Enchanted pen

I used to think control was the same thing as strength. Yoga had other plans.

I am someone who functions on structure. Always have. I like knowing what comes next, I like having a plan, and I like it when things go exactly the way I mapped them out. So when I first started teaching yoga, I thought I had it figured out — I had the sequences, the cues, the playlists. Everything organized.

And then a student walked in who couldn’t touch their toes and didn’t want to. Another came in carrying something invisible and heavy — you could feel it in the room. Another laughed through every pose, which is honestly the best thing in the world, but not something you can plan for.

My plan dissolved in about ten minutes.

The mat doesn’t negotiate

Here’s what nobody tells you before you step onto a yoga mat for real — and I mean really step onto it, not just follow along with a YouTube video from your living room — the mat has no interest in your agenda.

You can walk in with every intention of being present, calm, graceful. And your hip flexes will remind you exactly what you’ve been holding. Your breath will shorten at the exact moment you needed it to stay long. Your mind will wander when you needed it to stay still.

I used to fight this. I used to push through poses because I was supposed to be teaching — how could I not get into a position I was asking my students to try? I pushed too hard once and paid for it for two weeks. That was the lesson I needed.

Control and strength are not the same thing. I had confused them for years.

Teaching yoga is really just learning it again, slowly

When you teach, something interesting happens. You stop performing the pose and you start observing it. You watch how twenty different bodies approach the same instruction and you realise — the instruction was never going to land the same way twice.

One of my students once told me that a particular pose made her feel safe. Just that word — safe. From a hip opener. I didn’t have that in my lesson plan.

And that’s the thing about letting go of control — it doesn’t mean letting go of care. It means trusting that what is needed in the room is more intelligent than what you planned for it.

I plan my classes. I always will. But now I hold the plan loosely, like something I’m offering rather than enforcing.

AND THEN LIFE OFF MAT HAPPENED

I got married recently. And if yoga is a gentle teacher about control, marriage in a new household is a very direct one.

I’m not talking about losing yourself — I want to be clear about that. I’m talking about the very specific adjustment of realizing that your way of doing something isn’t the only valid way. That someone else’s rhythm isn’t wrong just because it isn’t yours. That sharing space with people means your preferences are sometimes in conversation with theirs.

I kept catching myself doing the yoga thing — gripping, pushing, trying to make everything look a certain way. And then catching the breath. Releasing.

The mat really does prepare you for life if you let it.

What letting go actually looks like (it’s not what you think)

I think there’s a romanticized version of “letting go” that gets passed around — usually with a sunset backdrop and someone in a flowy white top standing on a cliff. That’s not it.

Letting go is noticing that you’re gripping your jaw in a conversation and choosing to soften it. It’s being wrong about something and not needing to rebuild the argument from scratch just to feel okay. It’s accepting that some days your body won’t do what you want, and that isn’t failure — it’s information.

It’s small. It’s mostly invisible. And it builds into something that changes how you move through the world.

I still love structure. I still write my lesson plans. I still have a schedule and a vision and a plan for where I want to go.

But yoga taught me that the plan is the beginning, not the destination. And that the most interesting things happen in the space between what you prepared for and what actually arrived.

That’s where the real practice lives.