Yesterday I drank a large coffee before going to my night yoga class. It proved a great booster of asanas, but when it came time for bed the mind remained alert, never attaining deep sleep. In the morning I fed the dog, the roosters and myself and then felt sleepy again, so I went back to bed to meditate.
A good directive in meditation is: if you fall asleep, accept it too. It means you needed more rest. Yet, I couldn’t fall asleep again. I became deeply absorbed in my body, which is completely sore from a session of deadlifts yesterday at the gym.
I had made a vague commitment to work from my dad’s office today, and my meditation was being interrupted by urges to prepare the journey. They say: in meditation put these kind of away, don’t attend prompts from your mind, this is not the time to think about it.
And so I put my urges away, and eventually gave way to a long meditation session in which I recognized that my body wants a break. The last week I’ve been going daily to the gym and to yoga, this would be my first rest day.
Instead of putting my tattered body on the bike and take my sleep-deprived brain to work, I chose to clean the house, which was sorely needed. I washed dishes, wiped surfaces, cooked for the week, cleared stagnant water because it rained recently, and so on.
I realized: how privileged to be able to take a spontaneous day off. If flexibility were a measure of wealth, I’d be quite wealthy. But it’s not, and now that I’ve seemingly recovered from the coffee and exercise hangover, I put my hands and my mind available to the project that has been consuming me for the past few weeks.
I will write about it when the time comes.
Nothing ought to be forced.