Silencio

So today was my 12 hours of silence. I woke up at 6 with no alarm which is very odd for me and saw that it was time to start. Tim was still in bed. Since we couldn't speak to each other, I moved over toward him and laid my head on his shoulder. Eventually he got up to take a shower - he was going up to his parents' house in Dover, Ohio to do some target shooting (ahimsa). I listened to him shower and fought the urge to fall back asleep and the urge to turn on the Saturday morning t.v. I listened to the animals breathing their sleep noises. Moving around to reposition themselves as I did. I propped myself up in bed and looked out the back window out into the ravine that is at it's most lush green right now. That occupied a good deal of time. Eventually Tim went out to Panera. I had told him the night before that if I had to be silent all day that I wanted a cinnamon roll and some coffee to start the day. He's so sweet - he brought it to me in bed with the admonishment that I not get any sugary crumbs in bed. No problem - Lily cleaned all of those up.

After he left I propped up a bunch of pillows to do pranayama exercise. I have started my day like this before and I always feel invigorated. I just started with some deep breathing (I've got all day here) and then did my favorite exercise which is 15:10:5 breathing and then return to breathing so that you hardly feel like you are breathing at all. It's really wonderful.

My feet hit the floor at 9:30. What a leisurely wake up routine! My first priority was to brush the dogs because they have just been shedding and shedding. They are not used to coming when I whistle so that was a challenge and I usually tell them "good girl" and "stay" quite a bit. But we used non-verbal communication. I think they understood what was going on. The only problem was that our new next door neighbor came home and she wanted to say hello, but all I could do was wave. I felt so bad that I wrote her a note and took it over and dropped it in her letter box.

Then I came in and did my first of many meditations for the day. I meditated so much that by the end of the day I could just immediately come to it and quiet my mind. I did have one strange meditation where I kept hearing this voice with an odd accent was talking to me telling me that I was one and that I was part of the one. It was quite interesting. For a lot of the afternoon the dogs and I did what we might do on a normal Saturday which was chill out on the couch, except for surfing for some bad movie to watch I looked out the French doors at the ravine (there tend to be lots of mosquitoes and since I knew I was going to practice more I didn't want to put on mosquito repellent.)

I went back to my yoga room and did a super duper long yin practice. I couldn't decide if I was going to do primary. Well, after yin I did a 40 minute meditation. By this time, my mind was completely silent.

After that I felt so open, my mind at rest, I figured I had to do a little of the primary series, even though today is my typical day of rest. So I did a very modified version, but I found it very easy to let go. It was a completely different practice from my normal practice in a led class or even mysore. I didn't strive for anything, except to let go completely and to stay completely with the breath. At the end I did another short meditation before savasana.

After practice I coaxed the dogs outside and grabbed a San Pelligrino and lit every single citronella candle out on the back deck. The dogs ran around and did their little fighting show for me and I sat and admired the trees with the sun going down behind them. I noticed it wasn't very bright, sort of dim. Finally a bug or crawled down my shirt and I decided it was time for a shower. I got dressed and started doing laundry since it was technically past my 12 hours. I figured even in a monastery they do chores. As I was gathering the laundry together Tim came home. I started shouting "Tim, Tim, Tim." I told him about my day and he told me about his and then I turned on the computer to blog about my day of silence. Namaste