As well as saying goodbye to my freedom during lockdown, I also said goodbye to my fitness. At least the fitness I had. For a while there, I mourned the losses until I was forced to look to a new way of relating to my bones.

There were more walks, very slow and kind yoga poses without sequences or flow, done to simply keep my muscles and joints ventilated during lockdown. Having two young kids out of school, I had no strength at one point so I fell to my knees and starting the slowest gentlest cat/cows of my life, just to pay homage to my poor spine, my backbone, my centre which was shifting like the ground beneath it. I finally surrendered to my weakness, to being truly out of control. I soon realised that the control had always been illusion.

As always yoga held me during my quietest, most vulnerable moments, when I felt like my insides had been scooped out. No brain to think, no strength to hold up my body or mind, just a willingness to let go and allow this Covid tsunami to sweep over me. Often I smiled with the peace of it all, sometimes I struggled, but I always knew deep down this was bigger than me. This was a tectonic plate shifting, a volcano reforming the ground, a storm to shake off the old leaves and we are all waiting to see what is left behind.

My ‘fitness’ has certainly gone but I wonder now what that really means. I am loving being kinder and gentler to my bones, my muscles, my joints. Smaller, sweeter, kinder and gentler seems to be the flow of my particular river right now. How about yours?