Sunday, 3 June 2012

Eat Pray Blah blah blah...


So yes it is coming to the end of my second week and much like last week my inspiration hasn't soared and my downward facing dog is more greatly resembling a mountain range than standing proud like a majestic mountain peak. And so I am a woman in search of my drive, I know I love the feeling of doing yoga but by the end of the day my mind is saying bed and sleep not cat and cow! So it has lead me to this, another round of Eat Pray Love with my beloved potato bake in my belly and cat curled up to my side, it (the film not the food or the cat), alongside a little research on my part has brought to me some realisations. Since Julia Roberts personified those some 352 pages in order to reconstruct Elizabeth Gilbert's adventure women worldwide have taken it upon themselves to 'find themselves', every year it seems at least a few hundred women (perhaps the token male) pack their bags and follow in her courageous footsteps, it actually got me to thinking though, because these people who, with book tucked under arm, follow someone else’s adventure instead of beginning their own. They seek to relive her experience but forget that while trying to follow someone else’s dream they're never going to find their own, besides shouting Sanskrit and waving your arms about is not everyone’s saving grace... who knew?

And at last I have decided to take the plunge, I have no interest in following someone else’s dream, I want to travel the world, I too have a suitcase full of lonely planet magazines and torn out photos of places I want to visit before I die, I've already started but I am not yet anywhere near the end, I know it can take you travelling the farthest distances to find out the most trivial things about yourself. It took me travelling to New Zealand to realise I love English Breakfast Tea and being on a transit flight to Singapore to discover yoga and it's divine intervention into stopping me prizing open a door and jumping after 2 hours of a screaming toddlers tantrums 5 rows in front of me... this was my discovery of yoga from a 50 year old woman in the toilet queue, 1 mile high, on a 12 hour flight, at least a year before I knew anything of this book. Back to my point on taking the plunge, because it is only me after all who is actually stopping me from doing everything I hoped and taking 20 minutes from my day to perfect my Warrior, so I’m buying my mat (I’ll have to let you know how that goes)!

I know good ol' Lizzy Gilbert is a genius source of inspiration and I have no end of respect for this woman, and I don't much care for why you discovered yoga as long as it lead you to some part of yourself you'd lost or were losing, perhaps simply never knew you had! But I hope you never follow someone else’s dream and that you only ever have the strength to do what makes you happy.


Forget Eat Pray Love, bring on Eat Discover Meditate!