What the body keeps when the week is heavy

People often apologise on the mat for how tight they are, as if the body had failed them. It has not. It has been holding something, faithfully, for a long time.

Grief tends to sit high in the chest. Worry gathers in the jaw and the shoulders. Long stretches of bracing quietly shorten the hips.

The work is not to force any of it open. It is to offer enough warmth, time and pressure that the body decides, on its own, that it can let go a little.