Yoga and Blackberry-picking

Yoga and blackberries, may not be the obvious combination. But the time is now ripe (in the UK at least) to put the two together.

Timing is everything in the land of blackberry picking. It is utterly crucial to success. Last year the time came and went, and I was left bereft of a freezer of hand-picked smoothy fodder. The smoothy maker was relegated to the dud-kitchen equipment drawer to gather dust. This year though, I have remembered!

There is something very wonderful in the act of blackberry picking; something that takes us right back into the heart of Yoga. Yoga being in essence about unity, of ourselves, within ourselves, and rooted in the physical world.

Like the silence that accompanies an amazing meal: that delicious hush that takes away conversation, as if it never occurred in the first place. A quiet concentration that envelops the whole experience, so the only sound is the soft crackle of footsteps on woody stems, and the rustle of unseen birds deep within the briar patch. The subtle breath. The movement from bush to bush. This trance-like calming of the senses that so often overwhelm and pollute our peace. The power of the senses concentrates into an silent outer gaze of the eyes.

The act of picking requires a balletic poise and grace to avoid tumbling headlong into the thorns. The desire to avoid hurt and harm. That unity of body and mind into common purpose. The best and sweetest berries always hiding shyly beneath the skirts of layered leaves. They require a perseverance to seek them out. An awareness of the force needed to gently prise them away, and when to leave them. They require an openness and flexibility of mind. Beyond them the ones that may never be reached, touched, tasted, appreciated.

And finally the deep glowing black mounds, drawing us towards them, like torches in the green. Such clusters of beauty, succulence. Each berry reminding us of our earliest blackberry beginnings. The morular childhoods, we have forgotten. But seeing them along the old railway line, I am awakened to remember the natural beauty that surrounds us, that is us, and the rhythmns that we move to. Nothing else seems to exist except the moment-by-moment unfolding of noticing and picking. The chitta vritti (mind waves) calm at last.

And on some other levels, we remember the preciousness of things and not wasting them; the importance of only taking what we need, when the time is right. We leave the unripe to the elements. We feel the gratitude that this cycle continues on, and that whether we gather or leave the fruit, next year more will miraculously grow in its place. Will we be there to accept that gift?