A subtle overhaul
A rather old wrist watch came with me on a once-in-a-lifetime visit to a yoga centre in India. It got a little more actively involved than I'd intended.
A couple of decades ago, I stopped wearing a wrist watch. As an anxious person with a morbid fear of being late, ditching the watch was a way of freeing myself from the leash of timekeeping and clock-watching.
Recently you may notice a small silver watch has reappeared on my wrist. It’s not the most practical of watches - it’s too loose, frequently slipping and twisting round my arm; the clock face is tiny and hard to make out, and the glass scratched; the inconveniently subtle colouring of the hands and the number markings makes it difficult to read the time except in it the very brightest of daylight. Hence I can often give you an approximation of the time - it may be ten to two, or ten past ten, but I’m never quite sure which.
Nevertheless it’s a mechanical watch and it belonged to my grandma. No batteries required. Each day I wind it up, the ever-so-tiny wheel on its side grinding sharply against my bony finger joint, exactly shaped for this task. Raised to my ear, I check for the spritely tick-ticking and wonder at the intricate mechanisms hidden inside.
For a long time, this watch was out of action. Simply an heirloom of no monetary value, kept for sentimental reasons in the back of a drawer. That is until a kind, skilled and incredibly patient watchmaker and craftsperson who lives a few hundred miles away offered to pop it open and take a look inside. Little did he know the overhaul of this petite timepiece would become a labour of love, as he rebuilt the mechanisms from scratch, recreating the tiny springs and pins and gears, tweaking and tinkering until it performed its original function, give or take a few minutes here or there.
Some of you reading this will know I recently spent nine days at Isha Yoga Centre near Coimbatore in India. While there, as is recommended for physical and psychological wellbeing and to increase spiritual receptivity, I visited the ritual baths to immerse myself in a pool of energised water. Maybe you can imagine my horror afterwards when I noticed I’d left the darn watch on my wrist and both of us had been submerged.
I’d been completely distracted - it was my first visit to the pool and I had no idea how to do this ritual bathing thing. Feeling entirely out of place in unfamiliar surroundings, hoping not to make a fool of myself or offend the locals, I followed the basic instructions, swapping my clothes for a sizeable cotton gown and a stylish hairnet, showering and then making my way down a steep series of stone steps into the chilly water, doing my best to conceal my shivers, copying the movements and actions of the other women present.
Bathing as a sacred act, performed for its healing, cleansing and restorative powers, is found across cultures, geographies, religions and through history. The experience of entering the baths did move me in an unexpected way - it was one of several occasions during my ashram visit where I found my eyes spontaneously filling with tears. Something intangible rising up in me and passing through.
It wasn’t until I’d left the baths that I looked down at my arm and spotted the watch, still encircling my arm, its face now damp and misted. For a while afterwards the ticking sounded erratic, frenzied even. On winding the watch, it no longer kept time and instead ran fast. I feared all the hard work and effort invested in its repair and refurbishment had been undone.
There is a happy ending though. Eventually it dried out - the glass cleared, the rhythm of the ticks normalised. Strangely, it seems to keep time even more accurately than before. Am I seeing things, or does the face offer up a slight shimmer that wasn’t previously there? Did the energised waters iron out any remaining mechanical glitches, or am I simply very lucky? Who knows. Maybe, as it did for me, the experience at the yoga centre served as a subtle internal overhaul, acting on levels both visible and unseen, in ways that will forever be hard to put into words… much as I will try.
If you feel you are in need of your own internal overhaul, I’d recommend the Inner Engineering course offered by Isha Yoga Foundation and Sadhguru. Contact me for a referral code that gives you 20% off.
If you’re looking for gentle hatha yoga classes or one-to-one yoga therapy in Edinburgh, come and see me! yvonnecaplan.yoga.
glad to hear you're keeping time together