Shhh...

If I had to sum up what yoga does for me in one word, the word would be quiet. When I’m doing yoga in the sense of practicing asanas, life, or at least my perception of and engagement with life, slows down until there is just me, the movement and the breath. 

It’s hard to explain to someone who isn’t dad to two kids under ten how busy and noisy life is generally, and even harder to explain to someone who doesn’t practice yoga how quiet life can be at its most quiet. This is a real, deep quiet – a quiet without any self-questioning or raking over the past. The cycle of examination, critique and planning which is so valuable in my professional life but so relentless in my personal life just stops. There is now worry or judgement. There is no future planning, no looking forward to what might go wrong, no working through all the possible outcomes. The past and future stop tapping on the window for a few moments and the present is everything.

To crave silence in the middle of a hectic family life might seem an utterly selfish and even misanthropic, but I don’t buy that. On the contrary, a period of silence means that I can hear more clearly afterwards – literally and metaphorically. A lot of the noise in family life isn’t physical, although there is a lot of that. And that physical noise – the noise that most needs to be listened to, understood, attended to, absorbed – is in competition with the internal noise created by work stress, financial planning, managing a busy diary…

Yoga means that I can listen with less (I won’t say without any) distraction to my family and give them more of my attention.  I recognise intrusive thoughts as they pop up and just nudge them aside for the time being. I am more attuned to the emotional currents in the house. I am more aware of my own emotional state and consequently more able to control it.

In short, I can hear more clearly. Who wouldn’t want that?