upon.

We were on a stage… Dog walkers and runners went by, wrapped up warm -.hoods over their heads – while we leapt and bent and twisted and lunged in the dry…

I could perhaps be described as fair weather athlete now – well as much as is possible! Back in the day my coach insisted on singlet and shorts in all weathers, and on being out in all weathers – I still have a vivid memory of a hill session one biting cold January morn -racing up and down with the hail stones hitting my bare limbs!

But now, all has changed!

I bought a super duper ultra protective rain suit when I returned to the UK in the middle of last year..

I joined a gym – and after missing five winters- I steeled myself for the novelty of UK weather, thinking that maybe the following year, I could be sunning in Espana por favor once more! 

But for now I am staying here – this I have decided – I will winter once more in this beautiful land.

Already I am loving the shifting changing landscape

The seasons moving along – as they do – with their different characters, their beauty colour expansive swathes of grey black/ blue white clouds – and atmospheric airs and smells – the feel of the damp air, sunny glint through trees changing colour, rain and more rain washing the land and filling the river Thames – it is already looking higher than before…

And so I am ever inventive…

How to be an outdoor person for an hour or so each day, when I am not really an outdoor type! 

I’m an indoors or in a coffee shop with a coffee and cake type person, who just happens to love to run – and become – and so the land in all its ever changing beauty calls me forth to know her better….To appreciate her and love her in all her glory.

I remember the many summer autumn winter and springs I have run through…

And I am glad to be here once more to appreciate and be in this bounteous ever changing land…

We so enjoyed our new outdoor gym under the bandstand in the middle of the park

Dry while the rain teemed down.

Our indoor/outdoor gym to jump and squat and dance about in the early morning light.

A perfect start to another perfect day…

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Dear Diary; Just for The Fun of it

Julia Chi Taylor - Bodhisattva Conversations

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…!

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Dear Diary; September Morn Now

 On Sept 6th 2019 – I wrote this in my diary…

‘Today is September 6th, a new life begins today… I followed the instruction of the voice within and I find myself travelling to work in the middle of London Town… “Everything is changing… I will strive after whatever my inward voice commands… Not tarry anywhere but where the voice advices me”…’

I remember the nerves fluttering about my chest while I sat on the tube on my way to my new destination. I watched the feelings reminiscent of the first day at a new school, a new job, a course, a new path to who ever knows where it will lead…

And today one exact year later, I felt the familiar feelings of ‘pre race nerves’ – the same slight flutter within as I once again went into the unknown…

The familiar path of tarmac and one step in front of the other… And yet each new race never been trod before…

I have been running races for nearly fifty years – doing the same thing but always exploring the unknown…

In the same way that I watched the feelings as I sat on the tube a year ago – I watched these feelings too as I jogged to the park on a Sunny Sunday September morn…

A sign at the start of the race said it all… ‘Remember you can’t reach what’s in front of you until you let go of what’s behind you…’

All the races I have ever run, are done… They never happened… Now in this moment there is just the running step in front of me; whatever has gone before has gone and everything is new uncharted territory…

So even though I have been running races for so many years – today was my first race ever…

Being focused only on the process is quite possibly the reason I keep on turning up on a start line, because the other races have all disappeared like the wake of a boat…

It is a strange thing that I should choose to spend my life running as fast as possible from A to B, whilst learning deeply that life is not a race…

There is nowhere to get to… Striving to win and ‘get there’ can so often be a disappointing and exhausting journey…

This is not to say that goals are not fun – a goal to focus on fully can be the most wonderful experience…

Full focus on a process brings us joy in each step…

And then whether anything comes of it or not is not of importance, because we will have developed new skills, uncovered inner strengths and become wise with the experience… We will have fully lived each moment.

As I raced down the tree lined avenue on this sunny Sunday morn, suddenly beside me there she was, running alongside me the 29 year old me who raced here too, this exact same road… Running running running…

She covered the ground much faster than I do now…

But she discovered as the years went by that the real joy was in the run to become; she became the run – she stayed in the step and the next and each one turned into the next…

She’s still running now – after all these years; that never happened – she’s still running now…

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Dear Diary; Off The Lead

Anadi and I were planking on the grass together one morning last week!

