Take time before time takes you!

They say I'm old-fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast!

Dr Seuss

The problem with time is that there’s never enough of it! It slips through your fingers, can drag on forever, sometimes feels like you’re on that hamster wheel and other times like you are simply marking time. In the 100-meter sprint one-hundredths of a second can separate first from last place. In a marathon the difference can be minutes, even hours. It takes 22 months for an elephant to gestate, 22 days for a mouse. We set our clocks to rise in the morning, whether it’s at 4am or 8am, based on our morning routine (exercise, meditation, showering, breakfast, commute, etc), timing it down to the minute, so we can be “on time” to work and the duties that await us throughout our day.

Time! What an absolutely bonkers concept, what an indefinable measure, one that we’ve divided into segments based on the earth’s rotation around the sun into years, months, days, hours, minutes and seconds, I mean, it makes sense but why are we so defined by time.

Time can be your friend or adversary, depending on how you choose to have a relationship with it. It’s all a matter of tuning in, of becoming aware of the pace at which you are designed to travel through the world, acknowledging that and being at peace with it.

As regular readers know, I caught the yoga bug After a bit of a slow start, I have now fallen into a place where I look forward to my practice rather than slightly dread it as I do with other forms of exercise or going to the Gym. I’m starting to understand that not only does yoga challenge my body, it calms my so that I feel more centred and refreshed post-practice. Yoga has taken some of that precious time in my life however, I feel it’s time well spent and time that I ultimately get back.

In Yoga almost all postures, kriyas, meditations and mantras involve a time factor. It’s a way to create a particular vibrational effect on your being by holding the space with discipline, focus, and an inner calm. Creating a time boundary gives you, a goal allowing you to continue to improve and elevate your practice. When you set the timer for ten minutes to do a particularly challenging position and let yourself go into it deeply, surrendering to whatever physical or mental discomfort there may be, committing yourself to “keep up” until the alarm goes off and you take a deep inhalation of breath, then time is beautiful, it is your ally. Using time to “confine” you is one of those yogic paradoxes that allows for the amazing possibility that you will experience a sense of timelessness, of floating free in the eternal sea of now.

Enjoy this lovely poem by Kahlil Gibran.

Time by Xxi

And an astronomer said, "Master, what of Time?"

And he answered:

You would measure time the measureless and the immeasurable.

You would adjust your conduct and even direct the course of your spirit according to hours and seasons.

Of time you would make a stream upon whose bank you would sit and watch its flowing.

Yet the timeless in you is aware of life's timelessness,

And knows that yesterday is but today's memory and tomorrow is today's dream.

And that that which sings and contemplates in you is still dwelling within the bounds of that first moment which scattered the stars into space.

Who among you does not feel that his power to love is boundless?

And yet who does not feel that very love, though boundless, encompassed within the centre of his being, and moving not form love thought to love thought, nor from love deeds to other love deeds?

And is not time even as love is, undivided and paceless?

But if in you thought you must measure time into seasons, let each season encircle all the other seasons,

And let today embrace the past with remembrance and the future with longing.

Yoga for the mind maybe 😊