Some said I was brave. I didn’t feel brave but I was certainly outnumbered. Fourteen women, one man.
We were on a Yoga weekend, organised by my lively yogi, Jill Hoon, from Old Town (www.uptownyoga.co.uk) 14 women and one man. I’ll take those odds any weekend if they are the same people.
They could be direct though. “Your name again, your age?” This sternly from a nurse on first greeting, still on night duty. Her calm sister came to my defence.
Another had an idea for a great novel. “Imagine the headlines,” she said: “Man found dead levitating in a stone circle in the Cotswolds. No clues, no footprints, no bruising, no witnesses . . .” I blamed that on the Reiki session.
I took up yoga to improve my flexibility as I get older, get down there with my grandkids, complement my running, learn to relax. On this weekend I certainly relaxed. We had several meditation sessions, reflective experiences that surprised me and will inform future poems.
Being a writer adds a dimension: the nuances of language and accent that fascinate, personal stories shared on walks, conversation that’s often deeper with women than with men. It was a luxury to listen, to be an honorary woman among lovely, smiling people. Bring on next year, I say.
The following poem, Cocooned in Yoga, dedicated to Jill, was an outcome from the weekend:
I reach beyond my tension
in a grunt stretch from foetal
to fecund imagination.
I’m a crow on two hands,
a stork balancing on one leg:
the agile gift begetting the man.
I can hackle like an angry cat
be a table top or a plank
head down and face back
then relax at the end, my parted
mind conjoining the stretch,
calmer now than when I started.
