This Reluctant Yogi Archives - 100 days of solitude

A reciprocity of a different kind

I’ve thought long and hard about how to put this. I’ve agonised over it, gone round and round in circles in my head, practised words that never sounded right, stepped back from the circle and put it off, again and again.

Because I need to ask you for reviews, but without making it sound like there’s any expectation or obligation or pressure. I need to ask you for reviews, but without offering anything in return – nothing more tangible than thanks and gratitude – because this isn’t about enticement or rewards; because it depends on a reciprocity of a different kind. I need to ask you for reviews without sounding like I’m begging. Because that word has come up; that word has been thrown at me by trolls, “Look at you, having to beg for reviews”, and it cut me. Deep. I need to ask you for reviews, and I don’t know how. A full four years after I published my first book, I still don’t know how.

Because I want to ask you for reviews without asking, without having to ask, and it’s impossible. Because if you want something, you have to ask. If you need something, you have to ask. And therein lies the obligation; therein lies the dept: you owe it to yourself to ask. To draw a circle and stand in the middle, exposed, for everyone to see, and ask. Knowing that you might be rejected. That you will be. Knowing that rejection is a certainty.

I didn’t know about reviews when I first started out, four years ago, as a “published author”; I didn’t know about them before, in all my years as a reader. I didn’t know what they meant, how much they meant, how much of an impact they could have. I didn’t know how it felt to have none, or to get your first one. I didn’t know how it would feel to watch that number grow, to have a trickle of strangers pick up your book and read it and then return to Amazon unprompted to post a review because they wanted to share what it had meant to them. I didn’t know how a certain number of reviews could affect your visibility and your ranking and your sales, that mad, almighty Amazon algorithm than has the power to make little lines appear on your sales dashboard graph. And I didn’t know about the trolls. I didn’t know that there were people who knew about reviews, and who would randomly, arbitrarily, inexplicably manipulate the system for the express purpose of doing you harm. Who would go out of their way to place obstacles in yours, to belittle you, to discredit your work, to destroy you with a few careful, careless words. I didn’t know any of this then, but I know it now. Reviews matter.

And we make jokes, those of us who find ourselves exposed to judgement and critique; those of us who, for whatever reason or cause, place ourselves in any kind of spotlight – no matter how small or faint. We laugh, those of us who find ourselves under attack, “Haha, you have a troll; that’s a sign of success!” – but honestly, no: not in my book. Rejection is one thing, indifference another, and you will never please everyone, you’ll never be that person (author, artist, actor, politician, friend) that everyone likes, but the fact that there are people out there so bitter, so angry, so unhappy that they set out to take others down, to deliberately cause them damage, cannot be any measure of success, neither personal nor universal. It is a symptom of a very fucked up society that we’re supposed to be OK with this. That we’re supposed to shrug it off, to toughen up, grow thicker skin, grin and bear it, take the high road, claim the moral high ground.

Speaking for myself, I can tell you that tough doesn’t mean unbreakable, and there are words, perfectly targeted razor blades of hate, that can cut through the thickest of skins, and expose what we all are, underneath: vulnerable. Insecure, frightened, uncertain, and trying to make our way through this life as undamaged as possible. Speaking for myself, I can tell you I never set out to make any claims or take any road except my own, such as it is, as high or as low as it might be. I am prepared to cross a certain number of bridges on my way, but I cannot accept that ignoring the trolls lurking there, being advised to grin as they sink their teeth into me, as they chew up everything I’ve worked for and spit out vicious one-star reviews is any kind of sane response to the situation. Or in any way productive. All it does is foster the troll mentality, set them up in quaint little burrows, wifi-enabled, under their bridges, whence they can launch their attacks in extra comfort. I see nothing to grin about here.

And if we’re gonna talk about morality: speaking for myself, I find the whole thing morally questionable, and highly irresponsible. For both sides. Because, in school- or workplace-bullying, we have at least acknowledged that both parties need support. We do not advise the child who’s had his head held down the toilet to grin and bear it, nor the woman who’s systematically undermined and ostracised at work to grow tougher skin. We do not congratulate them on their status as victims and targets of abuse. And the perpetrators in these situations, those who are driven to cause harm to others, are not simply dismissed as “bullies” and allowed to carry on, nor abandoned to their hatred and unhappiness until they consume them. They are seen as people, probably battling with untold shit of their own, who need help as much as those they victimise. They are not just cast as storybook monsters: they are given a chance at healing, and redemption.

It sounds like I have sympathy for the bullies and the trolls. And, on a human level, I do. There is probably suffering behind their words and actions, and my skin is not so thick that I am untouched by their pain. But when we cross into some fucked-up cyber-fairytale where I am cast as a victim of success and the monsters are allowed to roam free and we’re all ruled by the Almighty Algorithm in the Sky, no: there is obligation here, there is responsibility, and it’s on me. I have to stand up for myself. Amazon is not a kindly schoolteacher or an understanding boss; Amazon is a business. It does have systems in place (more algorithms) to ensure the objectivity of its reviews and ratings, but they can only go so far. Beyond that, it cannot protect me. Amazon is a jungle, and I refuse to be cast as prey.

I can stand up for myself, but I cannot take on the bullies on my own; I need my pack. So here’s what I’m asking of you: to stand beside me. To be my allies, to be my pack. And if you have enjoyed reading any of my books, to say so. I cannot take the bullies down, nor their reviews; I cannot fight the trolls with fairytale swords, but I can fight them with words. Yours, this time. Your words are the antidote to their poison. My words have gone into my books; they are the best, the most I have to give. My books are all I have to say for myself, and I say this in the most unassuming way possible: I cannot do any better than this. They are my best effort to make sense of the world, my best attempt to connect with those whom I share it with. And if I have been successful in that, I am asking you: please say so. Without obligation, without reward, and prompted only gently. By choice. Just like you chose to read my books in the first place; just like I chose to write them, and put them out there to be judged. Knowing that rejection was a certainly but hoping, nonetheless, to forge some ties that go beyond a financial transaction. For a reciprocity of a different kind.

Thank you.

Below are Amazon universal links to all of my books; they should, in theory, take you to each book’s page in your local Amazon store.

100 days of solitude

you can’t name an unfinished thing

This Reluctant Yogi: everyday adventures in the yoga world

Collected: essays and stories on life, death and donkeys

Divided Kingdom: How Brexit made me an immigrant

Common People

Death by any other name

For Now: notes on living a deliberate life

P.S. Even those books that have, so far, escaped the attentions of trolls could do with a bit of review love. 🙂

New moons and minotaurs and what it all means

New Moons ans Minotaurs

There’s a new moon tonight, and a partial solar eclipse in Capricorn. I don’t know what that means. I know that the moon waxes and wanes and affects our waters; I know that new moons represent new beginnings. I know that eclipses are meant to be mystical; they pull the curtains on that which is no longer needed, and show us the darker side of ourselves. I know that there are a lot of Capricorns in my life and that where there’s a lot of anything, it’s generally been invited. I know a lot of stuff, but I don’t always know what stuff means, and I can only guess at the meaning of moons and eclipses in Capricorn.

I am advised to burn sage and set intentions. Harness the energy of the eclipse and the new moon. The energy of Capricorn. But I don’t know what that means. How can I, timid Gemini, ever get a grip on those mad, wild goats? They trot past me on their Capricorn missions, while I wander in their wake, trailing questions, dreaming up the words to explain them. I get lost in the labyrinth of my emotions that they have no patience for, and all the minotaurs are Capricorns in disguise, bull-headed bastards that they are, guarding the secret of their souls. I, crafty Gemini, hold the thread, I am the one who weaves the tales, but the endings always lead me back to the minotaur. And you’d think I’d know about circles and cycles, the moons and the stars, and that karma is basically a loop, but I don’t know what any of it means.

They scare the crap out of me, these Capricorns, but it’s obvious that I need them. I, flighty Gemini, need something of their firmness so I can learn to stand my ground. But firmness is one thing when it comes to standing, and yet another when you’re throwing yourself against a wall: they can be hard; they pride themselves on being hard. And I, mercurial masochist, am drawn to them like a moth to the flame. Except the flame is a cold, hard wall, with horns sticking out, and I am the words shattered, scattered on the ground by their feet. There’s a lot of collecting yourself when you’re around them – and I, all-over-the-place Gemini, choose to be around them, time and time again. I keep inviting them in. I collect them, like butterflies in a book – but listen to this: they only stay pinned down because they want to; have you ever tried to keep a goat captive? They roll their eyes at my stories, demonstrating their impatience with the labyrinth of my thoughts, but they’re always there, at the end of the thread, and they tug on it as much as I do.

