“Do your practice and all is coming.”
Sri K. Pattabhi Jois
founder of Ashtanga Yoga

My Summer schedule had started with two yoga classes selling-out in their first week. My cats were their old happy self again, making a full recovery after their teeth were cleaned under narcosis. The additional tests on the small one came back clean.
My eyes had improved for the first time in my life. A miracle the optometrist eagerly explained with “me getting close to 40”.
My hall was painted, thanks to my best friend who had sacrificed her Friday afternoon to help me. I hung up curtains in my bedroom and determined the rod could hold the weight. Big hooray for super glue, the path to victory over that impossible ceiling.

My painting friend had left and I had the rest of the evening to myself. I had even cancelled a date. It was a guy I should have stopped seeing a long time ago, but even if it had been Taylor Lautner himself, chances are I would have preferred to be alone.

“I’m going off-line,” I excused myself to my friend the Thinker on Twitter at 11pm. “I need time to think.”

Because how was I going to pay the unexpected bill for studio rent?
Compensate for the € 358,- I had paid at the vet?
Pay for the new batch of contact lenses for the next 6 months?

How to get my books published?

When was I going to give up and take a normal job and make a decent living like everybody else?

I looked through the blinds in my living room. Front and back, they were both see-through. Unexpectedly. In the highly unlikely event of a sex life, the lounge couch wouldn’t be an option unless I invested in extra screens. And faced a new Tool Time dilemma.

I opened a bottle of wine, installed myself for the TV. I was lucky! There was a Sex and the City marathon. I’m sure this was not the setting the Thinker had in mind when he cheerfully applauded my resolution to cook up a brilliant plan, but cold white wine and the highly successful NY columnist Carry Bradshaw were good symbols of success for me. And I already had the wine.

Now I know that for the story it would be really good if I somehow connected this women’s version of brainstorming to a brilliant plan. But I can’t. That night, all I could come up with was prostitution or a temp job, or a temp prostitute. I went to bed fatigued.

And then it happened! A small voice in the back of my head.
“Do your practice and all is coming.”

I had heard that sentence, had mocked at that sentence a zillion times and yet had never made the effort to think about it’s meaning. After all, what would a recently deceased Ashtanga yoga Guru have to say that could inspire me? I didn’t even agree with a lot of the teachings of Ashtanga yoga. yet at that moment, it sounded appealing.

ALL is coming.

Not just money to pay your bills. Not just a curtain that shields you from nosy eyes. Not just sold-out classes, not just bestsellers, not just more money that you can spend in a life time. No,  A L L  was coming!

Every morning I would wake up remembering all my dreams. I would smile and Twitter my prophecies, warning the world. I would buy my daily lottery ticket online in order to win some money for charity.
Then I would caress my Keira Knightley slim waiste line, shake my long silky smooth hair , and throw a wide smile at my cats who had been patiently waiting for me to get out of the bed.

So that night I decided, that was my plan: To do my practice. The practice of yoga for 28 days and then see what was coming.

Because regardless if the gift of foresight ever settled in or not, regardless if the guru had been right, or if my eyes ever improved: I could foresee one thing:

I was turning 39 in four weeks and having money to celebrate it would be very welcome. That I could then also show off my flawless splits and  superpowers at my party, and hit it off with Taylor Lautner and his fully equipped drill, would be merely a bonus.

Because if the latter didn’t work work out? There was always superglue.

 

 

LS Harteveld started her 4 week yoga regiment on Saturday June 25, 2011.