Saturday, April 15: Rests and Mistakes: Good

RESTS AND EFFORT

To move a new way is to learn something easy and delightful in life. To be compelled to always move a new way, would, I think, be tiresome. To build strength is fun, if we allow ourselves lots of chances to experiment on the way, and if we take it out of the gym, into the garden, into the yard, into the fields, into the streams. Life is fun when we use ourselves, especially with rests when we are worn out.

The other night I had a great birthday present, as I’d fallen asleep in a field after wearing myself out with too much celebratory eating. I returned twenty minutes late to an Awareness Through Movement class I was supposed to be teaching to find my sweetie, Marlie, reading AY 101 as the lesson. I lay down, and got to do the lesson with the others. It was “hard” as a hard yoga class is, but with all the rests, the “hard” became really exciting and rewarding. I got excited to teach this whole volume of AY.

Riding a bicycle, I’ve discovered again the way we used to train on a waterpolo team. Swim a fast lap, rest a little, swim another. On the bicycle this translates to riding hard for a little while, then riding soft, then riding hard, actually trying to keep the breathing, my breathing, smooth the whole time. The wish for my breathing to get more labored being the single to go slow.

Damn, I’m driving the car to pick up Marlie at the garden today, and writing this has me wishing I could be riding my bike. It’s so fun to put in effort that is exhilarating rather than exausting. Exhausting. There. That’s how you spell that word.

Sometimes spelling is exhausting. Like my friend Gisela says. We have this fear of making mistakes, which takes so much fun out of life. I mean, once we are dead, there’s an eternity of not making mistakes. While we live, we might as well live.

Think I’ll go take a useless bike ride, just for the hell of it.
Ciao