Whatever’s there once the light returns after an eclipse is what is meant to be there; eclipses, I am told, will never take away the things that belong in your life. The rest, however, under relentless Capricorn, is fair game. I’m not sure how I feel about Capricorn taking my things away, or dictating what’s worthy enough to keep. They’re always judging, these Capricorns, and I, insecure Gemini, keep submitting myself to their judgement, to their impossible, implacable rules. But listen to this: even as they dismiss me, they keep a firm hold upon the thread. And for all their eye-rolling, once the darkness clears, they’re always there; impatiently waiting for my meandering explanations, for the tales I unfold to reveal the secret of their souls. We need each other. They teach me how it feels to stand my ground, and I teach them about falling; they learn how to crack, sometimes, if not shatter, while I learn that it’s possible to stay in one piece. To stand before them is to learn I’m not so timid, not so flighty, not so insecure after all; to crumble at their feet is to teach them they don’t always have to be hard. And on it goes, in the endless loop of our karma, or whatever.

What does any of it mean? We’re all just guessing. We’re all just as lost as each other, and looking for explanations in the stars, navigating labyrinths of our own making, following threads that always lead us back to the minotaurs of our personal mythologies, our darker sides, the lessons we have still to learn. And if you’re reading this as neither Capricorn nor Gemini and you’re wondering where you might fit, don’t worry: none of us fit. We’re all just as messed up as each other, regardless of what particular configuration of planets we were born under. We’re all just going round our circles, our endless karmic loops, guided or aided or hindered by the stars, orbiting planets of our own making, whomever we’ve chosen to set up as the sun in our skies, whomever we’ve given the power to eclipse us. But when the darkness clears, each time, every time, we’ll still be there. Capricorns and Geminis, Libras and Virgos, and the full moon in Aquarius, and Venus opposing Saturn: none of it means anything. None of us fit, but we all belong. We all need each other.

P.S. This piece was five days in the writing because what’s also happening right now is that Capricorn has stolen Mercury, planet of communication, and the goats are expressing themselves all over the place while the rest of us are struggling for words. Dudes, kindly: I want my planet back.

Photograph by Paul Rysz on Unsplash

Refusing to be drawn

That strange twist in my gut today: that’ll be the moon, I presume. That subtle weight that makes my breath come out in sighs: the moon. My restless sleep last night: the moon; the anxious dreams, the thoughts – unbidden – that unsettle me, the silence that I fill with fears: the moon. And if I draw my curtains aside: too bright, too eerie, too many shadows cast where there should be just night, too many details picked out in the negative space – the moon.

Ostensibly, we strive for balance, and yet we give ourselves up to the mercy of the planets and the stars and the whims of heartless constellations. What equilibrium can we hope to achieve when we are tidal creatures, controlled by the moons and the spin on the earth? All those cosmic events, all that planetary action to explain, to justify, to forbid: and we are rendered helpless by our own choosing. Shadow puppets to those cold, distant bodies, our astral hegemons, dictating when and how. Full moon: review; new moon: now start again; when Mercury’s in retrograde don’t even think of trying, but make the most of Venus in your sign. Whenever you feel slightly askew, it’s probably something cosmic.

It is now the day after the Super Blue Blood Moon Eclipse. Last night, in defiance, I refused to be drawn and to draw my curtains aside; there were enough photos of the thing on facebook, anyway. Did it affect me, regardless, sight-unseen? Probably. Would I have acted differently, chosen different words, swapped one set of feelings for another if it had been another day in the cycle of the moon? Probably not. We cannot control our waters: we are tidal creatures. We cannot control the spin of the earth or how the planets move across our solar system. We cannot let those things control us, either. It isn’t Mars that causes conflict; it isn’t indecisive Libra that makes us put things off. It’s not the heat of the sun or the cold glare of the moon; it isn’t the eclipse that brings the darkness. We are not helpless; we don’t have to be.

