Spring Clean

It’s so literal, it’s actually beyond cliché. The fires are still burning, the kaleidoscope’s whirring and I’m cleansing everything in sight with an unabated frenzy.

Someone must’ve fed me a hallucinogen or two. Or three perhaps, or maybe my water supply’s laced with the stuff.

There’s bound to be some explanation for the cyclonic activity of me.

A crazy wench demands (now that she’s relatively sane-ish), she ALSO wants to claim her body back, too. There’s vanity in there, of course. But there’s also victory, power, aliveness. A synchronisation between heart, mind, soul and body.

Thus, I found myself signed up to group personal training (aka Boot Camp) twice a week, necessitating early nights and mornings, pre-dawn cycling, sweating, running, boxing and skipping. And more. Ole!

And yes I feel like I’m dying and a small but pointed voice asks demoralising questions like So why the hell are we doing this?? Luckily the wench has an answer ready, lobbing it back quickly BECAUSE we want our cardio fitness back.

Then, the yogini signed up for yet another yoga class, an eleven week course. Her voice is loud too, but emanates from the heart, not the ego. There was a moment in that demonstration class where the pleas started. We HAVE to do this course!!! NOW!!

Oh… I didn’t want to talk about Shadow Yoga yet, as I simply don’t know enough. It’s a mystery actually like a pass the parcel prize I get to unwrap a little more each week.

Perhaps though, I can talk about how I’m doing: simultaneously undone and re-made. I scatter into a thousand rainbow shapes and, learning new alignment and strength pulls me back together. It makes me sob, but in a good way. I don’t know what’s going on, but it’s something rather miraculous.

Like its moniker this work takes me inside my yoga, working from the inside out. I see angles and creases where before I only saw form. And already my body is doing things I never knew it could.

Hilariously, this is just the introduction. Not yet the preludes. There’s barely any asana happening and there won’t be, not for months. Still, I work hard and sweat and I feel it in my body.

Between regular yoga, yoga teacher training, cycling everywhere, Boot Camp and Shadow Yoga, my body triumphantly aches.

And there’s a desire to CLEAN. Everything! The twice a week early mornings are rubbing off on other days. Now I awaken freely, no alarm needed. The absolute opposite of the past few years. And there’s in-the-corners-totally-thorough type house cleaning going on. Weird.

Strangely I find myself saying things I don’t expect. Randomly, an old work mate strikes up a Facebook chat and says something like With all that yoga you must be so bendy. Must keep all the boys happy!

Says I: Boys? What boys?

Oh, I’m sorry I didn’t realise [assumes I bat for the other team]…

No [guessing her assumption], what I meant to say is, the man-drought is still in full swing…

And then this conversation leads me to openly, freely and very clearly explain exactly why that is. Initially, the man-drought being self-imposed until it became self-perpetuating! And why.

Strange. Who is this woman talking openly to another person about where I’ve been for the past four years? Undramatic. Straight-forward. Honest with outsiders. Without shame. Where did SHE come from?

Too many questions. So much movement and activity. I fire up iTunes, clean the windows and sob as my heart undergoes suction, extracting puss and atrophied tissues.

~Svasti