Yoga Oak

I've moved my yoga practice to a park near the office as then I can go in early and stay late but have a break in the middle, which works for me and the producers. In this little park there are some lovely sycamores and a few oaks, of which I felt called to this one.

After my two thirds of the Ashtanga first series, which is what I tend to do, I sat and deliberated.

Powerfully the sense came that I should cease my permanent search for a single mission. Instead, it's about following a deep and inner-led path, from golden moment to golden moment, via all the pains and vicissitudes along the way. It is an authentic path, an organic path, a path that leads into the unknown rather than following the light. Hollow places.

What I bind myself to is not an outer goal but an inner feeling. The image came: "You are a reverse Ariadne." I think of her, threading the route out of the labyrinth for Theseus, only to be abandoned by him. A reverse Ariadne? Showing the way to the centre of the maze? Or simply allowing herself to be lost?

I am reminded of Simone Weil who said, that to be rooted "is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul." Yes, I need to be rooted...

During this stint of work, I have been reading Elderflora, and that led to sadness and hope. Sadness that the elders will struggle over the coming years; hope in that the "woody way of life" has proven itself to be hugely successful. Farmer speculates that mixed deciduous woodlands will fare best, with conifers and big oaks succumbing to the weather, but maples, birches and others making headway. The trees need to be allowed to show their resilience as a community, not have their way plotted like the single route out of the labyrinth of life to some imagined "ideal state" of Holocene vitality.