Just before I went on holiday, I wrote quite a vulnerable newsletter about how much stress I had been carrying. So much, in fact, that my back finally decided it had had enough - and it went, on the school run. Brilliant.

Stress will always find a way of getting our attention eventually.

And this is quite difficult for me to confess as a yoga teacher because it's deeply ironic, but much of my stress tends to centre around my business:

Am I doing enough?

Are enough people booking?

Should I be posting more, sending another email or WhatsApp, running another workshop or attending another training?

And underneath all of that sits the biggest question of all: will I earn enough this month to feed my family (especially as the cost of living continues to rise)?!

If I'm totally honest, I also often find myself falling into that same old comparison trap. I look around at other yoga teachers and business owners and wonder how they seem to be achieving things that feel so far beyond my reach. Selling out retreats. Opening studios. Creating courses. Growing teams.

And how they manage to show up on socials so consistently, be so visible and get themselves noticed.

It's very easy to convince yourself that everyone else has discovered a secret formula that you somehow missed.

So when I went away to France, resisting the urge to do more felt almost painful.

Not posting (which actually comes quite naturally to me anyway!), or sending extra emails, or dropping into the WhatsApp group every five minutes!

Not trying to shout from the rooftops of beautiful Port Grimaud that I was still here and hadn't disappeared!

Because there's always a part of me that believes that if I stop pushing, everything might stop moving.

And I understand where that comes from.

When I stepped away from my business during maternity leave, things inevitably slowed down.

And of course, my nervous system behaves exactly as nervous systems are designed to behave: it looks for safety. So it filed that experience away as evidence that stepping back is unsafe.

So now, whenever I ease off the accelerator, that old story resurfaces.

But I did resist the urge to push, as uncomfortable as it was.

And whilst there was very little asana on holiday, there was a lot of observing, witnessing and noticing these habitual patterns, thoughts and beliefs.

What I found myself practising wasn't downward dog or sun salutations.

It was "vairagya" and "Ishvara Pranidhana".

In yoga philosophy, vairagya is often translated as non-attachment. Not in the sense of giving up or deciding we don't care, but releasing our desperate need to control the outcome.

And Ishvara Pranidhana is often described as surrender or trust. This is not passive resignation, but recognising that there comes a point where we have done all that is ours to do, and the rest is no longer up to us.

Together, they ask us to loosen our grip on the things we cannot control, whilst trusting that life will continue unfolding whether we try to micro-manage it or not!

My mum always used to say I was like a dog with a bone, and I was fiercely impatient.

If something was bothering me, I just couldn't leave it alone. I would have to pull it apart, analyse it from all angles, put it back together again and then start all over!

And nearly four decades later, not much has changed!

I still find it so difficult to loosen my grip.

But yoga constantly reminds me that life doesn't work that way.

All we can do is show up, do the work, and plant the seeds. we cannot then stand over the soil shouting:

"GROW FASTER!!!"

And yet, isn't that exactly what so many of us do? Whether it’s with a business, relationships, healing, our bodies, or life itself.

We want quick results, we want to “get there” faster. So we keep digging up the seeds (or bones!) to check whether they're growing?

I've realised over the years though, that although I enjoy teaching, sharing and connecting with people, I really don't enjoy shouting for attention.

What I love is creating spaces. Guiding people. And, amidst the darkness (which I often feel as though I'm stumbling around in myself), quietly holding a torch and saying: "This way, my love."

And perhaps part of my lesson right now is trusting that this is enough.

But we live a world that tells us that being visible is what we need to do in order to survive, which is deeply unsettling to a nervous system that is just looking for certainty!

So as I sat by the pool, feeling the familiar urge to check bookings, refresh emails, calculate numbers and mentally rewrite my plans for the hundredth time, I realised that my nervous system believes vigilance will be the thing that keeps me safe.

It believes that if I think about something enough, worry about it enough, monitor it closely enough, I might somehow be able to control the outcome.

Sound familiar?!

But uncertainty remains uncertain whether we worry about it or not.

The worrying simply means we suffer through it twice.

The truth is, I had already done the things that were mine to do. I'd planned the classes, sent the emails, created the workshops, and planted the seeds.

Everything else was no longer my job. My job, then and there, was to sit by the pool with my family.

And trust.

Which always feels like the harder practice… …because the deepest yoga isn't found on the mat at all.

Sometimes it looks like putting your phone/laptop down and walking away.

Trusting that life can keep unfolding even when you're not trying to force it.

I'm still learning that the tighter we grip onto something, the more we strangle it.

It doesn't mean we stop caring, or stop showing up. It simply means that once we've done what is ours to do, we allow life the space to meet us halfway.

Easier said than done for someone who has always been like a dog with a bone.

But perhaps that's the practice right now.

Namaste!

xxx