It's day fifteen - and me and millions of other people are officially halfway through the Yoga with Adriene thirty day TRUE challenge! Big up people. We are in the ZONE!

I love that the theme of today's video was 'Believe'. Such a stroke of genius on Adriene's part, don't you think? We're halfway through and we might need the extra motivation, the extra belief that we can keep going. And the very fact that we are on our mat, in all our separate continents and countries and towns and villages and homes and lifestyles and outfits and moods, is testament to the fact that we need to keep believing that we can do it. Because we are here already.

I woke up this morning putting into practice so much I have learned on the mat already this month. Today was the day I reeeaallllly wanted my poorly husband to come home from hospital but, as yesterday had demonstrated, we don't always get what we want. So there I was, moving through the motions of making breakfast, coercing children into school uniforms, doing the school run in the driving rain and meandering through desperately slow traffic jams towards the hospital, all the while centring myself, keeping my heart open, softening around all these difficult emotions and finding the inner strength I knew was there. And that was all before 10am.

As luck would have it, the gods or the universe or the stars or whatever were smiling on us after all, and the hubby was allowed to go home along with a hefty bag of medicines. I noticed the lightening of the my heart, the smile playing at the corners of his mouth, the way we both moved more easily around each other. Something had lifted and it felt good.

After getting him settled at home with his chocolate spread on toast, a cuppa, the snooker on the telly and a fluffy duvet, I tip-toed through to the spare room to 'do some yoga'.

The doing of said yoga was so much more than that. Whether it was because my man was back under the same roof as me or what, I don't know, but moving through these postures felt more experiential, more beautiful than it has done recently. Dare I say it - I felt beautiful.

My high lunge is a thousand miles away from that of Adriene and my standing stick thingy leaves a lot to be desired. But the way Adriene added the 'flying arms' and the empowering phrases throughout (finding your breath as you soar and take flight), I really felt a continuous flow of energy, an alignment with the yoga in which we weren't separate. I was the yoga. The yoga was me.

Which makes sense really, when you look at the meaning of the word:

And then I lifted my heart (as instructed), looked up and saw I was being watched. Not by a child (they were in that miraculous establishment called school) or by the hubby (he was tucked up with his toast), or even by a nosy neighbour. Nope I had a little companion, sitting totally still and staring unflinchingly through the window at my magical synthesis with the ancient art of yoga.

He didn't move a muscle, which is more than I can say for my standing stick pose.

Pretty much the whole of my practice was observed by my feline friend. Now whether he believed in me that I would nail those balances, or whether he was inwardly having a right old laugh, who knows? It didn't matter. What he did for me was show me what it was to have grace in stillness, elegance in silence, belief in the moment.

He dicked off not long after I bid him Namaste. Undoubtedly to find a chubby starling or something. But for those few moments, him from my overgrown garden and me from the warmth of my mat, there was a union of sorts.

Who knows when we'll meet again?

Go well,

Abi

#YWATRUE

P.S. The artwork shown in the first picture is by my brilliant artist friend, Jill Cowan.

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