Whisper #14Coming Back

My dear reader,

Lately, I’ve been noticing how heavy “coming back” can feel.

Not just to practice
to anything that mattered to us once.

There’s often a quiet pause before we return.
A hesitation.
A sense that we should have done better by now.

Most people don’t stop practicing because they don’t care.

They stop because they miss a few days.
Then a few more.
And at some point, coming back starts to feel heavier than staying away.

The guilt builds quietly.
The standards rise without being questioned.
And what once felt supportive turns into something you have to qualify for again.

I know that place well.

There was a stretch where I didn’t practice at all.

Not inconsistently.
Just not at all.

Life was moving.
Things were happening.
And the mat stayed rolled in the corner longer than I was used to.
In the past, that would have bothered me. I would have turned it into a problem to solve, a discipline to restore, a story to fix.

This time, I didn’t.

When I finally came back, I didn’t promise myself an hour.
I didn’t aim for depth, progress, or intensity.

I made a smaller agreement.

Fifteen minutes.
Show up.
Sit down. Stay.

No more. No less.

Some days, those fifteen minutes were all there was.
Other days, the body stayed longer on its own.

But what surprised me wasn’t how much I practiced
it was how little pressure came with it.

Nothing needed to be proven.
Nothing needed to be recovered.

For a long time, my sadhana had been built around conditions.
The right time.
The right energy.
The right version of me.

Without realizing it, I had turned practice into something I had to earn my way back into.

This agreement changed that.

Not because fifteen minutes is better than two hours,
but because returning stopped feeling like a test.

I didn’t negotiate with guilt.
I didn’t compensate the next day.
I didn’t explain the break to myself.

I just came back.

And something steady met me there.

Practice, I’m learning, doesn’t ask for ideal conditions.
It asks to be met.

Again.
And again.

With Love & Stillness,
Saf