My Happy Place

 I carry my happy place in my head. It sits there just behind my eyes and when I stop and

breathe in deeply, I have learned I can sometimes make it appear.

In the pose of a swan, I rest. Sat back on my haunches, my ears covered by my

outstretched arms, all sound around me dulled , other than the percussive beating of my

heart, the rhythm gradually slowing as my body rests. I breathe into the tiny cave my body

has made. A triangle of darkness in which my only task is to breathe. In this posture, I feel

safe and cocooned, the world cut off and unseen.

In these brief moments of stillness, where worries can get lost in the darkness, and dreams

drift overhead like passing clouds on a late summer afternoon, I am happy.

At first my mind takes me on journeys close to home; to the day ahead and like the

concerned parent, reminds me of all I need to remember on a merry go round loop of lists

and nags. And then like the school bully it drags me back unwillingly to images of stories I

have tried to forget, the eruption of memories singeing and burning like volcanic flow I am

too slow to outrun.

And then given time, it becomes like a balloon caught on a sudden gust of wind, and simply

flies free, my thoughts tumbling and floating through clouds unrestrained. Here the

kaleidoscope of images, dance in and out of my brain popping and bursting in a colourful

jumble, taking me on journeys around the world and offering me the universe with every

inhalation of breathe, before bringing me to stillness.

It is in this stillness beneath it all I find my happy place waiting. No need for questions, no

need for answers, no need for anything more than just to be. A fraction of time in which my

body’s energy joins the energy of the universe and I find my place in the world.

And then, as my body reluctantly comes out from the pose, my ears allow the world to enter

my consciousness and the rhythm of my breathing is lost to the rhythm the day ahead. In

the afterglow of my resting, my happiness settles and melts into sea of contentment into

which I swim all day.

I searched my lifetime to find my happy place, yet all I have to do is breathe to go there.

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