I'm sitting here with my glass of red wine, about to embark on a re-run of Stranger Things with Big Lad, Little Lad has been dropped off at a friend's for a sleepover, there's a loaf of banana bread in the oven and a pot of Turkish white beans simmering away on the hob. The early evening is as black as midnight and the dewy, wet air clings to the outside of the window. When my I flick my glance upwards and look at the title of today's post it makes me let out a long, contented sigh.

Be . . . . still.

So it's day twenty six and the last day of my thirty day yoga challenge with You Tuber Adriene Mishler is drawing in. I can't help feeling that in my very bones each time I start a new practice. It's nearly over, it's nearly over. My God, it's nearly over and I will have done yoga every day for A MONTH as well as drivelling on about it daily on the internet. Fist bumps to everybody who's been reading.

I think this 'Be Still' theme of Ms Mishler's was more than just a little sneaky. I knew it couldn't be a calm and restorative sesh as we got our fill of rolling around on the floor like babies just two days ago with the 'Be Kind' theme. No, today had to be more than that. And I was right. Because my legs are still shaking from that blinkin' lizard pose.

Ironically, it was in the stillness that the challenge came today. Not the kind of stillness that is challenging because you're lying on the floor while your mind is telling you that you could be doing a hundred other things. No. This was challenging on a different level. On the level that it is HARD to stay in a high lunge for more than five seconds. It is HARD to make your arms stay lifted during volcano pose. And, well for me, it is next to IMPOSSIBLE to get my elbows down, never mind still, in that pesky lizard pose.

No matter. Because, as she said right at the beginning of this journey, Adriene has got my back. She prepared me with alternate nostril breathing (I know it sounds mental but honest - it's a miracle worker for anxiety), her gentle way of talking me through reaching, lifting and grounding and the encouragement to find stability as well as ease within any of the postures.

Not for the first time, I was struck by how this woman, this yogic inspiration, always seems to be doing her life's work when I am engaging in her video classes. I do believe that everybody has at least one thing they are meant to do on this earth. Write a book, raise children, feed people, advance technology, make people laugh, teach kids, solve problems, make art, raise hell - whatever it is, it doesn't matter. It's your element, your purpose, your fire.

And this, I believe, is Adriene's. To inspire millions of people to embrace yoga. And by yoga I mean not just getting through the poses. By yoga I mean finding your compassion, being aware of your whole life as it passes by moment by moment, coming as close as humanly possible to your truth. Your one and only truth.

So to be with her while she's sitting in stillness, to be on my mat in stillness too, well, it's nothing short of a privilege.

Now if you don't mind, I'm going to go and sit in stillness with my eldest son while we do his most favourite thing. Eat banana bread and watch Stranger Things.

Go well,

Abi

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#YWATRUE