We had shed bits and pieces by the benches, my vibram five fingers, my running belt, Anadis Xero shoes and his T shirt…

A little dog raced excitedly over to our ‘belongings’ and rummaging around, decided eventually on one of my vibrams…

Off he raced; his owner in hot pursuit…

Anadi and I maintained our plank throughout a fit of the giggles.

She retrieved my shoe and brought it back explaining… ‘It’s only his second time off the lead…!’

He continued to race wildly and excitedly about, and was soon back on his (albeit long) lead…

I reflected how a huge part of my life has been unclipping myself from the lead of childhood…

And mine was in many ways a very long lead…

Born at the very end of the 50’s, my young years happened through the 60’s, which meant there wasn’t the same surveillance over children as nowadays.

We were let loose very young and raced for hours alone in the woods and over the common land… No mobile phones and only hungry tums bringing us back when ‘penny chews’ had stopped filling the gaps…

But the lead was there, none the less… Strict rules about ‘how to go on’, expectations of behaviour and a definite realisation whenever we ignited the disapproval of our ‘elders and betters’…

But in some ways, the separation from the adults – and the hours of freedom where there wasn’t a lead in sight – did allow for the space to find our who I was.

Essentially someone whose main purpose in life was to lark about and learn how to become clear within, which was there, even as a child… The awareness that all I ‘wanted’ (an oxymoron) was spiritual growth…

Oh – and to run and run and run! At first with no purpose other than to enjoy the joy of the running step….But then for many years I took up the burden of ‘pressure to succeed’, to eventually return to that original place… 

To run about, because of the  love of running about…

And along the way I completely unclipped from that lead – which demanded somehow that life was about something more than this…

More than simply larking about

In the moment

Silent

Still 

And free

And running about for the fun of running about.

It’s my second time off the lead and this time no one’s putting it back on me again!

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Dear Diary; Body Mind Mastery Magic

It was Saturday morning, a text popped in from my nephew Jamie… He and his fiancé Bethany (my niece in law!) were back in London after Locking down in Lyme Regis…

‘Perhaps we would we like to meet up in a park to do some training…?’

‘That would be great…’ I replied.

Every Monday morning Anadi and I run a longer loop route to Battersea Park, where we perform a circuit session – designed by me!

I suggested that they may like to join in with that?

The plan was formed… Executed for the past three weeks with perfect precision!

At 7am on the dot I hold a live Chakra Chant meditation in my ‘Conversations with a Bodhisattva group’, this is finished by 20 past… 

And Anadi and ready ourselves to run; out of the door by 7.30am – up the Kings road we jog, passing Bethany en route as she walks in the opposite direction from the station – coffee in hand –  on her own path to the park…. 

Jamie waiting for us outside Sloane square tube station joins in, we hardly miss a step (except for a hello hug!) and the three of us run to Battersea Park via Chelsea Bridge… We make our way round the outer circuit, arriving at a grassy expanse where we join up again with Bethany – sitting waiting for us on our ‘training benches‘ ready for action!

Our little training group applies itself with fun discipline, and after thirty five minutes or so we emerge the other side of our circuit… 

Today we had an extra member of the group – Karolina – she arrived in London two weeks ago and was finding her bearings barefoot in Battersea Park, she came over to us and asked if we were an organised training group – I said we weren’t; but that of course she could join in if she wanted…

And so we were five…

After training it is handstand practise!

Jamie who represents Great Britain in acrobatic gymnastics, and Bethany also possessing amazing acrobatic abilities, means that we have manifested within our magic Monday a tip top coaching team

And our handstands are improving – very noticeably!

Once again I have been shown the wisdom that to do something better often requires moving away from the way that feels more comfortable and familiar – and stretching to do something different and therefore rather uncomfortable…

But, by pointing my toes, straightening my legs and my arms, as I go to into the take off – or is it a take up? The improvement once I actually did those things ( instead of slipping back into habitual ways) was almost immediate; and it felt so different…

Balletic straight light….

