Yoga School Dropout

Now that the hurly-burly of relocating the chaise-longue is over, I’ve retreated into my number one coping strategy for getting my groove back, ie doing nothing. Of course nothing can be experienced in myriad ways, although it does require high standards in lack of planning. No schedule must be adhered to, no dates booked in the diary and only spontaneous activities are allowed. Everything must be light in tone – conversations, movies, books or wine – and completely without effort. Unadulterated pleasure – or leisure – is restorative to the soul and I must say my total lack of effort in that direction is coming along quite nicely.

Apparently I am in good company with this approach, as Oprah has recently written about overcoming overwhelm by simply stopping for a day in the middle of a frantic period looking for key executives for her school in South Africa and her new television network, OWN. Feeling frantic and overwhelmed, she decided on the radical approach of stillness. As she notes “So I stopped. Everything. For one day, I just stopped. Didn’t interview anybody. Or take any phone calls. Or return any emails. I stopped doing in order to return to the being of myself.”

“I pulled out my gratitude journal, in which I’d been too tired to write even a sentence for months. I went to my favourite place on earth, the place where twelve oaks form a canopy on the side of my front yard; I call them the apostles. I watched the sunlight filter between the branches and enhance every leaf. I listened to the birds and tried to decipher how many different ones were singing – or were they just talking at the same time? I let myself absorb the sacredness and the dignity of the oaks. I let those trees remind me how to be: still. I took a few deep breaths. I said ‘thank you’ out loud. I felt like I’d come home.”

Her day continued in blissful freedom, as she revelled in having no particular place to go and nothing she had to do, but plenty that called to her. Remembering the spaciousness of the time she’d carved out for herself, Oprah wrote “I sat in silence. I prayed. I meditated. I napped. I filled three more pages with praise and gratitude for all that’s gone right. And I stopped giving my attention to what wasn’t working. I watched the sun move across the sky. I went inside and filled a bowl with lemon sorbet and fresh strawberries purchased at the farmers’ market that morning. I savoured every spoonful, then licked the spoon. I went for a run with the dogs. I sat in a tub of bubbles until I got crinkly. I put on a new pair of PJs I’d been saving for a special … what? I read myself to sleep with Mary Oliver poems.”

Then, of course, as it somehow always does, taking the time for herself paid dividends in spades, as the two thorny issues she’d been dealing with suddenly resolved themselves. “The next day, I found the new head of school. Two days later, a president for OWN.” We shouldn’t be surprised, really, because we all know that feeling rested and centred can be a medium for seeming miracles, as much as feeling frantic and frazzled is an energetic accident waiting to happen.

One of my delicious pleasures of the past few days has been reading the exploits of the soi-disant yoga school dropout, Lucy Edge. She has a light touch with language, a keen eye for the absurd and a self-deprecating tone that makes her writing charmingly entertaining. In her first book she tells the story of how – after a decade in advertising with highlights like working on a margarine account – she set off to India “on a yoga school pilgrimage, in search of life’s greater meaning.”

Lucy’s aspirations for the journey were perhaps a tad ambitious, when you consider they included returning as “a Yoga Goddess – the embodiment of feminine perfection – peaceful, happy, loving, wise and endlessly compassionate to a suffering world – and a magnetic babe attracting strong and sweaty, yet emotionally vulnerable men. Not only would my purpose in life be revealed, but also a pretzel-like body – light on fat, flexible yet strong. I would sit in the lotus position, or stand on my head, effortlessly performing advanced postures in designer clothes for a Sunday Telegraph feature on Yoga Babes. Vogue would photograph me in my favourite organic juice bar and designer friends would choose me to model their size eight scented knickers. In these dreams the lack of money didn’t matter because I was beyond materialism, and anyway I got free holidays when Sting invited me to his Italian villa to give him personal tuition. Of course I knew it might not turn out this way, but it had to be better than looking for meaning in a tub of marge.”

It’s a bit of a no-brainer to work out that the path to smooth abs did not run smoothly, but the journey was definitely worth it. Lucy concludes “OK, so I wasn’t going home a Yoga Goddess wearing a shiny ‘new and improved’ sticker. To all intents and purposes I’d failed on my quest – but I didn’t feel like a failure. I actually felt happy and optimistic. Failure had set me free. I’d given up on perfection and I didn’t feel beholden to the demands of my ego any more. If I lay very still in my hammock I thought I could detect once more the vague whisperings of that ancient Eternal Self – telling me that in breaking free of the self-imposed goal, or gaol, without the ego’s fear of failure, I would find the world to be a bigger place … was I finally getting in touch with my own inner guru? The one that says be happy with what you have. The one that says happiness is always available to us, we just have to look inside ourselves. The one that says there is perfection in imperfection. The one that says talk to men on trains. The one that says eat M&S chocolate peanuts and be blissful. The one that says possess only what is necessary – and necessary may include pretty dresses, though they don’t always need to be labelled Joseph. The one that says life is a delicate balancing act: one part mugs of Maharishi Ayur-Ved Calming Vata Tea and standing on one leg yoga tree poses; one part bottles of Pinot Grigio and falling over.” Couldn’t have said it better myself, except I’d have probably gone for the Prosecco.

This week, just stop. Yeah, really. Don’t pay lip service to it – genuinely, actually and totally give yourself a day off. Take a day off from anything you think you should be doing and face the vast white space of an empty diary with an attitude of curiosity. Don’t plan anything. Get up in the morning and do what you feel like. Don’t get talked into doing anything anyone else wants to do. Use up things you’ve been saving for some special day. Above all, don’t fret about the things that need to get done – worrying is verboten.

Giving yourself some space can have miraculous effects. Just feeling rested will make you more effective and resourceful. Have a juicy, delicious, guilt-free ‘nothing’ day. Make it as empty or as full of activity as it occurs to you in the moment. There’s no right or wrong, just so long as you’re doing things you find pleasurable and you’re not in a hurry. Stand back and let the chips fall where they may. I suspect you’ll find things will stack up pretty well when you have the courage to simply let go – even for just one day.

Click through to the Coach Fabulous advice column archive by going to http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com. For alert emails on new postings, email subscribe@iamfabulous.co.uk. All material ©2008 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author.