Perfect Poise, Perfect Life
Bring your body into balance and revolutionise your life
By Noel Kingsley
Publisher Hodder Mobius
AVAILABLE HERE
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A breakfast encounter
While in Durham over last weekend for the conference on church photography, I was staying in the residential part of Hatfield College in the adjacent street to the cathedral. I was so close that one of my windows looked directly onto the cathedral east wall and the enormous rose window. On getting up from bed for some water at around 2.00am on Friday night, I glimpsed out of the window to see the whole cathedral floodlit and towering above a few half-timbered houses and trees in front. It was magical. So what did I do? I got the tripod and camera out of course and after much aligning and adjustment to get the angles right, managed to take two photographs that I hope will be quite impactful. Half an hour later I'm getting back to bed, but now being wide awake and the cathedral bells chiming every quarter, half and full hour I didn't sleep much again!
But the point I wanted to mention was not my nocturnal activity with a camera, but the experience I encountered over breakfast the next morning. Breakfast at Hatfield College is served in the main dining room. It is self-service and you take your tray of cereals, juice, and full cooked breakfast of bacon, egg, sausage, tomato, hash brownies baked beans and toast, croissant etc (or whatever you select!), to a long refectory table where you sit beside whoever you're lucky or destined to be beside.
While waiting in the short queue to be served I happened to exchange a few words with a lady in front of me and it turned out she's a musician from Edinburgh who now lives in London, visiting the College to attend an Open University course in music. We got on rather well I thought and we ended up sitting together to continue our chat. This lady was really chirpy, outgoing, relaxed in herself and quite entertaining, without being over-powering in any way whatsoever. I was enjoying her company when others sat down opposite and to the side and who were also were drawn into our conversation.
The conversation turned to singing, performance and she happened to comment that although she could happily stand in front of several hundred people and sing without any nerves, she would hate to be an actor as she felt that she'd be a bag of nerves, having had some previous experience of such situations. She went on to say what a very shy person she had been.
When this lady and I were eventually left alone for a few minutes I asked her what it was in her life that had changed her from being the extremely shy person she had described, to being the wonderfully outgoing, friendly, chatty and warm companion I'd had the pleasure of meeting over breakfast. She explained that her upbringing had been very difficult indeed, but she had now moved to London. She said that she was still shy but had discovered at some point that remains unknown to me, that she had a nice smile. People liked her smile. And I must say that it was her generous and ready smile that had made me warm to her at such an early hour of 7.30am breakfast after my night of disturbed and restless sleep.
Apparently when she discovered that she had a smile that people liked, she decided to let it out. On letting it out she found that people talked to her. And now she talks to everyone. So although she still felt rather shy at times, she had resolved to not let that stop her smiling and her experience was that it was returned. Now you mustn't get the impression that this lady is going around all day with a permanent frozen smile on her face because she certainly does not. She was what I would describe as being free, expansive, responsive to situations and very expressive. She displayed a wide range of emotion that was certainly not inhibited or what you might expect from a shy person. She also told me that she was happy pretty much all the time. She certainly made me happy over breakfast. Indeed she had such an impact on me I've now written a blog about our encounter!.
Mental note to myself..... let my smile out often. :-)
