Theloopylululog

Do you remember the time?

No, not the MJ song darling.

Time, when living came with effortless ease.

When slow living was not a concept that wellness retreats and resorts hidden in the mountains’ keep sold to us for a kidney or two.

When heading out for a walk was as natural as breathing. When it was not an activity, just something we did for free without the fear of our knees degenerating someday on our 43rd birthday.

When we simply walked with purpose and joy no matter where we were headed without the fear of getting lost in smog or smoke, or the fear of getting caught in the middle of the madness that has become the bane of life these days: traffic.

When exercise was not separately scheduled from our day-to-day activities. When we moved because our life revolved around things and people that didn’t reside within a 4.5 inch screen.

When sitting on the floor was an invigorating exercise for the whole body, mind, and soul. We sat to eat and rest; two activities around which our entire lives were centred as if they were the sun and moon of our existence.

When sitting on the floor was meditation in itself, not a posture or asana we force our stiff legs to get into, grumbling that it comes with a difficulty rating that would put the Olympic gymnastics team to shame.

When music was a part and parcel of life. Birdsong, children playing, hawkers selling their wares, and someone in the vicinity learning to sing or dance or play an instrument providing entertainment through the day. For everything else, there was Radio Ceylon.

When yoga and meditation and time spent on silent contemplation, self-reflection and self-inquiry were not something you had to carve out from the static busyness, we now call life. Integrated into the main stream of our life, as we breathed life into our mundane existence.

When we naturally woke up with the sun and actually “did” life as the sun went about its activities for the day too. Things slowed down as the sun began to set.

When bodies actually knew what circadian rhythm was, not as a biohack but as the natural way of life.

When life was yoga. Not a recipe to become a pretzel on a mat that is priced as if it is prime real estate.

Before yoga became the monstrosity it is now.

There was a time when if you lived well, in alignment with yourself, in alignment with nature, life itself was yoga.

How many of you knew that yoga is all about sthiram and sukham, meaning effortless ease. Life was all about effortless ease.

How many of us remember those times?

We’ve reached a point in life when we’ve led ourselves to become machines where there’s an alarm to remind us of everything we need to do, instead of us just moving through life with ease, without effort.

Now even yogasana has become just an activity where you put your body through the worst and then call it prayer, meditation and exercise.

Really?

Power yoga, really? What is that? Yoga is all about letting go of power, letting your ego go, putting everything aside and just dissolve into the flow of Nature, thus finding the one thing we all seek in vain: Purpose.

Remember the time that had faded into oblivion?

When time was just time, we didn’t have to categorize it into slow or fast. We just aligned with movement—the movement of our bodies, the movement of our nature, the movement of nature itself.

There was a time when the movement of our nature aligned and integrated with movement of nature itself with effortless ease.

Ironical, isn’t it?

We’ve taken the things that used to be the very fabric of an ordinary day, severed them from our lives, and then bought them back as luxury “wellness” products.

​We took sthiram and sukham—steadiness and ease, the quiet art of simply inhabiting a body—and turned it into another high-performance metric. We outsourced our circadian rhythms to sleep trackers, and the ambient symphony of our daily lives to curated frequency based playlists through noise-canceling headphones.

​When did squatting become a mobility routine? And walking about getting the steps?

When did stillness stop being a natural pause and solitude the day’s yawn as the evening light faded?

Why did we stop meeting the world as we were?

That is what I miss.

A time when we didn’t compete with the planet and its gifts to become the most advanced species of the universe, losing ourselves and the essence that make us humans on the way.

Someday, Time will stop us and ask, was it worth it?

I hope we have an answer.