the long hold #1
a new series of short notes on edges, stillness, and time
Hi pals,
In the tumult of 2024, I found unexpected solace in yin yoga. Unlike the fluid, dynamic sequence of vinyasa or other yang styles of yoga, yin is a slow practice that asks you to stay put—settling into passive poses for longer than feels natural. Three principles guide this: finding a comfortable edge, seeking stillness in the pose, and holding the pose for minutes at a time.
At some point, these ideas seeped off the mat. I began noticing where they showed up in Life At Large. This leads me to wonder: what if I actively pay attention to these three things as a counterbalance to the ever-quickening pace of modern living?
Let’s find out.
finding an edge
Let’s start at the end. I spent the first half of this week enjoying the slightly balmier climes of Porto—a welcome reprieve from London’s February chill. I returned feeling buoyed by a mini break that had the sedative effects of a week-long trip. That is, until the midnight Stansted Express service halted outside Hackney due to signal failure, reversed into a closed Overground station, said idle for 45 minutes until TfL staff arrived to unlock said station, at which point, at 2am, we were politely invited to disembark the train and ‘continue our onward journey’—cue all-out Uber warfare among us stranded passengers. This could have—should have—brought me to the edge of my patience. I could have huffed and cursed like everyone around me, but instead, I found myself clinging to the calm that I had hauled back up the Atlantic with me. What would my audible frustration have changed? It felt… rewarding not to let the disruption throw off four days of hard-won recentering. Though I won’t lie, I do look forward to firing off a very strongly worded email, one I sincerely hope does not find TfL well.
seeking stillness
I’m currently feeling into my nature-slowness era, as C.J. Hauser describes it:
It is the opposite of the kinds of drama that used to make me feel reassuringly alive. But I think I’m finally getting it. This kind of living isn’t the absence of story or of life. It’s just a story happening so slowly you can’t really see it taking place. It’s something that is plodding along, changing, and growing at such a rate that most people lose interest in it. But I think it’s there. I think it’s possible. And if such happiness exists, I believe it is a slow-growing thing. I think that sustained, lived-in happiness, to the naked eye, might look a lot like stillness.
taking time
I’ve written before about how time bends on long train journeys, but in the air, it feels even more malleable. Flying is ruled by time, of course: check-in two hours before, gate info one hour before, gate closes at 30 minutes. But once you step on the aircraft, you enter a kind of time vacuum. You’re still aware of the clock—how long is left of the flight, your body telling you it’s time to nap or pee (though flying disrupts even those reliable biological cues). And, of course, all rules around appropriate meal and drinking times are abandoned as soon as you enter the terminal. But at 30,000 feet, we’re briefly suspended from the tyranny of industrial (read: productive) time. No deadlines, no notifications. Just a stretch of malleable nowness—yours to spend as you choose.
Where are you finding your edge / stillness / time at the moment? I’d love to know.