At first I kept reverting to my old way, the body programmed into what felt doable…

But with repetition and practise the stretch has opened everything out – and suddenly I felt like I flew into a different space; a timeless, upside down world…

Our tried and tested ways – our programming – so often feel so comfortable that even if we’d like to do something different – in our lives, with our bodies, our relationships – even if we are given the new skills, the old ways tempt us back again and again, and then we stay in the same old often limiting cycle…

Learning new skills with the body can be a perfect metaphor for discovering new skills within us…

As we learn skills of how to master the body, we can use these inner skills to master our life…

Stretching to press pause, to learn to be with what is in each moment; training ourselves to respond in different ways, behave in different ways, and so create different things…

To literally have the ability to turn everything upside down and see things from different  perspectives, to challenge our paradigm, investigate it and try pointing our toes and straightening our legs…

And so discovering the magic of finding out what happens when we do something different….

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Dear Diary; Round The Sun

The world keeps turning…

The green parrots keep flying overhead…

The mother with her new baby arrives – she parks his ( how do you know he’s a boy? Anadi asks) little orange pram beside the bench – gets out her phone and starts her routine… First stepping up and down off the bench, then a lunge matrix… she pushes his (‘I just think he’s a he’, I reply) pram to the open grass to do her ‘frog jumps’ and ‘split squats’…

Anadi and I finish our circuit and go over to the small white building to practise our handstands ( ever improving, but still I need the security of the little white building to balance me…!) She is watching and calls out in admiration, whilst pulling her baby from his pram; she takes him over to the bench to sit and feed…

Multi tasking – baby at her breast, her eyes on her phone – mid exercise routine… 

The world keeps turning.

Lapping the park – the familiar figures – we encounter every day.

All of us rising and running at the same time

Each day

Clockwork

Round the park we go

Round the clock we go, following the earth’s rotation each day

Again and again…

Around the sun; a whole year long to journey back to where we first began

Travelling

Very fast 

Sixty seven thousand miles an hour

To return to the starting point and set off once more…

Mirrored in us lapping the park on wheels and on legs

Going nowhere 

Back to the beginning

Travelling ever inwards if we care to look, up and see the bright blue sky of promise

Of infinite space, endless, limitless

Our spirit free

All that we can be

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Dear Diary; Breaking Bread Together

It’s Friday night, and I have a date with my BF (best friend/Boy friend!)

We walk through the park hand in hand, the clouds grey heavy hold a promise of rain, muggy heat, summer night, mid June.

We see others out for Friday night fun, walking talking, some also holding hands…Runners running, sweaty, fast, focused, training hard – go by… And cyclists too, some training, some on their way to a night out…

Like us…

The Pear Tree opened a couple of week ago…

I noticed it as we ran past on our morning run…’Look, look… Anadi look’ I pointed to the ‘We are Open!’ sign on the road…

A scene like a festival beheld us as we arrived, people scattered in twos and threes, six friends meeting – sitting on the grass… A group of guys in suits around a table, three young women occupying another; the new mask under the chin look fashioned by a couple of folk – one supping a pint, the other a cocktail in one hand, and a cigarette in the other…

Everyone else bare faced…

Clusters of people near the pond, standing, some sitting cross legged on the earthy earth; cradling plastic pint mugs, pizza boxes, glasses of wine…

Signage all around… Instructions; the new order…

We joined the queue.

‘It’s all part of it now’ I said ‘The British liking to queue has been taken to another level…

More chatting time with you’, I added…

While Anadi waited for his beer and our pizza, I took my mango lasi and our salad box and set up camp…Throwing my purple – blue gold swirls of colour – yoga mat onto the grass, I sat alone watching people being people – all around me…

Gathering, talking, laughing, eating drinking, being together… 

Communal beings, being, creating a mini community on a Friday night in Battersea park.

And so life goes on…

People adapting adjusting accepting

Carrying on doing what we have always done

Living loving sharing…

Breaking bread together.