Reverb 10.12: One With All

A health-related Reverb10 prompt. I guess it has its place. I’m doing this on the run before I rush out to meet a friend on this uncharacteristically cold December evening in Mumbai.

December 12 – Body Integration

This year, when did you feel the most integrated with your body? Did you have a moment where there wasn’t mind and body, but simply a cohesive YOU, alive and present?

(Author: Patrick Reynolds)

A few weeks ago, the boyfriend decided to pick on his fitness regime again. After a round of the local gymnasiums, he signed up for a membership at one of them and has been regularly working out, working day or not. I can’t understand that. Few things feel as boring to me as repeating the same action over and over again, whether it is running in place or moving an arm up and down or doing crunches. And yet, he seems to really enjoy it.

I realized then that a fitness regime has to be personalized, not just according to the bodily needs but also the person’s requirements. Gymming is not for me. But a lot of other things are.

A lot of my contemporaries find yoga really boring. I’ve been exposed to yoga when I was a child and I can see how that would be an unimpressive experience for most people. But I started a tri-weekly yoga routine five years ago and I revelled in the experience. Not only did I love how I felt later, I really enjoyed every minute that I was actually doing the asanas too. That’s what a good exercise routine should feel like.

I was aided by the fact that I have a very good yoga instructor. She doesn’t just demonstrate and teach the asanas, she also explains the spiritual associations and the relationships of the body’s movement and state to the emotional well-being. For example, when I started the class, I was plagued with chronic lower back pain and stiffness. She explained that a lot of my stress was going straight to my back and what’s more, I had literally made myself more rigid to deal with the situation I was in. I pondered that and I realised that I really had accumulated ego, envy and pride as if they were necessary tools to compete in the corporate world. Through the asanas, she showed me how to release them and let them go.

“Attitude is the most important thing in yoga, not the physical asana itself.”

was her adage and it really worked. I also learnt to empty my head of the various conflicting thoughts that clamoured for attention and focus my mind. It brought me peace, resolution, clarity and confidence.  A few years later, she was describing my body type as extremely flexible which made me .

The yoga sessions have stopped in the past few months as my schedule doesn’t match my instructor’s. But on her advice, I took to another exercise that I’ve enjoyed almost as much and for even longer – swimming. I swim 2-3 times a week. Working for myself means I have the liberty of a 5p.m. swim in a virtually unoccupied pool.

I try and do 20 laps crosswise. I usually start with a freestyle with my face in the water, which means I reach the other side out of breath. Then, instead of stopping, I flip onto my back and float back to the other side. The 90-odd seconds that this takes is a time when I feel like my ego, my worries, my ambitions, my pride…everything that creates barriers, problems and structures for me, is easing away. All there is the core, the very essence of me, that can’t be bounded or contained any more than a beam of light can.

That’s integration with myself, my universe and my body.

Smile

My smile is like a neon light
Lighting up all around
And drowning out all else
Brilliance in person
It says, “I’m happy!”

Yours is like a candle flame
A single flicker in the darkness
Enveloped in a warm embrace of shadows
Gentleness personified
It says, “I make you happy.”

And you do.

Chain Story: The Morning After

I started this as a Tiny Tale. But Anish Vyavahare added a chapter to it  making it a collaborative effort and a bigger story. That got up featured on Protagonize’s editor’s weekly picks. I’ve just added the third chapter. You can read just my two pieces independently or read the three-in-collaboration here. Comments awaited!

—————————————————–

His eyes open and he stares for a long minute. He’s surprised by his own surprise. It’s the same room that he has woken up in for the past four years, the bubbles on the corner of wall and ceiling as familiar to him as the plumbing woes that create them. His eyes flutter to his left foot, the direction, a book once told him, is where we look when we’re remembering the past. Then to the right, the direction of the future plans. He gives up and gets up, ignoring the protesting knots in his back.

And at once he realizes. He hasn’t been woken by the sunlight, most unwelcome to owners of east-facing bedroom windows. It’s the sound that has woken him up. Clattering on the tin parapet that the people below insisted on putting up last December. It’s raining.

He steps up to the window and waits for his eyes to adjust to the waking world. A few seconds pass before he realizes that it’s coming down so fast and heavy that the gray around is not his sleepiness but water, sheer water.

For the briefest second, he begins a smile, thinking the earliest conscious thought that occurs to a Mumbaiker during heavy rain. NO SCHOOL! But the smile stops before it reaches his cheek corners and he realizes there’s an investor meeting later in the day and an early morning chat with the boss to prepare. How’s he going to get to work in this downpour? He’d better carry an extra set of formal clothes, one part of his brain is already whizzing. And his hands reach for the side-drawer, groping in the musty darkness for the plastic shield for his mobilephone, lest he forget to carry it later. Survival first is the metropolitan mantra.

He should probably leave early to provide for any delays. There’ll be plenty – traffic jams, pedestrian snarls, late trains, buses negotiating puddles. As he leaves the room, his fingers brush the switch panel, turning on the light, turning off the fan and the mosquito repellent plug-in. Mid-automation, he swirls around. Even through the downpour, he can tell, the window opposite is shut. Funny. He could have sworn, it was open last night. Maybe she got up when it started raining and shut it. Maybe it was always shut. Maybe…

The doorbell rings and he rushes out of the room, all thoughts fleeing instantly. The monsoon is here and so is Monday.