The one with the boring narrator, Bashira and the second question

I have made a discovery about my own brain.

It is, left to its own devices, extremely boring.

I don't mean I am boring (although I know in the wrong company I can be). I mean I just end up with a never ending stream of inane chatter about why Harley needs to be on a lead during this part of a walk (that I have done 1000 times) and Flynn doesn't or which days I have time to do washing before I go out to coach or won't have time to bring in before I go back out for some evening classes. It even runs to things like what I want for tea, not just once, when I have decided, multiple times. It's like having a conversation with 10 different people I met along the walk and telling them the same thing.

It infuriated me once I noticed it. My brain that can come up with questions so complicated they have taken me months to unpick. The same brain that thought up equations for finding your way home — check out my Pinterest if you are curious — that plans classes around people's injuries, that comes up with yoga class additions on the fly, given nothing to play with ruminates around 'chilli or stir fry'.

I understand why it does what it does. The default mode network — the part of your brain that fires up when you're not focused on a specific task — is designed to consolidate, process, and file. It is doing important work, to a point. It is also, if you actually listen to it, essentially making small talk with itself and I, like 99% of you, hate small talk.

So I started doing something different.

I set myself a question before I leave the house.

Not 'What do you want for tea'. Not where shall I train tomorrow while the car is in for MOT. Something that requires me to actually go somewhere in myself to find the answer.

Things like: where am I not looking after myself right now? Or: what does safety actually feel like? Or: what was the bravest thing someone did in class today and why did it move me?

The first answer always arrives quickly, Hermione Granger style 'I know, I know'. It sounds like insight. It's well-formed, considered, the kind of thing I might say to a trusted friend over coffee. Reasonable. Measured. Probably true, as far as it goes.

Then I ask the second question.

What does that answer feel like?

Or: what makes me think that's all I can have?

And that's where I actually live.

The first answer is for strangers. The second one is for me.

It changes my perspective. It usually changes the original question and it definitely teaches me more about myself on a thirty minute dog walk than I have in years of busy, productive, useful, extremely well-narrated days.

Here is what I think is happening.

I have a DVD (yes I know it's 2026 and no I don't have a DVD player).

It's Jillian Michaels Power Yoga and for some reason every time the bin calls, my heart puts it back in the drawer, where it lives next to The Greatest Showman, the only other DVD I own.

I should tell you immediately that it was not really yoga. It was a yoga inspired workout built in levels, with two assistants — one who did the easy version, Jillian in the middle, and then there was a woman I am going to call Bashira. I might be confusing her name with the tiger from The Jungle Book, which would be embarrassing for everyone, but she was magnificent. I haven't watched the DVD in 10+ years but the memory of her holding crow pose for what felt like a week when all I could do was face plant the floor meant I wanted to be her immediately.

The first time I tried crow, I was in my spare bedroom. One of the cats got underneath me — as cats tend to do the moment a yoga mat appears — and I didn't dare lean far enough. I blamed him for being in the way. I could easily have moved him, he was a cat after all. I did not move him.

The second time I made sure there were no distractions. I went for it.

Nose first onto the floor.

I tried again. Less nose, more forehead. Better.

My arms were tired by the time they moved on in the video and so I moved on too. But I kept coming back to that DVD. I must have done it fifty times. I must have fallen, one way or another, forty nine.

Then I got a hold. Miniscule. Maybe two seconds. But it was mine.

Life happened, the way it does. I stopped practising at home.

Then came a Thursday.

I won't go into the details here. What I will say is that it was one moment too many of feeling like I didn't matter. It wasn't dramatic. It wasn't brave. I just wanted peace. I wanted myself back.

I found a minute flat in town.

And round the corner from it, like a magical siren drawing me to a home I had forgotten, was a little yoga studio.

I walked into the advanced class. I had absolutely no business being in that room. I mean none.

I fell. I told myself all sorts of horrible things about that. Then I looked around at all the people who weren't trying.

I got up and went again. And again. I stayed after class and tried again.

That studio is the reason I became a teacher.

I could not have asked myself the second question on a dog walk ten years ago. I wouldn't have even thought to ask the first one.

Not because the question didn't exist. But because I hadn't built the ability to hear that boring internal chatter let alone the ability to not only sit with the answer but answer her (me, I think — there's a question for another day) back.

What I understand now — from the DVD and the cat and the forty nine falls and the minute flat and the studio and every crow pose since — is that self-knowledge works exactly like physical skill.

You start with the easy version. The first answer. The one that sounds like insight but is really just the next level up from internal politeness.

Then you practice leaning a little further. Asking the second question. Sitting with what comes up without immediately doing something to make it stop.

Then further still.

Patterns create pathways. Pathways create highways. Highways let you go wherever the road takes you.

I am still building mine. Some days I can go very deep very quickly and the answers arrive clear and true and surprising. Some days the narrator is back with her clipboard and the best I can do is notice she's there.

Both count. The forty nine falls and the one hold are the same practice.

One Thing For You — The Second Question

Before your next walk — or your commute, or the school run, or any stretch of time where the narrator usually takes over — choose one question to take with you.

Make it real. Not a task question. Something that requires you to go somewhere in yourself to answer it.

Walk with it. Let the first answer come. It will arrive quickly. It will sound reasonable.

Then ask: what does that answer feel like?

Or: what makes me think that's the limit?

You don't have to do anything with what comes up. You don't have to fix it or share it or act on it today.

Just hear it.

That's the spare bedroom. That's the cat on the mat. That's where it starts.

From the Trail

I have a dream — a long term plan (loooooonnnnnnggg) if you will, that I like to focus on during some walks. It's called The Clearing — a place where nobody is in a hurry to leave, a place where everyone who comes through the door is seen but not noticed. A place for movement, rest, learning, laughter, tea, dogs, books, sunshine, rain, strength, stillness and turning your world upside down, just for fun. It's not coming soon, but it will come and in the meantime, when the deep questions are too much, planning which books to put in the library and how to arrange the rings so you can still see the view while you fly is fun.

For now, if you have a question that has been following you on your walks, I'd love to hear it. Just reply to this email.

Until next time, keep walking the trail.

Becky x

P.S. Harley's relationship with skateboards remains complicated, hence the lead situation. Flynn has decided the correct response is to ignore them entirely mainly because he lives in his own magical world, which I suspect is a lovely place to be.

P.P.S. The questions I ask myself on walks — the second ones, the real ones — are the same questions that live inside Inner Needs. Seven weeks of going a little further each time, with someone who has fallen nose-first enough times to know exactly where the floor is. If you're ready to start asking your own second questions, you can find it here.