I’ve just spent 10 days in Brazil, and I’ve got to say, I’m in love. Sao Paulo/Rio/Ilha Grande/Paraty blissed me out and have got me daydreaming about packing my bags and making a move.
I also may have overdone it on the photos … but truth be told, it’s impossible not to be swept away in the beauty (and romance!).
I’ve been detoxing for the last two weeks. It was actually really manageable (read: I wasn’t hungry and didn’t feel deprived or even a little bit sad). I did however spend an inordinate time in the kitchen cooking and washing dishes, feeling like a much less sexy version of Nigella. I’d suggest the broccoli soup, lentil and sweet potato stew, broccoli and chickpea salad, oat and banana pancakes, and insist upon the blueberry and mint smoothie and mango and tahini smoothie. Delight.
My chocolate and caffeine cravings didn’t really abate though and I do find a very early morning practice a thing of wonder when I’ve got a shot of espresso in me. Hello focus. Hello energy. Hello prana. So, you could say that I’m re-toxing (and this guy is in my kitchen’s future).
2013 has so far been a whirlwind – new job, new adventures, a feeling of things falling into place (and a whole new life in a matter of days!) – and my ever present anxiety kept at arm’s length, despite some considerable change and stress. My ball juggling skills are at an all time high (and my to do lists at an all time extreme length), but my goals to keep some perspective and not think too far into the future seem to be mostly intact.
Deep breathing.
There’s very little that beats a proper beach holiday, especially one spent with your family on the KwaZulu-Natal North Coast. My childhood was spent in Natal – the Drakensberg, Ballito, Southbroom – and there’s something about those long, steamily lethargic days, palm trees, breezy sugar cane, occasional shoes and a wide assortment of creepy-crawlies that makes for a true mind/body break.
After the yoga/sea swimming/pool swimming/book reading/afternoon napping routine I established, I feel like I might have a handle on 2013. The overarching theme of my 2012 was ‘anxiety’, deeply coloured chartreuse.
2013 will be light, easy and the colour of drizzly Zinkwazi sunsets – stimulating, diverse work, health, love, a lot of humour and perspective, continuing bravery, some exotic travel, and steady, seamless flow. I’m ready.
2012. Not my favourite year. Not many people’s favourite year. Roll on 2013.
I enjoyed 2011. It was tumultuous, but I felt like I came into my own, discovered myself again, got a little braver and faced up to some loss.
2012 was a slog. I feel like I had to face ALL of my stuff, ALL of the time, backed up by a voracious pace of months speeding by, deadlines to meet, events to attend, hearts to mend and self analysis to see to.
In terms of the ‘wasn’t all bad’, I did finally stand up from backbends and drop back by myself (buoyed up by some heady love hormones which kicked the Jaws theme tune I’d been hearing for months in the teeth), buy a Gregor Jenkin table (which makes my eyes glad), see Scandinavia, practice with David Swenson and Laruga Glaser, and have many moments of happiness with my many dazzling, funny and wonderful friends, including getting lost at OppiKoppi for 7 hours and sleeping in a drunk stranger’s tent (which was a frozen, dusty hell at the time, but hilarious in hindsight).
I also then had to face some startling disappointments, deal with some overwhelming anxiety and contemplate depression (and my various feelings about being “depressed”) for the first time in many years. Some boredom-induced creative block, and some information overload and what must be over-stimulation ADHD, left me high and dry and unable to write, with just a deep down rage on the simmer.
I’ve also become extremely time sensitive with age – when I was in my 20′s months would pass with me feeling love sick and heartbroken. Now I feel like there is no time to waste being sad … that doesn’t mean though that I’m not sad – I’m just more aware of time passing, days disappearing, with me feeling bereft in the ‘prime of my life’. Added to this I’ve also become more aware of my body changing as I head into my 30′s, triggering more feelings of clocks ticking time away. Tick tock.
In closing I’m hoping the Mayans were right. Bring on a consciousness shift.
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I’ve been thinking.
I had these on my list:
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Source: africandy.com via Jenny on Pinterest
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Source: worldsviewsports.co.za via Jenny on Pinterest
Source: africandy.com via Jenny on Pinterest
Source: africandy.com via Jenny on Pinterest
Source: itswhatiminto.com via Jenny on Pinterest
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Source: thebeachhead.co.za via Jenny on Pinterest
And now I just want this:
Thanks.