Perhaps our balance can be sought in remembering that we’re equally part of this earth that spins as of the cosmos that surrounds it, subject to both its gravity and the magnetic pull of those twinkling, meddling stars; that we are earth and water, fire and air as much as any other body in our skies. Acting the way we would, flighty Geminis or stalwart Capricorns regardless, and letting the moon rise and fall, letting it wax and wane without casting ourselves in its shadows. Perhaps our balance can be found in refusing, sometimes, to be drawn. Whatever the moon brings out in the negative spaces is there anyway, whether we shine a light on it or not. We’ll draw our curtains aside when we are ready to see.

Image credit: Business Insider

Fuck being strong (this once)

Do you ever feel like that? Like, just fuck it? Like you don’t want to improve, you don’t want to evolve, you don’t want to better yourself, you don’t want to learn? Like you’re done fucking learning and gaining experience and getting over things and coming out the other side, stronger and wiser? Like you don’t want to be stronger or wiser or more patient or less of a mess? Like you just want it fucking easy, this once?

I am a mess. I want it easy. I want love, easy and uncomplicated; love strong enough to be easy and uncomplicated, this once. I want a love I can trust to be easy and uncomplicated in a life full of difficult and complicated things. I don’t want a love I need to be strong for, a love that needs to be talked about and defended and understood and fucking vindicated; I want that simple understanding that I am for you and you are for me and we’re in this shit together – bring it on. I want to find myself in the same place as someone and just stay there, with his arms around me, with nothing to do. With nothing that needs to be done.

I don’t want vindication. I don’t want a love that gets written about. I don’t want to hear another person praise me for my strength, for my wisdom; I don’t want to be brave or inspirational for the things I’ve gotten through. I don’t want to get through another thing and come out the other side; just this once, I’d like to be a little weaker, a little less wise, and hear one person tell me that he loves me, that I don’t need to be brave, that I’ve been patient enough.

I am aware of the value of learning. I am aware of the lessons we’re taught through our pain. Every wrong turn, every wrong move, every disappointment; every time our hearts get broken: an opportunity to learn. To build resilience, to build our strength, to grow our wisdom. I have learned this, but fuck it: I just want a shoulder that’s mine to lean against. And yes, to turn our pain into art is consolation. It’s redemption, that I can take my pain and turn it into beautiful words. But the beauty of that shoulder to lean on, those arms to fall into: just once, can I have that instead?

And right now, do you see what I’m doing? I’m turning my pain into art, into literature, into words that might reach other people’s souls. Into words that might touch another person who needs touching, and that’s incredible, that’s a gift to me – but I need touching, too. It’s a gift that heals my soul as much as anyone else’s but I long, sometimes, to be reached rather than to be the one who’s reaching. I long for a time when my soul doesn’t need to heal. And right now, for all the value these words might have for me, for other people, I would rather be in somebody’s arms, giving nothing but the warmth of my body; I would rather be held and be loved, quietly, simply, having nothing to give but myself in this moment. And I don’t know if that’s possible for me, now, this once, or ever. I don’t know if this simple thing is out of reach. For all the lessons I’ve learned, for all the strength and all the wisdom, for all the patience and the trust, I just don’t know. Right now, for everyone I’ve ever reached, for all the pain I’ve written into love, there’s no one here to hold me. And I’m done being brave. And I’ve been fucking patient enough. And fuck.

Fuck.

The conditions for unconditional love

I’ve been thinking about love a lot lately. My sister is getting married this weekend, and I am going to be her witness, and sign my name on a document officially declaring her and Arek husband and wife (or the other way round, as the case may be). And this makes me feel happy and grateful and proud and a little in awe. But, my own role in this event aside, my bearing witness, both officially and unofficially, to what is truly and unequivocally an excellent thing, I cannot help but question the purpose of such declarations. Weddings, marriages, and their necessity in connection to love.

My sister and I are not wedding people. In fact, the mere mention of the topic as it relates to our own lives is likely to cause, in both of us, an almost phobic reaction. In addition to this, we share a – partly justifiable – mistrust of marriage itself, as exemplified by our parents and society at large. The phonecall in which she announced to me the fact of her engagement could be described, without exaggeration, as one of the happiest and most awkward conversations two people have ever had. We have never talked about weddings; we have never fantasised, as other girls, of dresses and engagement rings. This was a foreign land, full of dragons and booby traps, and we circumnavigated these terrors as best we could, to arrive, clumsily, at a mutual conclusion of joy. We weren’t trying to be obscure, or unconventional; we just don’t have the vocabulary for this sort of thing. None of us really do.

