Paying Attention In A Particular Way | Yoga 15

My mum and I are very different. She is slow, careful and creative and I am fast, consistent and impatient. Everything my mum creates is meandering and beautiful, whereas everything I do is optimised and on time. I think it is because of, and not in spite of, our differences that she continues to be one of my greatest teachers.

Last week, she sent me a piece of writing about her garden in France. It struck me that the opening and closing passages closely parallel my own experience of this crisis from the other side of the world.

“We have been in lock-down for five weeks now and I have spent at least some part of nearly every day in the garden. With this amount of time among these plants, I see detail as I haven’t had time to observe it before.”

One aspect of this pandemic that has been therapeutic for me is that it has forced me to slow down and reduce my sphere of attention. I quickly learned that there was no use trying to plan more than a few days ahead and have since discovered much more subtlety and nuance in my day-to-day. Confined to the same four walls, each day I notice something different in the house. Following the identical route on my run every morning, I notice incremental improvements in my breathing and running gait. And every time I practice Pigeon pose, I can tune more deeply into the sense of…