I imagine myself finger painting, reaching my fingers into pots of paints, then lowering them down onto sheets of paper. Feelings come out in rushes of colour. In this yoga movement,  I feel my emotions flow out of my hands, into the air.

I often crave wordless expression. I love the ballet and at times prefer it to the theater where I can feel bombarded by words. This might sound strange coming from someone devoted to writing. But silence makes space. For thoughts and feelings to come and go, to change, and merge, to be discarded.  Silence creates room for possibility.

At the end of class, we have a 5-star relaxation, with two bolsters and a blanket. We come together and chant our OMs.  I float out of class, into my street clothes, ready to face Monday.

Lately, I haven’t been feeling still. I’ve  been feeling stuck. Stuck in my body. It’s cold and I don’t want to move. I’ve been stuck in my writing. The creative juices are frozen. But my mind is buzzing. Thoughts and ideas whirl around, trapped. Why is it that feeling stuck takes up so much energy?

Lisa pointed to the sculpture of Ganesha, the Hindu elephant god, that hangs on the front wall of the yoga studio. Ganesha, the remover of obstacles, is a popular mantra for meditators. Boy, was I was in the right place.

When I got home I  wrote a list of my obstacles, internal, external, real and imagined. I circled the one that loomed largest and wrote about that for 10 minutes. I read back what I wrote out loud. I felt better for acknowledging my thoughts and for  releasing them into my journal. I felt lighter.  I had created some space.

Thank you Lisa.

Thank you Ganesha.

What was I doing checking out my yoga comrades?  Why was I constantly tugging my t-shirt down, worrying about my stomach spilling over the top of my fold over yoga pants? Wasn’t I supposed to be breathing into a state of mindfulness instead of a place of minding everyone else’s business?

I was exhausted at the end of this practice. And  I felt angry with myself  for being chubby, for not being as flexible as everyone else, for not being in the right spirit of things.

I went home and wrote in my journal: I AM THE FATTEST GIRL IN YOGA and slammed my notebook shut. Then I took a breath and re-opened my diary.

I wrote about  how worried I was before going on a yoga retreat for the first time, last year. I voiced my concerns to the fabulous Nadia Narain, who was leading the retreat. My issues were: I will be the fattest person there, I will be the oldest, I will be the worst. She said that I wouldn’t and I wasn’t. But that’s not even the point. What happened at the retreat was that I let myself go. I tried different poses. I did some, but couldn’t do all. I wasn’t worried about how I looked or how anyone else did either.

I allowed myself to feel all the feelings, to let them come and go. Some days were harder and I felt upset and angry, some days I felt successful, happy and light. By the end of the week these thoughts presented themselves: I feel happy with myself. I feel good. I promised myself that I would remember these thoughts.

I wrote about those feelings as they happened in a diary I kept at the retreat. They’ve been in me all along, but I’ve dug them up and put them in another journal to keep them alive.

At the end of this writing session spurred on by a yoga session, my body felt stretched, my writing hand was sore.

I felt good.

Most people think that they are inclined towards one side or the other. For instance, writers tend to see them selves as right brain people and lacking in left brain ability. But think about it. You couldn’t begin to write without organizing yourself to get your notebook or your laptop, choose a place and time to write,  consider what you want to say.

As I walked Macy Gray in Holland Park I wondered about animals and their right/left brain activity. I was making lists in my head, thinking about how I was going to approach the tasks for the day and Macy was running around the dog area with a cockapoo named Honey. The dogs exuded pure joy and that feeling was contagious. I forgot my list and just felt happy to be in the park.

When it was time to go home I had to choose whether to go right, and onto the path, or left through the knot gardens and out. I let Macy lead the way.

I am always grateful if I can get to Louise Grime’s Gentle Yoga class at the Life Center. Someone once told me that gentle yoga is for people who are old, recovering from injury or illness. But I don’t see it that way.

Louise has such a light touch but her message is strong: don’t do anything that causes pain. The aim is to feel good. No knees, no backs, no necks, no shoulders are ever to hurt. Louise has us start lying on our backs with our legs up the wall, closing our eyes and feeling the breath wash through our bodies from our feet to the top of our head, oiling the joints, filling the lungs, bringing us energy.

I was lying in bed the night before thinking about what I have to do this week and the work ahead. I didn’t write as much as I wanted to, didn’t get enough done. That post new year’s feeling landed smack in the middle my chest.

But lying with my feet up the wall I came back to the moment, doing what I could, breathing, letting my body be.

Today I participated in a brilliant online Writing Retreat through Urban Writers’ Playground created by Charlie Haynes. I wrote from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m, with breaks for tea and lunch and felt the thrill of  getting words down alongside other writers in a virtual space. We posted comments on the forum after each of the four sessions and this really did create a positive energy and a feeling of community.  Charlie reminds her clients not to beat themselves up and to keep coming back to the writing, even if you don’t feel you’re keeping up with your goals. She reminds us to be kind to ourselves, to let the writer part of us be.