And yet we try. We try, with words, to explain why people get married, to define a marriage, to express love. To capture its essence, to measure it, quantify it, evaluate it – demystify it, perhaps, to make it more manageable, more attainable. We are, as a society, entirely preoccupied with love, endlessly producing quotes, metaphors, clichés and contradictions. They’re in our art and our literature, our everyday conversations, our highbrow theories and our pop songs. And, regardless of whether we subscribe to fairytale endings or take the cynical view and reject love and marriage outright, in our moments of elation and of pain we all drunkenly sing along.

And if you turn to Eastern philosophies in search of a more sober perspective, as I have, it gets even more confusing. The teachings of Buddhism encourage loving kindness and compassion, yet discourage attachment, while Buddhist monks are happy to bless a union that is basically a marriage by another name. The Buddha is quoted as having said: “He who loves fifty people has fifty woes; he who loves no one has no woes.” And I don’t understand whether this is a warning or simply a statement of fact; whether those woes are to be avoided, or accepted – welcomed, even – as a part of love.

It is then suggested that we should love, but love all creatures equally. And I don’t think that’s possible, sustainable or even desirable. I can see the virtue in approaching each person and each situation with love; it takes practice, but it can be done, and I call that kindness. But to enact love, to love, as a verb, is a different thing entirely and I, for one, cannot produce that level of emotion for everyone I meet.

And further: love, in its truest, purest form, should be unconditional. And sometimes it is. But the reason it became love, the reason it grew into love is because certain conditions were in place when it began. Conditions as in circumstances rather than terms, but conditions, nonetheless. Does this negate its unconditional nature, retroactively, once it reaches that stage? Perhaps I’m taking things too literally, and this is just another case of our vocabulary letting us down, but it seems to me that for all their dogma, these philosophies are placing conditions on who and how I love.

But love is not possession: this one I can live with. Yet I have lain in a man’s arms and felt, with my whole, entire self: “I am yours. You are mine.” And it has nothing to do with ownership, but with the fact that something in the way this universe moves has brought us together and that’s exactly where we should be. A place where all the definitions of love cease to matter. But when I try to explain it, these are the words that come out. They’re the only words I have.

But what does all of this say about marriage? Does a wedding validate a love? Is placing a ring on someone’s finger a declaration of ownership? Is it, as Beyonce suggests in the eloquent lyric “If you liked it then you shoulda put a ring on it”, all about staking a claim? I think in many cases, in many marriages, it is. I may find the notion of ownership incompatible with my understanding of love, but to many people, the idea of belonging to someone, of someone belonging to them, is an arrival, a homecoming – it’s where they want to be. Just like I want to be in that place of stillness and certainty that I have found lying next to a man I love, and most marriages are lands I never want to visit.

But there are other marriages. Ones where love needs no validation. Where commitment transcends the signing of papers, if papers have been signed at all. It depends on where you place yourself in this equation. You can stand next to someone, or you can follow them, or you can lead the way. You can stand next to someone and place a ring on your own finger, not a promise to anyone else, but a symbol for yourself, for how you feel. You can get married, or you can marry; you can be a passive or an active part of the grammar that makes up your relationship. You can have a marriage where nobody belongs to anybody else but perhaps, if you’re lucky, you belong together. And you can hold their hand, but loosely; if they want to go away, they will, no matter how tightly you grip.

Words, grammar, syntax. Xs and Ys and the mathematical formulas that bring them together. The laws of physics, the laws of nature. Symbols and signatures, rings and vows and altars. Faith, fate, god and endless theories. We summon all these things to try and explain the inexplicable, to express something that defies expression, as elusive as it is ever-present, as abstract as it is tangible, as extraordinary as it is commonplace; something that slips through your fingers like your lover’s hand when you squeeze too tight, but will happily settle in your open palm if you know enough to hold it out, and wait. And it’s the human condition that we keep trying, that we will always keep trying, because if there ever comes a day when we stop trying, it will mean we have captured something that shouldn’t be caught, demystified the mystery that keeps our lives in motion. And that, I think, will be the day that everything stops. That will be the day when saying the words “I love you” will express exactly what we mean, and I cannot think of anything sadder than that.

There is no such thing as a universal marriage, just as there’s no universal definition of love. Those are choices we make, each of us, for ourselves, and saying you don’t believe in marriage is not an ideology, it’s a cop out. Love no one. Have no woes.

