Following the Muse

My day today seemed to pass quickly, a simple sequence of meal, transportation, yoga, transportation, repeat.

After breakfast I drove north up Columbia Pike about 13 miles to a new yoga studio run by a young woman I met in one of my regular classes.  I took Chris's morning class and then we talked about classes that might work out for me to teach.

By the time I got home it was time for lunch, and soon after that Pam and I headed over to the Silver Spring studio of Willow Street Yoga for a 2 hour hamstring workshop.  Maria, the teacher, is one of our favorites, and also the teacher in whose class I met Chris.

When we got home, it was about time to fix dinner, which included fried green tomatoes from our garden as well as corn and sweet potatoes from the farmer's market.

I was very tired, my energy low.  I sat down to read and soon dozed off.  I wasn't motivated to work on anything major from my list of things to do.  The one thing that reenergized me was playing the piano.  

Lately my playing has been a mix of jazz standards and free improvisation.  I play what comes to me. I play based on what I know, but also just explore things - taking the music where it seems to want to go.  I'm not thinking much, but am letting my deeper mind learn what works through the experience of doing it.  It is very much an experience in the present.  

I've played piano nearly all my life.  In just the past year or so, my playing has become much freer, much more interesting.  I know this is a result of my yoga and meditation practices, which have given me a new relationship with the thinking mind and the judgmental right/wrong mind.  When I'm playing, those parts of mind are stowed away, and I'm connected with a deeper, freer, more intuitive part of mind.