The chores can wait

Every day I try and do a little bit of yoga. Even if that’s only ten minutes squeezed in before the chaos of teatime, or the rush of getting ready for the day, I figure it counts. It’s better than no yoga. Today, though, I took a whole hour out . . . casting my eye around my very untidy bedroom, I decided that the task of righting the mess could wait. My body needed a good stretch more than my room needed to be neat.
After my yoga, coffee in hand and back at my desk I couldn’t help reflecting that it is little wonder my room is chaotic. At night it is a bedroom, by day it is an office (frequently with folders and paperwork spread on the bed and then dumped back on the desk when it comes to sleep time), a yoga mat is more often than not on the floor (just in case there is a chance for a practice) and there is a monumental pile of ironing on a chair in the corner (largely ignored). It is a lot to ask of a space, to make it work for three - if not four – activities.
When it comes to the body, we are forever “multi-tasking” though . . . fair enough we do tend to avoid swimming after eating (not because we’ll definitely get cramp and drown, just that it doesn’t feel great to be digesting a meal and splashing about) and do our best to focus on driving rather than phoning or texting. Yet every day, we push our bodies to perform repetitive and counter-productive tasks often at the same time. Answering the phone and working on the computer (shoulder in ear to pin the phone in place while we tighten our arms and hands to hit the correct keys), sitting forward on the edge of our seat, shoulders rounded as we search through documents or answer emails. We can even suffer excruciating pain in our wrists (or even our thumbs) from overdoing scrolling on smart phones.
We can’t really change the way modern society works, or office practices . . . but we can make sure we make space in our day for movement – whether that is a stroll in our lunch hour or some time on the yoga mat – or five minutes to sit back, rest, reset our posture and breathe. It’s a good use of time.  The emails can wait five minutes. And so can the untidy bedroom . . .