I still think my sister is very brave, and there’ll be dragons to slay (or approach with love, and convert to household pets), but I’m not worried. I have every reason to believe that she and Arek will have one of those other marriages, the ones that don’t make me want to run away screaming. I think they have it already. Because neither of them is getting married: both are marrying the person they love. Because, at times when I’ve lost my faith, I’ve looked to them and seen that they have built their life in that same place of stillness and certainty, and though they may wander off sometimes, they always know how to get back. Because they’ve shown me that big love doesn’t necessarily equal big drama, and when you’re faced with it, you might no longer need to put it into words.

But words are sometimes all we have, and mine are all I have to give. So this is dedicated to them: in hope, in admiration, and in love. Not equal, but as unconditional as it comes.

Taken from This Reluctant Yogi: everyday adventures in the yoga world. View it on Amazon, or join my readers’ list and get an e-book copy for free.

Not #yogaeverydamnday

This has been building up for a while, and I can contain it no longer: I really resent the #yogaeverydamnday hashtag. I don’t know why it riles me up me as much as it does, but I’ve properly taken against it. It hits a special nerve in my head, the one that sets off my neon BULLSHIT sign, and it flashes on and off and sounds a loud alert and I just can’t make out anything good about it through the din. It’s irrational, and probably very unyogic of me; every time I come across it, it gives me feelings akin to rage and rage, as all good yogis know, has no place in the #theyogaworld. If I were a good yogi, I should have the grace to namaste this thing with a respectful bow of my head and wish it well on its travels through a million facebook, twitter and instagram feeds, but I can’t. Because: why?

I confessed this resentment to my sister. Tentatively, because I know she’s used the offending hashtag more than once. She was very diplomatic.
    ‘Oh,’ she said, and cleared her throat. ‘You know it was started by Rachel Brathen?’
    I didn’t. I didn’t know who that was.
    ‘Look her up,’ she said. And I did, and she seems like a lovely person. And many others who use her hashtag in their posts, they’re lovely people too; I know, because I’ve met them. They’re my sister; they’re my friends. But still – why?

Why every damn day? What bothers me about it is everything. The intention is good, I’ve no doubt. And I can tell this is meant to be bold, empowering, motivating – but all that filters through to me is compulsion. And yoga: I don’t think it should be practised compulsively. I don’t think it can. I don’t think it’s even yoga if it’s compulsive because where is the mind in that? Where is the heart? Where is the soul? It might be exercise, this thing that you do, compulsively, every damn day, but not yoga; not as I understand it. But I may have misunderstood. There are lots of things in #theyogaworld that I don’t understand.
I might be taking this the wrong way, but it feels wrong. It feels like an imposition and I don’t want anything – not even yoga, especially not yoga – imposed on me, on any day. It’s a statement when yoga, in my mind, is an understated practice. It’s a label, and labels divide as much as they unite. Slap that hashtag on anything, and you’re immediately creating separation between those who practice #yogaeverydamnday and those who don’t. And the good yogi scales tip on the side of the former. And now, all of a sudden, you don’t have yoga: you have competition.
And that word, damn. It has me fizzling with frustration. What is it doing there? It has no power. It implies a defiance that’s completely unnecessary, a challenge where no resistance has been offered. It’s like putting obstacles in your own path, just so you can kick them out of the way. But nobody’s stopping you from doing yoga every day, if that’s what you want; there is absolutely no need to be defiant, and with such an impotent word. Because I suspect the intention here is to emphasise, to use the shock value of a swearword to reinforce a point, but damn just doesn’t do it. As swearwords go, it’s emphatically tame. No one but the deeply religious – for whom damnation actually means something – ever flinches at using that word. To the religious, it’s offensive; to the rest of us, it’s just one adjective too many. And if there’s an element, too, of “Hey, look, I’m a yogi and I use bad words!”, well: I’m a yogi, and I’m not fucking impressed. And if that makes you flinch, perhaps it’s time to worry less about shock value and more about the values by which you live your life. Perhaps it’s time to rethink your hashtags.