Yoga for the body, yoga on the page.

Happy New Year to me.

I like to think of every day as being fresh. Pranayama helps with this. Breathing in, holding the breaths, a little at first, expanding the lungs until you are comfortable with holding onto more. Easing into breathing reminds me to focus on what I can do right now.

I am a nail biter. There, I’ve admitted it after years of hiding my hands. I am a nail biter  when I’m actually chomping away and in periods of remission. I can go for months without a nibble and sport 10 glorious fingernails. Then something will set me off, I’ll chew one nail, feel the need to even out all of my nails and before I know it, my nails are undone and  I am ungroomed.

I know it’s not the worst thing anyone can do but it makes me feel bad. After I’ve done it. While I’m doing it I feel the pressure spiral out of me through my ragged fingers. It’s my go to comfort. A bad habit, a thing to resolve not to do.

But that kind of negative resolution never works for me. I need to think of the positive. I need to think of having healthy looking hands and glamorous, neat looking nails. I need to feel my nails growing.

Breathing helps. When I’m able to sit still, I close my eyes and  imagine the breath flowing down to my finger tips, filling me with energy and love. Sounds corny, I know, but it works for me when I’m ready.

It also helps to write one good thing that’s happened during the day in my journal before I go to sleep. It’s satisfying to close my notebook with a positive snap before drifting off to sleep.

I wish you a year of bright red fingernails and happy dreams.

The other night I watched one of my favourite movies, 84 Charing Cross Road. It’s about the writer Helene Hanff, played by Anne Bancroft, and her long-distance friendship with London bookstore manager Frank Doel, played by Anthony Hopkins, after World War Two. It’s about physical distance and the closeness that develops between two people discussing literature. It’s a film about loving books. But books have a way of making you take a look at your own life. Helen and Frank use the works of Samuel Pepys and John Donne as a jumping off point for telling each other their own stories. It’s about words printed on the pages of antiquarian books and words typed into letters and how these words allow the reader  to hear the writer’s voice ring out.

Helene’s sense of humour makes me laugh out loud. And I cry when Frank dies before Helene manages to get to London. I’ve watched this movie so many times that I can say some of the lines before the actors do. I know what I’m in for.

This story leaves me feeling sad but happy for experiencing it.

As Helene might have said, go figure.

The lovely receptionist informed Amy and me that time is actually speeding up and that there have been studies to prove it. I wondered about that and said that it must be age. Time goes faster as you get older. The receptionist and her theory kindly disagreed.

In class Amy had us do balancing poses. She invited us to be where we are now and reminded the class that balance can be psychological. I kept falling over and thought that maybe this is a space where I can fall, pick myself up and try again. I relaxed and was able to hold the balance pose for a little while. This part of the class was a struggle. It went slowly.

I am always happy to lie down in shavasana. It’s a gift, the part of the class when time can stand still.

Why does it always seem to go so quickly?

The day before I took Macy Gray, my six month old Labradoodle, out for a walk in Holland Park. I’ve done that walk every morning  for the past 14 years, with Indie, my golden retriever, who died in September. I loved starting my day being outside, looking at my surroundings and noticing the changes with Indie walking in sync beside me. I could listen to The Today Show on the radio, or stop to chat with other dog walkers. I used this time to think, to go at my own pace, to breathe.

Macy has changed this. She jerks the lead out of my hands and runs towards home. She pulls me and insists that I go at her pace. There is no chance of me stopping to chat or listen to the radio. I cannot focus on the trees or the birdsong. I came home feeling exhausted and disappointed because I didn’t have the walk that I used to have. I didn’t feel peaceful.

Meditation can be like walking a puppy. You sit down thinking that you know what to expect. You’ve done it so many times before. But then the thoughts come in and out, they run away and can even surprise you. You think you can control them, hold on to them, but they do what they want to do. It’s easier to take a deep breath and go with it. 

Tomorrow will be another walk, another story, another breath. Macy will be a day older and so will I. And we’ll learn to walk together.

Autumn has a regal tone. Ruby red, gold and orange leaves,  deep brown earth rich with decaying, nourishing plants, patches of bright blue sky when we’re lucky. The sunlight that manages to pierce through the morning clouds ignites and incites these shades as if to remind us to enjoy them.  Muted shades of winter will be here soon.

It can be interesting to think of our feelings in terms in colour and to write about them. Close your eyes, take a deep breath in and release. Do this again and again. And ask yourself, what colour am I now? Write for five minutes without stopping.

At the moment I’m feeling vermillion.