So here’s what’s been happening, yoga-wise.
I’m reminded sometimes (when I’m panicked or wholly distracted during my practice) when I first started primary series – when there was no space in my head for anything other than “breathe!” or “just one more chaturanga, you can do it!”. Now it’s much easier physically to get through a practice, and much, much harder mentally to keep my chattering mind in check.
Our bodies are constantly changing, minute by minute, cell by cell. I guess it’s this change, the impermanence, of our bodies, and the world, that is both comforting (I’ll get my legs comfortably behind my head one day), and at the same time terribly frightening.
I think I’ll just leave it as a yoga check-in for today. The rest of my life is suffused in anxiety, fuelled I think by the run up to my 31st birthday – balancing on my forearms seems the easiest part of my day 
The last week has been overwhelming. Hell, the last six months have been overwhelming, but the last week in particular. There’s something about a straw and a camel in there somewhere.
I’m taking some measures to cultivate sanity. They involve silencing my phone, closing tabs, managing social media perusal, and declining invites. I’m over-stimulated, overwrought, distracted and wholly addicted to staying ‘connected’, ‘current’, ‘busy‘.
And it’s a load of shit.
The busier I get, the more I scroll through Facebook and Twitter, the more I get whatsapp’d, bbm’d, emailed and skyped, the less present I am and the more anxious. I’m so distracted by the relentless stream of stimuli coming my way, the constant array of snippets of other peoples’ lives (with which I create long, convoluted fiction), the habitual phone checking to affirm my worth, that most of the time I can barely get my work done. I lose all perspective; and contemplate medication to take the edge off.
The busier I am, the less time I have to think about the aching big questions, the ones that wake me at 3am in the morning, the ones that creep up on me during my ashtanga practice, the ones that trigger desolate, startling tears on the way home from somewhere in the early hours of the morning. I’m doing cool things, socialising with people I like (and sometimes even love), solidly creating the appearance of an admirable life … and still feeling frenziedly anxious about my place in the world, whether I’m making a valuable contribution as a human being, whether I am a valuable human being.
The busier I am, the more distracted by floating flotsam, the never-ending onslaught of information, the less time I have to deal with my feelings, the lumbering elephants parading through the room. And, well, I have a lot of feelings; barely covered by a thin veneer of togetherness, busyness, importance. The busier I am, the emptier I feel, clutching a smartphone in the hopes of connection, a confirmation that I’ve flitted through someone’s mind long enough for them to tap out an instant message.
So here it is: a Saturday night’s plans cancelled, a night in, and a phone switched off. And many thoughts. Here’s hoping for some perspective and clarity, a bolt of light. Or even a spark.
xx
Most days when my alarm shakes me from sleep at 5.30am, and later when I’m breathing through my panic in kapotasana, fighting with my hips in dvi pada sirsasana and wondering if I’ll ever be strong enough in pincha mayurasana, I question why I practice ashtanga. It’s gruelling. It’s taxing. It’s 90 minutes or more, 6 days a week.
And then I have weeks like the last few and I realise that without yoga I’d be a public (and personal) liability. On good days I dance with anxiety; on bad days I’m a straight-up bitch, unfocused, compulsive and preoccupied, nail-biting, temper-flaring and 3am ceiling-staring. And although it’s fighting a big fight at the moment, ashtanga helps me moderate life’s vagaries, hurts, mediocrities and disappointments.
It’s the discipline that keeps me sane. It’s the moments of magic that keep me coming back.
I’m aware of the oxymoron.
But still. The month of July sees my once-weekly ashtanga students challenged to a month of a dedicated (6 days a week, less moon days) ashtanga practice. And because they are competitive, achiever types, a ‘bootcamp’ challenge seemed like the right thing to do to get the end result of a committed self-practice … Machiavellian yoga?
Okay, and it’s a little about me too. It’s winter: cold and dark. I needed some motivation to get up in the morning. And a daily adjustment in supta vajrasana.
They’re half way. And it’s amazing to watch as the layers begin to peel back … falling down the ashtanga rabbit hole
xx
I’ve done a post on inspired planters before, from another Etsy store.
I’m a little obsessed with their radness.