Yoga every day: it’s a wonderful thing. It would make for a better world if we all made yoga a daily practice. But it isn’t about hashtags, and it’s not even about how much time you spend on your mat. There are days when I do yoga. There are days when I don’t. There are days when I wake up longing to do yoga, aching for it, and days when it doesn’t even cross my mind. There are days when I think about doing yoga and then don’t, and days when I just throw my mat on the floor and do it. There are days when I need to be talked into it and days when standing in tree pose just makes perfect sense. I don’t do #yogaeverydamnday but it’s my daily practice, because: grace. I think grace is what it’s all about. It’s what yoga teaches us, and it’s in the way we carry ourselves through each of our days, in how we conduct ourselves in this world, not #theyogaworld but out here, outside of the hashtags. It’s about bringing that grace we’ve been taught into our lives, passing it on to those who cross our paths, without obstacles, challenges or resistance, without defiance or statements or superfluous words. Without any need to make a point, because grace has a way of making itself known, without labels or introductions, and it cannot be mistaken for anything else. Out here, where we’re all doing the best we can, if we make grace the value we live by, that’s the very best that we can do.

For similar posts, please check out This Reluctant Yogi on Amazon. It’s a bookful of yoga rants! 🙂

Shanti om, bowel.

Did you know that it’s possible, in the magical world of yoga, to pass a chair? You know, as in going to the toilet. As in number two. I bet you didn’t. I’ll let you ponder that for a while, breathing deep into your bowel as you do so, and come back to it.

I decided to do a juice detox. I decided this on Friday night, in the midst of a feast to celebrate Katerina’s nameday, and that said detox would take place on the next day, the Saturday. Polyna happened to mention (while we all happily munched on patsitsio, the Greek version of lasagne) a concoction consisting of beetroot, celeriac, lemon juice and honey that’s apparently good for cleansing the bowel, and I latched on to this, and decided to incorporate it. I picked up the ingredients on my way back home that evening, and thus began my haphazardly conceived bowel cleanse juice detox.

Day one was OK. I did my work in the morning, dutifully gave myself a glass of juice (which had to be chewed, on account of my blender being a bit of a bargain buy) and set off on a lovely, meditative walk to the port of Kamares, feeling all kinds of virtuous. I arrived at Syrma, Katerina’s cafe on the beach, just over an hour later, serene and glistening with sweat, to be assaulted by the smell of food.
    ‘What is this?’ I demanded to know, in lieu of good afternoon.
    ‘Polyna’s lunch,’ Dimitra supplied. ‘What’s the matter with you?’
    ‘I’m doing a detox,’ I confessed.
    ‘What are you detoxing from?’
    ‘Everything! Except coffee and cigarettes.’
    Dimitra smirked. ‘Coffee?’ she suggested.
    ‘No. I’ve had one already. I’ll have a green tea.’
    Dimitra gave me a look of utter disdain. ‘A green tea,’ she repeated, as if I’d asked for dry twigs to chew on.
    ‘Please.’
    From the kitchen, Katerina sniggered. But kindly.

I took my (unsweetened) green tea outside, where Polyna, her husband and two friends were enjoying a spread of last night’s nameday dinner leftovers.
    ‘Join us,’ they said, but I shook my head bravely and explained my predicament.
    ‘I hate you all,’ I added. ‘You’re bad people.’ I took a sip of my green tea, and was overcome with remorse. ‘I love you, really. Enjoy your lunch. I’m going for a swim.’
    And with that I disrobed, and threw myself into the cold November sea. Resolutely not hungry. Which, actually, was true: this being 2pm, I hadn’t had a chance to get hungry yet. I often skip breakfast and go straight for lunch: my detox, at this stage, was entirely theoretical. Words, and a sour, chewy juice.

Katerina came over in the evening. We were going to do yoga, but she’d had a fall and bruised her shoulder and knee, so we had tea instead. A Fortnum & Mason blend that someone once brought for my grandma, scented with orange blossom and served in my mum’s best, daintiest chipped china. We talked, indirectly, of food; of how it’s a pleasure and a comfort, much less of a need than we imagine, and of the times – the exceptions – when thoughts of eating fall right out of our heads. Acute love, we agreed, and acute sadness. Being subject to neither, I confessed to dreaming of pasta. I showed Katerina the glass of juice that was to be my dinner, instead. We both sighed. ‘Be strong,’ she said.

