Our house is situated on a hill. The road, lined with beautiful tall Christmas and other trees, undulates up and down in a gentle slope. However, going up and down that hill on foot involves triumphing over the naysaying body! Especially when the weather is a bitter cold -10 degrees C as it was today. However, on any given day, I just have to peek out at 6:30 am, when it is still dark, and I will see a familiar figure in a burgundy coat, fully covered from head to toe, taking strong determined strides. In the summer, she is a skinny figure in shorts. I like to call her Sophia the woman of the hill. In her 60s she has relentlessly scaled that hill everyday for 29 years. She does 10 hills on an average day at 12 minutes per hill but could keep at it for about 20. I have never been able to do more than 6.
I met Sophia three years ago when she approached me on the hill as we were crossing paths with "are you a yoga teacher?" I admitted that I did lead yoga sessions. We got into conversation about all things spiritual and esoteric. Born in Greece and a resident of Canada for over 40 years, Sophia still speaks with her accent. She is a healer. She is a Master Reiki practitioner, a Bowen therapist, a counselor and teacher who holds free success groups and non religious prayer sessions at her home every Friday night for the willing and the down and out. She can quote from any religious or spiritual text, from the Gita to the Bible, Osho or the Dalai Lama and her knowledge of human anatomy and physiology is astonishing. A karma yogi, she counsels and treats people all day and does it out of love and a desire to make them feel and live better. She has vowed to lower my blood pressure with Bowen and has never charged me for the one hour sessions. Healing is her calling, spirituality her state of being. She eats fruits and vegetables and very little of it. She responds to all emails from people in distress every day and prays for them. She lives with her husband in a house on 2 acres of land growing her own organic vegetables in a magnificent greenhouse. She has a heavenly orchard with apple and pear trees brimming over with their bounty in the fall and donates them to friends and anyone in need. She works hard in the house and garden and tending to people in distress, with no outside help. She maintains an immaculate house cleaned with soda bicarbonate, vinegar and steam, keeping all noxious chemicals out.
But most inspirational of all is her habit of walking up and down the hill every morning of the year, no matter the weather, while inspiring others to do the same. She has gathered a crowd of faithfuls around her, walking away depression and loneliness from Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). She goes over to our homes sometimes to draw us out. She then regales us with wonderful stories as we walk with her, of her trips to Corfu, her hometown in Greece, a book she has been inspired by, a healing remedy she has found, a condition she has treated or even the recipe of a gluten free apple crisp she has baked for her prayer group. She greets everyone who joins her walk with a warm and tight hug and stays till the last one leaves the hill. She speaks with passion of the hill's magical powers to heal, the special magnetic field around it and we believe her.
I feel blessed to have Sophia as my neighbour and of course to be living on such a daunting but holy hill. It truly only takes one person, to transform a village.
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