The Return Is the Practice

Last month, I didn't send my newsletter.

There was no dramatic reason. September filled up the way it does in Napa: harvest in the air, full classes, new clients, and a fall yin series I was building from the ground up. Somewhere in the middle of it, the newsletter slipped. By the point I noticed, the month was nearly over.

My first reaction was familiar. I wanted to explain. I wanted to make up for it by sending something twice as long and twice as polished, as if extra effort could erase the gap. Underneath that was a quieter fear: that missing one thing meant I was slipping everywhere.

Then I got on my mat.

What perfection actually asks of us

Perfection sounds like a high standard, but most of the time it works more like a trap. It tells us that if we can't do something fully, flawlessly, and on schedule, we might as well not do it at all. It keeps a running tally of each missed practice and every plan that didn't go the way we pictured. And it rarely lets us rest.

I see this constantly in coaching. Someone skips a week of their morning routine and decides the whole thing has failed. The miss itself is small. The story we tell about it is what does the damage.

Practice and letting go

In the Yoga Sutras, Patanjali pairs two ideas I keep coming back to: abhyasa and vairagya. Abhyasa is steady practice, the devotion to keep showing up. Vairagya is non-attachment, the willingness to release how things are supposed to look.

He doesn't offer them as a choice. You need both. Practice without letting go turns rigid. Letting go without practice turns into drift. The real work lives in between: holding your values firmly and your plans loosely.

That is what a missed newsletter taught me. My values didn't change in September. I still care deeply about this community and about sharing what I'm learning. What changed was my capacity for a few weeks, and that is allowed.

The season of release

It feels fitting that this lesson arrived in autumn. In Chinese medicine, this is the season of the lungs, the organs of taking in as well as letting go. Every breath is a small rehearsal of release. You cannot inhale again until you have fully exhaled.

Out in the vineyards, the vines are doing the same thing. They let go of everything they carried all year, and they are not diminished by it. They are getting ready to rest.

Coming back to yourself

So here is what I want to offer you this month: stepping away is not the same as falling off the path. Adjusting is not failure. The return is the practice.

If there is something you've let slip- a routine, a goal, a side of yourself you've been meaning to get back to, you don't need to make up for lost time. You just need to come back. Once, and then again.

If you're finding it hard to loosen your grip on how things should be, that is exactly the kind of work we do together in coaching. Schedule a complimentary consultation and let's find your way back to you.