If it is appropriate
A life lesson I learned from the irreplaceable Rosina Bonsu who died on 02/02/2020.
I am lying on a yoga mat, legs intertwined and arms outstretced, on a large veranda in Agios Pavlos with about twenty others. Above our heads bambo slats shade us from the afternoon sun. A clear, decisive, encouraging voice calls out from across the space "Very good, Neil".
I am doing Breathing Bones, the therapeutic bodywork devised by Rosina Bonsu to help dancers and yogis recover from their intense practice and understand how their body works.
"If it is appropriate, take the whole arrangement to the other side."
This is the line I remember most vividly. Rosina would say "If it is appropriate" about where to put your limbs and how far you can stretch them, but the way she said it made it come across as a philosophy for life:
If it is appropriate, carry on reading this piece.
If it is appropriate, go and make yourself a meal.
If it is appropriate, cry.
If it is appropriate, laugh and go dancing.
To be appropriate is to do the right thing at the right time. To acknowledge the situation as it is and to do what you feel is necessary.
Everyone is different. We need different instructions. Rosina could teach a group of 30 people and give them all individual attention. She had a profound knowledge of bodies, allowing her to see from twenty yards whether someone was straining or taking it too easy. She explained to us the anatomy of hips and hamstrings, bones and fascia, muscle and ligament, always with practical examples. She showed how 'being appropriate' wasn't some external imposition from an authority, but your own deep intuition. As a life lesson, it is a way of cutting through the neuroses. Cutting through anxieties about whether you should eat or drink this or that and to really listen to the body.
Rosina's death has hit us all like an earthquake. We are disoriented, structures have collapsed around us. Nevertheless, by sharing the lessons of this brilliant woman, by living more like her, the earthquake reveals a thousand treasures that give us what we need to rebuild.
So if it is appropriate, grieve. If it is appropriate, move. Listen to Rosina, listen to the universe, listen to your intuition, and find the right course of action.
