Stretching in the fjord light
On a forty-minute floor practice I do most mornings beside the window — and the way the early Bergen light changes the work.
The apartment looks out over a slim grey arm of the fjord and the light here, for most of the year, is a wet kind of grey. I do not love the light. I have learned to work inside it. Most mornings I unroll a mat in front of the long window and do forty minutes of slow stretching, the kind of practice that is half yoga and half what an old physiotherapist taught me, and the grey light is the only company I want for it.
I have tried doing the practice in the evening. The body is more pliable then, the day's accumulation having softened the joints, and you can drop deeper into the stretches faster. But the evening practice does not stay in me the way the morning one does. By an hour later I have lost it. The morning practice carries through the day. Whatever is true about the body in the early light is true in a different way.
What is in the forty minutes
Mostly long holds. Pigeon for three minutes each side. A wide-leg seated fold for four minutes. A reclined twist for two minutes each direction. A long supported bridge. A long savasana at the end. The shapes are not interesting. The duration is the practice.
Forty minutes is enough that the body stops bracing against the work. The first ten minutes is negotiation — the hips arguing, the lower back making small complaints, the breath catching when a stretch goes beyond the comfortable. By minute twenty the negotiation is over. The body has agreed. The remaining time is when the work actually happens.
On the light through the window
By February the light here is so weak that the room stays slightly grey all morning. By June the light is so persistent that the room is bright at four in the morning and again at midnight. The body, on the mat, takes notice of this. In winter the practice is slower, more interior, more closed. In summer it is more open, faster, lighter. I do not adjust the practice on purpose. The practice adjusts itself.
Forty minutes of slow work, with whatever light is available, has become the thing I count on. It is the part of the day that I will protect against most other claims. If a meeting is offered for that time, I move the meeting. If a child wakes early, I do the practice quietly anyway. The practice has earned its protection by being what holds the rest of the day together, and the grey light, after all these years, has become the light I most associate with my body being in the right place.