The yoga of cleaning bhaji

Deep breathing. Mind racing. Come on, you have to do the surya namaskar today. Mind responding.. no, there is no point, go , lie down back. Mind responding.. come on.. move the hands from your sides.. clasp your hands. Body does not move. Hands do not move. Fear enters. Mind says.. come on.. bring your hands to the front of your chest to start over. Body is stiff. Only five more to go. The other eight have taken too long. Time is useless though.

Work to be done.  Day to be planned.  Come on , breathe in and focus. Get through the next five rounds. Bring your hands up and over and bend. Body cannot move though. Eventually, hands move. The next five are done.. anxiety that they are not being done properly, gratitude that you get through even though you started off not thinking you can finish.



Bhaji is green
Bourda market. It is easy to walk through without thinking. Mind not too focussed.  Lots of colours on the grey morning. 
Feeling heavy and not concentrating. Bhaji on the list. Carcass too much over the last few days. Sugar too much over the last few days.  It is easy not to think about colours. Green reminds about plants and growth. Green is thinking about possibilities and trying not to feel overwhelmed by failure to deal with those possibilities. Careless remarks on one day result in some problems. There is anxiety always about results of actions and the energy consumed in wondering about every action. Green is hoping that it would be possible to fix things later.


Bhaji can be too perfect
The bhaji is good. No holes, green leaves, each leaf is kept, none yellow , all firm.  As with a lot of things, I am sometimes swayed by the seller rather than the quality of the goods and the woman who sells this,, well I have bought things which I have not really needed but then you can overeat vegetables without the same kind of worry about cake or ice cream.
There is a thing though, that if the bhaji does not have 'wan wan hole den it is fertiliser/pesticide' bhaji. Even though my mind not focussing, I am lucky because as I clean the bhaji (remove leaves from stem) I do not get the metallic whiff that sometimes comes when the bhaji might have been too chemically nurtured.

One lesson learnt is that healthy body and healthy mind are related. It is not clear which comes first. Healthy body is easy to define, a body without pain and which could move easily and which does not feel as though it is always cringing in anticipation of some fight. Healthy mind though.. not so easy to define. Perhaps the ability to concentrate and focus, and learn new things and apply things well to real life issues.

So it is okay, these times, when there is no energy, when the body withdraws and the mind is sluggish in not being able to concentrate. There is no imperfection and no perfection. It is just how it is.


Bhaji wilts
My favourite bhaji is poi. The one which wilts the most. Eddoe Leaf, Saijan, Mustard, Pak Choy are good value for money. There is something about how a whole set of bhaji just 'melts down' to almost nothing but still tastes good.  Thinking that all the worries and the anxieties and the struggles are not really the essence of existence. Reminder earlier in the week to try meditation again. Trying to plan in all of this how to reduce those times when the dark clouds overwhelm, and also how to not be anxious in the good times about when the dark times will come again. Perhaps one way is not think of them separately as good moments and bad moments but just as they are and find a way of going through them.


Bhaji is predictable and good for you
Bhaji always taste good. A man had told me that he and his family had been poisoned after buying some which had too much chemicals. But Bhaji never disappoints. I like my bhaji with paneer.  Routine is supposed to be good for managing mental health.
Life though is not like that and there is this constant adjustment to things around and the routine things get lost. The times for high and low moods cannot be predicted. I used to worry about the triggers as a way of curing, but there are no definite triggers just ways of managing and also finding ways now of not being worrying too much.  One thing which is to do now is to avoid the unhealthy things which seem to offer cures. A big bowl of ice cream with chocolate cream biscuits instead of the yoga or even in addition to the yoga and crunching on two bags of cheese stix will not help.. but something seductive about these 'bad' things.


Bhaji cleaning can be good for you
So, a whole set of bhaji to pick the leaves from. Mindless task. A big pile to go down. Moving hands. Remembering when I used to run when there was a part where you stopped thinking of running and just felt the breeze on the face. So you can be useful, without thinking too much. Cleaning the bhaji. Ironing. Sharing information with people who ask. Always, some hope , some flicker that regardless of what, that functioning is possible. The rest will work itself out.