Today I woke up at 6:30am. As yesterday, I started and ended the day sprinkling a bit of grass on my tobacco. It’s 19:20 now, almost 13 hours later. In between I went to the gym and did pull-ups, hitting 12 slow and well controlled reps, then 10, then 9. I don’t care about the numbers much but I still count, to me it’s about time under tension combined with effort and I no longer practice explosiveness. My intention was to train my legs but the dumbbell area was crowded, so I kept in the functional area stretching splits between pull up sets.

Starting from the moment I woke up, I heard the narrator in my head describing the experience I would write later, “oh, he’s back” I thought, surely it was triggered by me writing what I wrote yesterday. “Should I stop writing so the narrator in my head goes away again?” I pondered, but then thought the real challenge is to find presence and to write about what you experienced later.

Despite this commitment, the voice in my head was ever present except in work and in yoga, and I notice it is here where I can describe my experience. The narrator in my head was busy narrating my bike ride yet I remember almost nothing about it: ah, I also had to find a bike a the next nearest station but recalling that required effort. I recall leaving the bike at the station close to work and running to cross the street at the green light, “and then, as usual, I get the green light just as I leave the bike and I run across the street, questioning again if this is sign or coincidence” (as I write this I notice: this happens because of the synchronization of the street lights along the path which I bike. I get the green pedestrian crossing as I leave the bike by running the red light behind me, which I usually do).

So then I started arguing with myself “oh could you just stop narrating everything you do?”, the next thought and that’s when I knew I would write about this argument later “Ok, notice the breath”, couple of deep breaths and I was present again. Couple of breaths and I’m present now, just describing the experience brought me back to the storm of thoughts which are fortunately not unpleasant but definitely not useful or necessary. It’s just turning down the volume on radio ego.

Work is work but today I got to brainstorm ideas with the bosses and my designer colleague whom I also greatly respect and admire, I was engaged and collaborative and it was a pleasant impromptu 2h meeting. After this we grabbed lunch with most of the team at the nearest restaurant which has a very modest menu for an inflated price due to the zone, and I found myself chatty and asking good questions and opening topics naturally, even finding moments to be funny. I don’t know how or why this happens to me, most of the time I’m sullen or abstracted away but today I was present at lunchtime and I enjoyed that a lot.

I had reserved a yoga class with Nidia at 17:00 and I nearly missed it because I was so focused on work. I left running and was lucky enough to get the last functional bike from the station, and I sped to class when I should have left ten minutes earlier, I ran all the red lights I could but I was aware enough to remember the police almost always has a car stationed at a street light which is very badly synchronized with the next one, so if you respect it you will have to wait a long time at the red light at the avenue.

I arrived with two minutes to spare and quickly made my way into the dressing room to get changed. I entered the classroom and the teacher came right behind me. The room was warm and we all sweat like pigs, but it’s difficult to convey just how much I sweat, I leave puddles behind and sweat drops are constantly dripping to the point where I’ve given up trying to wipe myself off, I just leave the towel on the mat and I do my practice. I wipe of occasionally by lying on the towel and rocking slightly from side to side.

After class I spoke with the teacher and I expressed interest on the new sequence that she will start soon. She writes an opening message for the class, often related to the season covering a related topic. This month, for example was about letting go as the leaves of autumn drop off from trees. She said that next month’s topic was about finding your inner light. I like that she writes it herself yet I have found no reproach in her messages. They might be airy or ambiguous, but there’s nothing objectionable and it’s always a positive message. This might seem self-evident in a yoga teacher, but you wouldn’t believe the amount of bullshit-misinformation-ego-inflation I have heard from yoga teachers. Keeping the message free from an agenda by sticking to yoga’s tenets (Yamas and Niyamas) which are really the perennial virtues with an embodiment spin.

This is for me clearly the most intense class of Madrid, despite having no handstands or fancy jump backs she manages to challenge you in incredibly difficult poses while pleading you to stretch stretch stretch into infinity and my body seems to simply obey her orders. Her sequences are also very original, there are many new sequences that I haven’t tried in seven years of practice in dozens of studios. Since starting practice seven years ago I’ve lived in Montreal, Toronto, Puebla, Cancún, Barcelona and Madrid and I visited Mexico City enough to also count it in, the number of teachers I’ve had is probably in the low hundreds. There’s “original” sequences but they are usually poorly thought out by inexperienced people, I’ve seen Nidia iterate on the monthly sequence as she sees it in action, removing stuff that is confusing or doesn’t flow nicely, it’s endearing to see someone care about their craft and put time into something nobody pays her for. Ok teachers have a standard class, good teachers have a repertoire of good classes, you would think that great teachers are great at reading the room and improvising but this is not the case, great teachers simply know what the fuck they are doing and can explain the reason for the sequence. They might change parts of a sequence depending on the reading they get from the room, if this can be called improvisation.

Anyways, if yesterday I wrote about Laren, today I write about Nidia. I left the studio and the streets were wet from the rain. I got the last bike at the station (again!) and made it home had my smoke and sat down to write. I finished writing this at 20:30. 70min for 1200 words.

Closing thoughts: the challenge is not to shut down the narrator by arguments, but to turn the volume down by the observation of breath if the narrator makes an appearance. To repress is folly. I must continue writing, I notice a lot of stuff by doing it, yet I detract from lived experience by narrating my experience to myself.