The Perfect Balance Between Yin And Yang
I was up early this morning because I had arranged to speak with my friend Ange on Facetime at 11.30 UK time; that is 6.30 here… And the internet had disappeared in our apartment!
I made my down to café Ole at the marina, hopeful full connection would be available…!
The new day was cool and fresh; the roads wet from some recent rain…
Everywhere was very quiet… Good Friday, a national holiday. I arrived at the deserted marina, there was just one guy picking up the fallen leaves in the car park, otherwise not a soul about.
It was glorious; still, hazy blue, boats resting… I felt again the freedom of my inner child; a sunny summer morn when I would be up with the lark and go outside, all alone, barefoot on the grass…
I remember a holiday in Cornwall, I wasn’t very old, ten or eleven, or maybe even younger, because I hadn’t started to go running in the mornings…
I set my alarm for 6am each day, so that I could go walking in the lanes all alone before breakfast, the summer sun rising…
And all throughout my life, I have loved getting up early, seeing the sun rise. It has always given me the joyous feeling of possibility… light arriving out of the dark… I’ve seen it happen, that wonderful space where the yin, yang balance hangs in perfect harmony beyond separation, beyond the swings of pain and pleasure.
I’ve seen it on summer mornings and many winter mornings too… setting off to run in the pitch black and then the sun rising through tree tops, or out of the sea in Eastbourne; or when I was training to run an 100k race that was taking place in April, I trained with my friend Jim throughout one long, very cold winter… We ran a long way during these long winter months, regularly running for five hours at a time…
We would meet outside The lamb pub at 6am and run around the town and along the seafront in the dark; waiting for dawn, seeing the orange semi circle of sun as it appeared out of the sea, and then heading up onto the downs to welcome the glorious joyous arrival of another day…
And so seeing this outside me in the perfect rhythm of nature, I have known that it exists within me too; the perfect balance of light and dark where there is endless joy…
So within, without; and so it follows, that whatever we are seeing outside ourselves is always a reflection of our inner state…
Today as I settled at a table alone in Ole, ready to chat to Ange, I could feel the joyous rising of my spirit in celebration of the dawning of another new day and all the possibility ahead of me….
As we spoke, the marina started to come to life; and by 7.45 the staff at Café Ole were sweeping and cleaning and readying the space for the day ahead… Just before 8am opening time a few customers arrived for a first cup of coffee; and when Ange and I had finished speaking, I hesitated, the thought of a cup of real coffee tempting me…
I reached for my phone thinking I might text Anadi – who I had left sleeping - to see if he would join me…
And then didn’t, we had a plan to run ten miles together, and so I made my way across the car park, turned left to head up the road for home…. And coming towards me was Anadi !
We came back to the café and sat enjoying coffee and pain au chocolat and one another’s company; 
the holiday feel pervading the day… there felt a timelessness and ease to our own day too, even though we are not part of the holiday and not really celebrating Easter as such…
We wandered home and then ran our ten mile run; which flowed easily; we ran and talked, and talked and ran; It is strange to think that 144 days ago, I was taking my first steps back from injury, and now that is a distant memory and I am running with more freedom and balance than I was feeling before my injury occurred…
Greg Funnel, of Optimum Muscle Care, who helped me heal, is so right… He describes the Achilles tendon injury as the re building injury…. It took me right back to basics; so that to run again I needed to rebuild right from the bottom up…
And so create a very firm foundation….
