After four days of doctor-enforced rest, I couldn’t do it anymore. Resting through an injury while everyone else trains is its own kind of test, and I found it a hard one.
So when the sun rose on Friday, I decided to go back to training. I knew I’d have to take it easy, but I was happy just to be moving again.
The morning session went exactly as I expected. Movements that had felt fluid a week earlier now seemed attached to a body that creaked like an old barn door and had the grace of a young bird trying to fly for the first time. It wasn’t pleasant, but it was beautiful, and after an hour of struggle, things began to flow. My mind relaxed, and the familiar forms took over. It was an unremarkable session, and it was the session I needed.
This past week, I’ve been caught up in my own head. We all get there, and so do I. The only way I know back to the stillness I’m looking for is movement: slow, deliberate movement, punctuated now and then with moments of fast, hard power. It’s a mixture I find hard to resist, and step by step I feel balance return to the body.
The rest of the day drifted by with an ease that had been missing longer than I’d like. Life has been testing lately, and some of these unannounced tests I pass and some I fail. The difference always comes down to the same thing: my perspective on moments that are only passing by.
Too much attention, too much attraction to any one moment or event, creates a gravity I never wanted and never needed.
It seems simple when written down. The key to flow in my life is to stay almost indifferent to all that exists. None of it really matters. It never has, and it never will.