The day today

 8:30 Yoga

10:30 Weekly Skype chat with mum

12:30 Leicester v Chelsea in the Standard (Callum playing fingers crossed.)

17:30 Wales v Australia rugby (Amazon Prime)

Owed to Joy

My plan for tomorrow morning is to go to yoga first thing, then pop in to Coffee in the Wood for breakfast, thence next door to get my hair cut.

In the afternoon I will go to the Standard to watch the six nations rugby with the son and heir, thence next door for a pizza in Corleone's.

I think it is possible to exaggerate how much influence leaving the EU tonight will have had on this.

'crouch, touch, pause, engage'

I've taken to doing Hotpod Yoga on Saturday mornings when I am back in Cardiff. Booking up this weekend's session, I noticed that they are involved with the 'Quins.

I shouldn't be surprised given https://nickbrowne.coraider.com/search?q=yoga+rugby yet this unlikely cross over never ceases to put a little more spring in my step.

Shoulder the blame

I had to bin yoga this morning because I aggravated my old left shoulder impingement injury yesterday by rowing flat out when I had already tweaked it bench pressing on Friday.

This is the first time it has come back since I banged it skiing in March.

I had to change gear with my right hand driving last night. That was interesting, but not as interesting as when I had to drive back from Somerset in that style when I pranged the jinxed joint in a mountain biking fall in 2013.

I think the first time I hurt it was playing rugby for London Cornish. I can't remember ever injuring it in Muay Thai, but I wouldn't be surprised if I have.

Indeed the shoulder certainly seems to have led a more adventurous life over the years than I have. If it could move I might shake its hand or even ask it for an autograph.

A night in with ibuprofen and an ice pack would seem to be on the cards this evening.

Ultra spiritual

It was my three hundred and thirty third yoga session this morning, and though, judging by the mirror that always lines the front wall at a Bikram session, I still turn into Red Skull before he first water break I must be improving. For the second week in a row my locust pose was praised and offered as an exemplar by the teacher. When I consider that when I started I couldn't raise my legs at all in it I am rather chuffed.

A year ago, I went straight to the studio after coming back from the Bomber's Old Ruts end of season rugby tour and fell asleep (can't imagine why, I'd only been up boozing for three days) before the lesson even started. I was woken by a stern woman whose blissful egolessness had been disturbed by my snoring.

These days I would have explained to her that ‘prana’ refers to the universal life force and ‘ayama’ means to regulate or lengthen. Prana is the vital energy needed by our physical and subtle layers, without which the body would perish. It is what keeps us alive. Pranayama is the control of prana through the breath. Why you gots to be the hater pouring salt on my game you no-skillz beetch?

Man finds food

John and I watched Chef the movie again the evening after we met Shauna Guinn (Icons passim) Aaron Franklin is in it as himself and so - under the assumption that the universe is sending me a message - I have ordered his book from Amazon. The image above was the clincher as the map on the left contains all the BBQ joints I can remember Shauna recommending during our chat.

I fired my smoker up for the first time this year and did a shoulder in it overnight. I will work it up into some pulled pork with Carolina mustard sauce later. This is a dry run for Ollie's birthday barbecue next Saturday. She actually asked me to bring some long to it earlier this week when I was having a crafty pint with the Hendries and the Goddings. I was flattered.

I have also decided to go down to Cardiff's Brew Dog on 23 April for the Hang Fire Smoke House takeover. I will go on the train and meet up with the Ruts for the rugby tour on Friday.

This means that I will have go and see Matthew Bourne's Adventures in Motion contemporary dance company on the Tuesday. To sit here writing that sentence when I have already been to yoga this morning and after a paragraph about BBQ and rugby feels rather strange. It takes all sorts I suppose, and I am all sorts just on my own.

"I predict a return of hot sauces to American cuisine. With color TV, the entire sensory life will take on a whole new set of dimensions."
Marshall McLuhan 1966

How right he was.

In the pink

I went to Virgin Active with the Bomber yesterday for the first time since he was a toddler learning to swim. He has rejoined and done his induction so he can use the gym unaccompanied now as long as I am on the premises.

They weighed and measured him as part of the assessment so at 1.83m he is now officially just over six feet tall.

He has got three rugby games again this week; the next round of the NatWest Cup today with year 10, a year 9 game on Saturday and a league game on Sunday.

I went to yoga for the 300th time this morning. A Bikram class being ninety minutes long, that is four hundred and fifty hours I have done in hot room. I shudder to think how much sweat that represents.

Sarries' serried ranks

Jules Evans in the Telegraph:

For the past year, I’ve been running a philosophy group at Saracens rugby club. Once a month, I go to Saracens’ training ground in St Albans and give a brief talk about an idea from ancient philosophy that can be applied to our lives today.

.........

I went in to the rugby club with zero expectations, and still find it strange to sit in a circle with Jim Hamilton, Owen Farrell and others, discussing Aristotle’s idea of the Golden Mean. But it’s been good fun for all of us. It was “the most popular thing we did last season,” says defence coach Paul Gustard.

It is easy to sneer, but here is the rationale:

When new management arrived, in 2009, they insisted that the character, values and wellbeing of the players were the top priority, and results would follow from that. They launched something called the Personal Development Programme, to support all the players in their lives and their careers after sport. They duly invited various people in to talk to the players, including mindfulness experts, a yoga teacher, even a philosopher (me).

The “Saracens revolution” has created a unique culture. Alex Goode, the 26-year-old Saracens and England fullback, says: “The old Saracens was not a particularly friendly place. There’d be quite brutal banter. Now, there’s much more of a feeling of togetherness.”

The esprit de corps has made the team stronger and better. Saracens won the Premiership in 2011, and broke the record last season for most tries scored and most league points won, reaching the European cup final and Premiership play-off final, both of which they sadly lost.

The Premiership final loss was to a dubious try in the last minute of extra time, after a disallowed try of their own. Defeats don’t come more cruel. But, as Brian Moore noted in his Telegraph column, the team handled it with impressive integrity and dignity.

It is very reminiscent of the regime of Pete Carroll's Seahawks in the NFL (see Icons passim) who went on the win the Super Bowl last year then trounced the Packers earlier this week to begin their title defence and must be doing something right.

There being very little wisdom about, we need to take it anywhere we can find it.

this kind of thing is my punch bag baby

I went to Bikram Yoga this morning. Facebook has told me that Floyd Mayweather did it this week as well in the run up to his rematch with Marcos Maidana in three weeks time, thus confirming once more its unlikely badassery,

The 8am Sunday session won't be an option for me once the rugby season starts again in a fortnight as I will have duties getting the Bomber to 10 o'clock kick offs.

He's still asleep at the moment. In two weeks time he will have waking up duties as well.

Arise, take up your mat

I've been to yoga more than 250 times now. I subscribe to a five class a month programme at Bikram Wimbledon and, barring accidents, you will pretty much always fine me at the 8 a.m. Saturday class.

Having stumbled on this video of the England Rugby League team grunting through asanas, I have decided to post it here and create a new Yoga label for the blog that I can use - retrospectively - to thread together the thoughts that I have shared from the mat over the last few years.