Music, Emotion & Yoga

Well, I've been off the blog for a few weeks....which have been a blur. News of Peter's death put me in a haze...it was the straw that broke the camel's back. I've had a huge amount of  'new' stuff in my life to get used to: moving to Australia, starting a new career track....It had all kind of piled up. I was keeping it inside and getting more and more frustrated with my inability to vent it and have a release. I was running things around in my head, and couldn't stop: what could i have done differently, why did things turn out the way they did? is it all my fault? Am i a failure? Am I f*****g it all up?

In typical Fabs style i was beating the shit out of myself. No-one is better at self flagellation than me. That, people, is the great 'negative' of having Germanic blood. We do guilt 3rd only to Catholics & Jews. I was a zombie for a good two weeks. I ate junk every day. I didn't train, and skipped out on yoga. I started slipping back into darkness. Then, on Sunday morning, I woke up to see that one of my Boston Yoga mentor Jedis had posted a class playlist on FB. This mentor always puts together amazing playlists and I usually head right to I-Tunes to check it out and buy a couple. Listening to the excerpt of one...I froze...Matisyahu? Who the f**k is that? A Hassidic Reggae artist? Who knew! I buy the whole song...put it on my I-Pod...and it hits me...PERFECTION...just...for...THIS...moment. I head up to the privacy of my room, cause its raining outside, lay out my mat and start doing Sun Salutations. Within seconds the tears are flowing, and the release is HERE...Surya Namaskara while bawling your eyes out with a song on repeat. Music touches my heart like no other art form. It reaches the depth of my soul in ways that a painting or photograph can't. Combine it with yoga and it's perfect....Sunday night I slept like a baby and this morning, boy did the weights get thrown around....I'm over the hump and back...

"Sometimes I lay under the moon
And I thank God I'm breathin'
Then I pray don't take me soon
'Cause I am here for a reason

Sometimes in my tears I drown
But I never let it get me down... So when negativity surrounds
I know someday it'll all turn around..."

Shitty News...And T S Eliot

Over the weekend I got the news that my godfather has died. Although I hadn't seem him all that often in the last couple of years, he was always a huge support to me. He always gave great advice, and called the monsters in my life by their name, without beating around the bush. After a long day at school yesterday, I got massively upset, and started crying about losing him. I didn't get to say goodbye, I wish I'd told him what his advice meant to me, and what it meant to me that he had my back when I needed him to and when few other people did.  Being so upset about him in turn brought on being upset about someone else. You'll know who I'm thinking of. I just wanted someone to tell me things are going to be ok, and to give me a hug. I almost broke for the first time in months...I almost emailed the person I'm thinking of but didn't, thankfully.

I didn't because a piece of poetry popped into my head. Read out by one of my mentors in a Yoga class in Boston early this year, it made me stop, and breathe, and realize that the desire to have someone is a normal human emotion....but I want someone who values me for me, and knows what they have found in me.  The stanza from the poem always calms me down, but also moves me in a very deep way. Its from T S Eliot's East Coker, and I don't think any further comment is necessary.

"I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting."