Day 673: Bruce Lee Yoga

It's been a lovely, many-faceted, simple, easy, pensive, rich day, full of birds and butterflies. Even a dull as shit day where nothing happens is full of birds and butterflies here, though if I spend too long swearing at a screen because the internet doesn't work, I notice fewer of them. There are bugs too, of course; a great big fat black and yellow thing upside down in the big plug-hole, plump enough to fill it. I tried to lift it with a scourer. I finally flipped it with a piece of grapefruit skin – the right way up it's just a massive cockroach, however pretty its belly is - only to find the fucker in exactly the same position two minutes later. I'm not going to spit my toothpaste on top of that! I scooped it out again and lobbed it into the bushes. It landed upside down. Some insects are losers.

Yoga was a laugh again, and a chance misunderstanding led to a conversation which in turn led to me preparing a Bruce Lee yoga class for tomorrow. There will be karate noises and chopping, mark my words. We will be channelling our inner Bruce Lee. If only I had reliable (or indeed, switched on) internet, I could do a bit more research, but as it stands, I'm going to have to make that shit up. There's not really a way to get that right, though, is there? If my karma is really mashed, a random Bruce Lee Uberfan will join the class tomorrow, and will tut and huff all the way through.

I spoke to both Ruths in the last 24 hours. Actually, I spoke to both Ruths yesterday, and then one of them again today, just for a flippety snip of a nanochat. Well, maybe a little bit longer than that, but it was short and meaty like a pie and well worth it, and I even had a tiny taste of David laughing about enemas in the background. I feel very loved when I speak to them. It helps when David shouts 'I love you... did you hear that?' and when Ruth says it lots of times per call. I love them too, so that helps. A bit of a great big love party, then, what with the deep pleasure of talking to my beloved Related Ruth too.

Good company on my trip to town today and the bonus of discovering a place where I can sit and drink coffee that tastes good - made by Dutch people in the 'making it into a drink' stage anyway – the coffee beans are local and delicious. Interesting conversations and ones that made me ruminate.


I am so very grateful to two people who have been with me for yoga and massage for four consecutive days (five tomorrow). It has been an honour, a pleasure and a massive way to go deeper in the work that's doing itself here. I feel like I'm being shown a whole shed-load of things.

I made a commitment to myself today, and I make it publicly here now: I will never again belittle this energy healing work by playing it down or trying to make it palatable and 'not too hippy'. In fact I'll stop using the h word. This is really profound stuff. It happens, when it happens, because the person is ready to do the work and open to surrendering to it. It happens because we are present and accepting and because we agree to do it. I don't have to know much or do much (hence feeling like an imposter), but it takes me to be there and to focus for it to happen. And it is life-changing, profound, wonderful work. It creates shifts. Things genuinely move on through and leave, sometimes things that have been hanging out in your energy field for years.

I don't mean Big Bad Scary Things That Will Eat Your Soul – I mean energy you don't need any more; stories that have woven their roots in and have no motivation to move; ideas that mess things up or looseness/tightness is places where the opposite would work better. You don't have to think of yourself as having been in some kind of psychic danger to feel better when stuff you don't need burns off or comes out and leaves your field. Combined with massage and hands on, deep bodywork, it's even more powerful. Well chosen words help too. Not chatting. Not me 'knowing' what's happening either, but listening and if it feels right, asking. As I can hear my wonderful coach Fiona's voice saying in my head this second 'Why would you throw away powerful tools you already have just because you're learning new ones?'.

It's all very well making learning something new easier by resisting the urge to compare it to/return to techniques that are already familiar, but once the learning stage is over and the work starts, bring it all back in. Use what works for the situation. If you have an awl and an awl is called for, don't shun the awl because there were no awls on your woodcarving course last week. Dig out the awl. Use the awl. Then if you want to carve the awl hole to make it prettier, do it. Don't try and make an awl hole with a wood chisel just because you learnt how to use one last week. It'll be shit.

So if suggestions come while I'm working and I have to tools to ask powerful questions that don't prescribe answers, and I think it's relevant, I take the risk of getting it wrong. I had a teacher recently who said not to do this. I decline. I will do it if I want to and if the person I'm working with is open to it. If they're not, I'll shut up and stick to pummelling glutes and digging my fingers into shoulder meat. I give myself permission to get it wrong (another one of yours, Fiona, thank you) on my own terms.

It's funny, isn't it, how solitude and sociability work. This was a topic on the table today. I love to be social, I love connection and I need quite a lot of time alone. When I don't get it, I turn into (or at least feel like) a monster. I'm not easy. I'm tight and ungenerous. When I know I can have space when I need it, I'm fine. Angel Bitch, my friend calls me. Harsh but fair. But all the bitch needs is a walk and a little bit of space. And when I'm too much alone, I turn into an emo waif with haunted eyes and sucky energy. I need connection so badly that I can hardly muster it and the pull from me makes all sane people keep their distance. Or so it feels.


Today, I enjoyed both and mourned both. I enjoyed being in company; I enjoyed being alone and on the edges of said company and I mourned it a little too. Grateful to have my autonomy and a little yearnsome to be part of the lovely laughter I could hear and the obvious connection. Part of me thinks that instead of being here in the mountains enjoying my massage and yoga, I should be 'Out There', making myself available to become part of a couple who can laugh with each other so well.

I see a lot of couples come through here and I marvel at their laughter and their ease when I remember my own tightness. I question my ability to be anything other than alone. I speak to friends who love each other deeply and I fear that maybe it's much too late for me – I'm past the point. It's not a question of attractive or not, more of how long I've spent alone (pretty much all my life so far, if we're talking extended periods, and happily coupled, very little indeed).

And then that jolts me into remembering how much I dislike being in 'the wrong' couple. I hate it. I feel trapped and enclosed. I panic like a fox in a trap. I would bite off my own leg to get out, and sometimes, I might as well have done for the pain I've caused myself, and undoubtedly the other person. But there is someone, maybe, with whom I feel like a fox in a field (with another fox, obviously, or the simile falls flat on its foxy face).

So here we are. I love the taste of melancholy of hearing others get on well. It's a thing of joy and my twinges are to do with wanting it, not with not wanting it for others. I also love the taste of freedom to choose what I want to do. It's a dance, as every aspect of life is. It's a question of approaching it all with at least some degree of equanimity. Something like that, anyway. And not believing too many of our stories or our lies.

And tomorrow, we do Bruce Lee yoga. Pensive or not, life is good.