Why your yoga practice needs to leave your mat
If you've never heard the word sadhana before, you might imagine something intimidating a 5am routine, a discipline reserved for monks, something that feels impossible to fit around getting a kid out the door or making it to work by 7. That's not what it means. Not even close.
Sadhana isn't a ritual. It's a devotion.
A sadhana is simply a consistent, devoted practice toward transformation. The container matters less than the commitment sometimes a sadhana lasts a lifetime, sometimes it's forty days. What makes it a sadhana isn't the shape of it, it's the depth you're reaching for inside that shape.
I think of it in terms of ritual versus routine. Routine is autopilot the things we do without thinking, like pulling a sweatshirt over our head or fixing our hair without noticing we've done it. Ritual is conscious. It's showing up and asking: how am I arriving right now? What are my values doing? What's my energy doing?
I teach a class called Unfixable Flow, built around exactly this noticing how many small, unconscious adjustments we make without even realizing it. Even in yoga classes, unless a teacher specifically asks us to check in with how we're arriving or how we're leaving, most of us don't go there on our own. That small nudge pause, notice, arrive is the difference between a habit and a sadhana.
Off the mat is where it actually counts
Here's the thing about the mat: it's a rehearsal space. Can I find my breath in a pose? Can I find my center when my body's uncomfortable? Good, now can I do that in a hard conversation? In traffic? Mid-scroll, when I catch myself and ask, where am I right now, am I grounded, am I reactive, am I calm?
I've had to lean on this more than once in real, hard moments. About a year ago, I lost my grandma and, within a day, a close family friend passed too. In the middle of all that grief, my mom had a moment where she reacted hard toward me. My instinct was to react right back. But I could feel my practice asking something of me instead: can you feel your feet beneath you? Can you receive what's coming without matching it? I didn't go low. I stayed grounded. And the next day, my mom texted to thank me for being the steady one in the room.
I've had to call on that same steadiness in heavier moments too including this past summer, when my brother and sister-in-law lost their five-month-old. Different situation, same question: can I hold heavy emotion and still be a kind of lighthouse for the people around me?
That's the real test of a practice not how graceful you look in a pose, but how you show up when life actually asks something of you. It won't be perfect every time. There will be moments you regret. But there will also be moments where you can feel your practice working, where you're able to weather something hard and still find your feet.
What this can actually look like
A sadhana doesn't have to mean meditating for an hour. It can be as small as noticing which nostril is more open when you wake up, and what that tells you about your energy for the day. It can be a five-minute phone timer where you simply notice how you feel before scrolling and how you feel after and let that tell you something true. It can be curating who you follow so your feed stops working against you.
And it's not about perfection or streaks. Most 30-day challenges fall apart around day seven, and I don't think that's a personal failure I think it's because we're cyclical beings. We ebb and flow, especially if you have a menstrual cycle. We are not the same person for 28 days straight, so why would we expect a rigid, unchanging practice to fit us?
An invitation
This is exactly the spirit behind the 40-Day Vayu Sadhana, starting October 1st and running through November 7th. Every week, we'll explore one vayu one of the five subtle energies that move through you through a Tuesday/Thursday drop of short practices: sometimes a meditation, sometimes a quick yoga sequence, a flower essence to try, a mudra to work with. Bite-sized, easy to digest, genuinely practical. Two live calls bookend the container, so you have a chance to ask questions and gather together.
It's on a sliding scale starting at $99 and if that's still out of reach, message me. I don't want cost to be the reason this doesn't reach someone who feels called to it.
Your sadhana doesn't start on the mat. It starts the next time you notice. And then the next time. And the next.
That's the whole practice.
This Week's Challenge:
Listen to your tri-gunas what are you noticing when you start and end your own practices?
Listen to the podcast
