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“Practice, and all is coming.”
The words are famously associated with Pattabhi Jois. Simple words, and perhaps easy to misunderstand.
When we first begin practicing yoga, what comes can feel quite obvious.
The body starts to open. We become stronger. Breathing becomes easier. Perhaps we sleep better. We notice that after practice there is a little more space in the mind. We feel calmer, clearer, more at home in ourselves.
These things matter. They are not small.
And today we have plenty of research showing us what regular movement, breathing, meditation and contemplative practices can do for our physical and mental health.
But I don’t think this is the deepest meaning of all is coming.
Because if you stay with the practice long enough, something else begins to happen.
You start meeting yourself.
Not the polished version. Not only the calm, flexible, patient version we might like yoga to turn us into.
All of it.
The impatience. The comparison. The need to achieve. The fear of not being enough. The places where we hold on too tightly. The things we would rather not feel.
Sometimes emotions or memories appear seemingly from nowhere. Sometimes an old pattern suddenly becomes impossible not to see. Sometimes there is resistance to practice itself, and even that resistance has something to teach us.
I would be careful with saying that emotions are literally “stored in the body.” The relationship between body, memory, emotion and the nervous system is more complex than that.
But anyone who has practiced with sincere attention for many years may recognise the experience of becoming aware of things that were previously hidden beneath the noise.
Because there is only so much running away you can do when you repeatedly place yourself on a mat, breathe, become quiet and pay attention.
And perhaps this is where yoga starts becoming something very different from simply feeling better.
I love yoga deeply, but I don’t believe we serve the practice by promising that it will always make life lighter.
Sometimes practice feels beautiful.
Sometimes it confronts us.
Sometimes it shows us how attached we are to a particular version of ourselves. How much we want to control. How quickly the mind judges. How uncomfortable stillness can actually be.
The Yoga Sūtras do not describe a practice whose sole purpose is relaxation. Yoga asks us to see more clearly.
And clarity is not always comfortable.
Patañjali speaks about kleśas, the patterns that cloud our perception and contribute to suffering: ignorance, ego, attachment, aversion and our deep clinging to life as we know it.
We do not overcome these simply because we can perform difficult āsanas.
If anything, practice gives us another place to notice them.
Our attachment to progress.
Our frustration when the body changes.
Our pride when something becomes easy.
Our resistance when it becomes difficult again.
The mat can become a very honest mirror.
This is an important distinction for me.
Yoga is not an endless project of fixing ourselves.
If practice becomes another place where we need to become better, stronger, more spiritual, more disciplined or more accomplished, we may simply have brought the same patterns into a different room.
There is nothing wrong with progress. There is joy in learning. Strength is useful. Mobility is useful. A steady practice can transform the body in beautiful ways.
But they are not the final destination.
Ultimately, yoga points us inward.
Toward awareness.
Toward the possibility of seeing what is happening without immediately becoming identified with it.
A thought arises, but I am not necessarily that thought.
Fear arises, but perhaps I do not need to organise my whole life around it.
A feeling comes, stays for some time, and eventually changes.
The body changes too.
Everything changes.
And somewhere underneath all of that movement, yoga asks whether we can discover something quieter.
We live in a culture that loves quick results.
Thirty days to a different body. Five steps to a calmer mind. A morning routine that will supposedly change your life.
Yoga moves differently.
Of course you may feel something after your very first practice. I hope you do.
But the deeper work cannot be rushed.
It happens through repetition.
Returning to the breath.
Returning to the body.
Returning to attention.
Again and again.
Not with aggression, but with steadiness.
Patañjali describes abhyāsa, sustained practice, alongside vairāgya, non-attachment. I find that pairing increasingly beautiful.
Practice sincerely.
But loosen your grip on what you think the practice should give you.
That changes everything.
Because then we are no longer practicing only to become more flexible, achieve another posture or even to become calmer.
We practice to see.
Maybe “all is coming” does not mean that if we practice hard enough, eventually we will receive everything we want.
Perhaps it means something much more interesting.
Everything comes.
The pleasant and the uncomfortable.
Strength and vulnerability.
Clarity and confusion.
Periods when practice flows and periods when we question everything.
Versions of ourselves we are proud of, and parts of ourselves we would rather keep hidden.
Life itself comes onto the mat.
And slowly, if we remain attentive, our relationship with all of it can begin to change.
Not because yoga removes every difficulty.
Not because practitioners somehow become immune to grief, anger, fear, heartbreak or uncertainty.
We remain human.
But perhaps there becomes a little more space around what we experience. A little less need to run from ourselves. A little more capacity to stay.
And for me, this is where practice begins to touch freedom.
Not freedom from being human.
Freedom within being human.
So keep practicing.
Not relentlessly. Not because you are afraid of losing your progress. Not because being a “good yogi” means never missing a day.
Practice with devotion. Practice with curiosity. Practice strongly when strength is appropriate and softly when softness is what is needed. Sit. Breathe. Study. Notice.
And allow the meaning of practice to change as you change.
After all these years, I still find that practice refuses to let me settle into easy conclusions. Just when I think I understand something, it reveals another layer: a habit I had overlooked, a question I had avoided, or a way of seeing that has gradually changed.
Perhaps that is part of all is coming too.
We keep showing up.
And, little by little, we begin to see more clearly.
See you on the mat for your urban exhale...
Namas-té,
Ine
