A Relationship with Practice

When people hear the word practice, they often think of a particular activity. A yoga practice. A meditation practice. A breathing practice. Something we set aside time to do before returning to our everyday lives.

Over the years, my understanding has gradually changed.

I no longer see practice as a collection of separate techniques. Instead, I have come to see it as a way of relating to life itself.

Movement, breath, meditation, sleep, dreams, conversation, and even the ordinary routines of each day are not isolated disciplines. They are different opportunities to observe how we meet our experience.

This shift has also changed the way I teach.

In my classes, movement is not only about flexibility or strength. It is a way of learning how we inhabit the body. Breath is not simply a technique for relaxation. It reveals the subtle relationship between attention and the nervous system. Meditation is not an attempt to stop thinking, but an invitation to become familiar with the habits of the mind.

Over time, I found myself drawing from many different traditions and fields of study. Yoga offered practical ways of working with the body. Buddhism offered a profound understanding of suffering and the nature of experience. Taoist practice reminded me that life unfolds through constant change rather than rigid control. My studies of anatomy and biology helped me appreciate how these ancient insights are expressed through the human body.

Rather than seeing these as separate subjects, I began to recognise them as different languages describing the same life.

This understanding also changed the way I think about learning.

I have been fortunate to study with many teachers and traditions, and I continue to learn from them. Yet some of my deepest understanding has emerged not from collecting more information, but from years of practising, teaching, listening, questioning, and observing. Every conversation with a student, every yoga therapy session, every retreat, and every personal challenge has become part of that learning.

Practice, for me, is therefore not a path towards becoming someone different. It is a gradual refinement of our relationship with what is already here.

We begin with the body because it is the most immediate place to meet ourselves.

From there, practice naturally extends into breath, movement, rest, sleep, dreams, relationships, and the rhythms of daily life. Philosophy then becomes something to be explored through direct experience rather than simply understood through ideas. Even questions about reality and illusion are no longer distant philosophical debates, but living inquiries that accompany ordinary life.

This is why I continue to return to one simple phrase:

A relationship with practice.

It reminds me that practice is not something we perform. It is something we cultivate through the way we meet each moment.

The thoughts shared throughout this journal are simply reflections from that ongoing journey. They are not conclusions, but invitations—to observe a little more carefully, to question a little more deeply, and perhaps to discover that practice has been present all along.