Yoga Pathways

I didn’t want to go out.

It was cold. It was wet. I was tired in that deep, low-battery way where even putting socks on feels like an unreasonable request. Every part of me wanted to stay in, stay warm, stay still.

But this is what I do now. I go anyway.

So I pulled on my coat and went for my daily orchard walk — the one that usually sorts me out whether I want it to or not.

Three-quarters of the way in is my bench.

It sits right at the top of a field, looking out over fields as far as the eye can see. This is where I always stop. I sit. I breathe. I usually leave a rambling voice note for my friend Liz, saying something profound like “I didn’t want to come out but I’m glad I did” or “why do I always forget that this helps?”

It’s not just a bench.
It’s a pause.
A reset.
A small but mighty act of self-care.

As I reached the bottom of the field, I could see — from very far away — that someone was sitting on it.

Someone was on my bench.

This has never happened before.

I slowed my pace, hoping they’d get the hint and leave. (They did not.)
I slowed some more. (Still there.)
And then — and this is where I must confess — I started crying.

Actual tears.

Because all I wanted was to sit on my bench. To rest. To do the thing I had mentally planned to do. And now, apparently, that was being taken from me.

At this point I was essentially in the Goldilocks fairytale, trudging up the hill thinking:
Who’s been sitting in on my bench… and it’s not just right.

I could feel the injustice of it all rising. I was tired. I’d forced myself out. I’d done the “good” thing. And now even this small comfort was unavailable.

Very yogic. Very evolved.

When I finally reached the bench, I realised the person sitting on it was the daughter of one of my very good friends.

And in an instant — an actual instant — everything changed.

Relief washed through me. Proper relief. We were genuinely happy to see each other. We chatted. We smiled. The world righted itself again.

Equilibrium restored.

I sat on the bench after all.

Walking home, I couldn’t stop laughing at myself. Crying over a bench. A perfectly ordinary bench. The drama of it all.

But here’s the thing.

It wasn’t really about the bench.

The bench had become the symbol of rest.
Of regulation.
Of doing the thing that helps when I’m depleted.

And when you’re tired, cold, and running on empty, even the smallest disruption can feel enormous.

Yoga doesn’t make us immune to this. If anything, it just helps us notice it more quickly.

I hadn’t lost the bench — I’d lost the idea of how the moment was supposed to go. My mind had raced ahead, written the ending, and decided it was unbearable before reality had even arrived.

And reality, as it turned out, was kinder than the story I told myself.

Practice doesn’t promise that things will go our way.
It doesn’t guarantee empty benches or perfectly timed pauses.

What it does do — slowly, quietly — is build the capacity to be with what happens next. To recover more quickly. To laugh at ourselves sooner. To find balance again after we wobble.

Sometimes discipline gets us out the door.
And grace meets us there.

Even if it’s sitting on our bench.