Day two and I still wasn’t hungry, but I was pretty miserable. The detox headache had arrived, and I was possessed by a strange, manic, desperate energy that did not translate into the desire to do anything. It was pure momentum, with nowhere to go. I decided, nonetheless, to martyr myself to my cause and stretch the cleanse to another day. I distracted myself with making things: I made smudge sticks out of herbs I’d picked the day before; I made jam out of bitter oranges; I made bangles with scraps of vintage fabric. I made promises: to be better, to eat better, to look after my digestive health so I would never again have to resort to such extreme measures for giving my bowel a break. To eat fewer crisps. I made tea from peppermint and lemon verbena leaves and drank it, unceremoniously, out of a mug. The will to juice had gone out of me completely. I made an infusion from wild sage, hoping for wisdom. I went nowhere and spoke to no one; I barely even spoke to the cats but resented them, silently, for the meal of Friskies croquettes that they crunched on. I thought about doing yoga.
In the evening, I was suddenly taken over by the absolute certainty that I should have a steak. A steak, yes, and a salad, from my favourite restaurant in town, which, gloriously, stays open throughout the winter. I could call them up right now, and ask them to prepare this salvation for me, and I could walk down and pick it up and bring it home and put an end to this madness. A battle of wills ensued, between my virtuous, martyred self who shook her head sadly, so disappointed, as the glutton screamed her petulant argument But I want! The martyr won, assisted by the fact that I had exactly 1.55€ to my name. She settled down, smug and free of desire, with her cup of wisdom tea, and decreed that, in addition to not having steak, I would stretch the detox into the next morning, whereupon I would perform Shanka Prakshalana, the yogic bowel-cleansing ritual. Yes, I thought. What an excellent idea. I was clearly tripping.
I did not sleep well that night. My head thumped and my stomach churned; I dreamed of crisps.

Monday morning, and as I prepared the mixture of warm water and salt that I was to consume and eliminate in aid of purifying my colon, I thought I might refresh my memory on the particulars of Shanka Prakshalana. I chose one of the many articles on Google, and was reminded how the process involved drinking up to 16 glasses of the saline solution and performing, after every two, a set of five asanas designed to move the liquid through the intestinal tract. After the fifth set, practitioners are encouraged to go to the bathroom and perform the Ashvini Mudra (a.k.a. clenching and unclenching of arse muscles) to stimulate peristalsis of the intestines.
At which point the writer of the article imparted the following extraordinary piece of wisdom: “If the chair starts,” he wrote, “great. If not, no problem.” You just carry on with the salt water and the exercises, he reassured, until the chair comes. He went on to explain that “the chair will be solid at first, but as time goes on it will be cleaner and more watery”.
The chair? So frazzled was my brain that I accepted this as some sort of yogic lore, some super-technical/spiritual term that surely must be valid. Nevermind that in thirty years of actively studying the English language I had made my peace my shit being referred to as stool but had never, not once, heard of passing chairs. Solid or not. But it must be true, I reasoned, because the wise yoga man on the internet said so. Chairs would be passed and the bowel would be cleansed. Shanti om, brother.

I passed no chairs, but not for lack of trying. There came a time where I would have been happy to pass anything, any type of furniture at all, for the relief of emptying my bowel of all that salt water. I was drenched in sweat and bloated to fuck and even threw up a little bit (which was cheating, because throwing up salt water is actually Kunjal Kriya, the yogic stomach-cleansing technique). I did my asanas and my Ashvini Mudra and breathed and tried to relax, as advised, but no chair came. The stool did eventually, triumphantly, mercifully – and, on account of the two-day martyrdom that had preceded this exercise, it was as watery as advertised. It came several times over the next two hours. The rest of the day passed in a daze. There was food, which I ate, and there was furniture upon which I reclined. It was all very spiritual, I’m sure.

It is now Tuesday morning. I sit here, at my desk chair, with coffee and cigarettes and the bowel thoroughly at peace, and of clear mind once again, and ponder the lessons I learned during this weekend that, thankfully, passed.
    – A chair is an item of furniture that you sit on, and is not to be confused with a stool whose meaning can be dual.
    – Passing chairs must be avoided at all costs, especially in solid form.
    – The internet is a strange place, its strangeness matched only by the world of yoga. Venturing into either must be undertaken with extreme caution.
    – Decisions must never be made on an empty stomach.
    – When in doubt, eat a steak.
    – If you’re gonna stop eating, do it for acute love. It’s the best reason for everything.

Shanti om.

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