2/14/07 The Silver Hour
After a lifetime of rising early at first light and quickly getting right to my work, this winter I have a new and unexpected pattern. Instead of waking at 5 a.m. by my "busy mind," I am sleeping until 7:30 or so. For a "early" morning riser this is quite unusual.
I wake naturally (a feat in itself) and lie quietly in bed and then reach for my book and read for a half hour or so. What a luxury to start my day according to my bodies natural rhythm! I typically reach for "Meditations for the Mat" by Rolf Gates, a book of yoga meditations. While I am waiting for my left knee to heal (I injured it in November stacking a cord and a half of firewood) I cannot physically practice yoga every day, but I can work my practice at the interior level in the meantime.
I realize now that for the past 30+years I had felt a deep sense of urgency to get up promptly and start working and keep working until I dropped at the end of the day, whether I had had enough sleep or not. I have never been one to sleep in, in any sense or shape since I was a teenager. After all these years of intensity and over-working I am sleeping like never before. (I imagine I am still recovering from 6 years of carrying a load that would have dropped many a women.)
I find it interesting that my sleeping pattern has so drastically changed of its own accord. It also reminds me of the early 1970's when my son's were little - another time when I was not stessed by owning a business and managing it all alone. (The early child rearing years were a period of concentrating on just one job - raising my sons and keeping house - a healthy period for me.)
The early morning of this wintery February morning has a softness and stillness that is like the ambiance of church. For all of the anxiousness of the previous months and years, this period of calm is a blessing.
