I should probably start by saying this:
if this sounds familiar, that’s because I’ve been circling the same idea lately.

Last week it showed up in a Buddhist meditation retreat.
This week it’s shown up in my bedroom, on my walks, and on the yoga mat.

Same practice.
Different places.

I’m ten days into not sleeping with my phone in my bedroom.

No scrolling in bed. No podcasts easing me into sleep. No familiar voices filling the gaps. I also walk every day without my phone — no music, no audio, no gentle distraction pretending to be self-care.

This isn’t a digital detox. There’s no purity involved. If anything, it’s been faintly annoying — mostly because it’s made me notice how often I reach for my phone without thinking.

What it’s shown me — very quickly — is how often I reach for something rather than stay with what’s already here.

Which brings me, slightly awkwardly, to yoga.

Confession: I am not a “good” yogi

I’ve never been especially talented at slowness.

I like momentum. I like novelty. I like feeling like I’m getting somewhere. Slow classes used to frustrate me. Repetition bored me. Anything that felt too basic made me restless.

I wanted to get to the doing part.

This will surprise precisely no one who knows me.

Autopilot (the sneaky bit)

At the same time as my accidental experiment in silence, I’ve been teaching a morning reset called Begin, Begin Again and starting a five-week Foundations course.

What I’ve been noticing — in myself and in the room — is how much of what we do happens on autopilot.

We know the shapes.
We know what comes next.
Our bodies move faster than our attention.

I’ve watched people pause mid-movement, slightly confused, as if they’ve arrived somewhere without quite knowing how. There’s often a little laugh. A moment of oh.

That moment matters.

Repetition (unfashionable but honest)

Another thing I’ve been reluctantly reminded of: repetition is far more revealing than variety.

Doing the same simple things again and again removes the distraction of novelty. There’s nowhere to hide. No clever sequencing to lean on. No sense of being entertained into progress.

Repetition shows you your habits.
Where you rush.
Where you grip.
Where you stop listening.

It turns out repetition isn’t boring — it’s honest.

Which probably explains my long-standing resistance to it.

The breath has been trying to tell us this all along

Slowing down also brings the breath back into focus — not as something to control or perfect, but something to listen to.

The breath is very informative.

I’ve heard people say things like, “I didn’t realise I was holding my breath that much,” or, “I thought I was breathing, but apparently I was just supervising it.”

Same.

When we rush, we miss that conversation entirely — and then wonder why everything feels harder than it needs to be.

The basics (still not basic)

And then there are the basics.

The surprise, every single time, is that they aren’t basic at all.

They’re subtle.
They’re layered.
They reveal more the longer you stay with them.

What I’ve noticed most in the Foundations classes isn’t people becoming more flexible or more impressive — it’s people becoming more confident. The quiet kind. The kind that comes from understanding what you’re doing and why.

Beginning again, everywhere

Starting again hasn’t erased anything.

It’s refined what was already there — on the mat, in my habits, in the small moments I usually fill with noise.

Taking my phone out of the bedroom.
Walking without distraction.
Returning to simple practices.

Same skill.
Different settings.

Beginning again isn’t a phase. It isn’t something we do once, or only in January, or only when we’ve “fallen off”.

It’s a practice in paying attention.

And for someone who likes to rush ahead, fill gaps, and get to the next thing — that’s proving to be a surprisingly useful practice to keep returning to.

Again.
And again