I’ve got back to yoga! It was something I did for quite a few years until I broke my arms in a climbing accident. You can’t do a “dog down” with broken arms …. nor quite a few other positions either. Somehow or other I never managed to get around to restarting. I would be hard-pressed to say just how I came to realise that I missed yoga, but there was a persisting sense that something was missing.
The first two sessions have been pretty demanding, and I realise that the backs of my legs have become terribly stiff. Nevertheless, the instructor was good enough to comment that clearly I had not become completely out of touch, and basically I knew what was going on. Today I even managed to do one position more readily than some of my colleagues, because it depended quite heavily on strength. The climbing keeps that going, I guess. My big problem is that I have forgotten all of those weird Sanskrit names for the positions (the asanas). They always did sound very much like each other, and I had to check what other people were doing before committing myself.
“What (I hear you ask) has this got to do with art?” Well, actually, rather more than you might think. People who are not regularly engaged in art have little appreciation of just how physical an activity painting can be. I really began to appreciate over the past few days the extent to which coordination is required, and that can only be assured through concentration, and awareness of what your body is doing. I don’t entertain any fantasies about being able to do some of the astonishing things that the more advanced students get up to. Without aiming for that kind of virtuosity, however, I would like to think that I will be able to bring to my painting a degree of “centredness” and a level of concentration that will turn out to be beneficial.