Welcome.
My name is Andrew McElroy,
And I'm your guide today.
We're going to talk about daily practice.
You've started before.
Possibly many times.
10 days and then a trip or a bad week.
And then the quiet shame of abandoning the daily practice.
I'd like to take that off the table today,
Because the tradition is unusually specific about what makes practice hold.
And none of these three conditions is discipline.
Atha,
Let us commune and practice together.
We're going to look at the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali,
Particularly Book 1,
Verse 14.
It translates to practice becomes firmly grounded when attended to for a long time.
Without interruption and with sincerity.
So he gives us three conditions.
Long time.
Not intensity.
But duration.
This is the horizon measured in years.
And knowing that it is a relief because it means today's session doesn't have to be good.
Without gaps.
And here's the useful reading.
The Enemy of Connuity.
Isn't missing a day.
It's missing a day and then deciding you fell.
Connuity is about return.
Not about the perfect record.
The whole practice of yoga is about the return.
Usually rendered.
With reverence or with care is the final one,
Or with sincerity.
The practice is treated as something that matters,
Which practically means you don't have to do it in the gaps between other things while checking your phone.
Long,
Unbroken and sincere.
That's the whole formula.
It says nothing about a length of a session.
Habit research agrees with Patanjali in almost every particular.
Behavior becomes automatic through repetition in a stable context.
Same cue,
Same place,
Roughly the same time.
Frequency matters far more than duration.
The commonly cited 21 days figure has no good evidence behind it.
The better estimate from Lally and colleagues at the University College London found a median of around 66 days to automatic.
Repetition of something.
This is with enormous individual variation,
Though.
Anywhere from 18 days to well over 200.
That same study found something worth holding on to.
Missing a single day has no measurable effect on the eventual formation of the habit.
Which again,
Is just about the continuity and coming back to the practice.
That is the language in behavioral science.
The gap isn't the problem,
The abandonment is.
So did I.
Sit however you like.
Be sure you're comfortable.
Today's practice is deliberately short.
Because we're building the container,
Not filling it.
If you can close your eyes or soften your gaze,
Please do so.
First before breathing.
Notice the C.
Where you are.
What's under you.
What the room sounds like.
This is the cue.
Repetition and stable context.
Let your body register this specific place.
Now three slow breaths,
Nothing measured,
Just long and easy.
Now the practice itself.
And it's very simple.
Breathe at the nostrils.
Fill the air awry.
And then fill at least.
When you notice you've gone,
Come back.
This is the art of returning.
Again.
Inhale.
Exhale.
And continue at your own pace.
I will come back and get you.
Shortly.
You've probably left several times.
Each return is one repetition of the only skill that matters.
At the attention wide end.
And let the breath go unintended.
And now one small decision made here rather than later.
Tomorrow.
What time and what seat.
Don't decide how long.
Just the wind.
And the where.
All that.
Same time,
Same seat.
Or any length at all.
One breath counts.
Notice the body in this seat one more time.
How it is.
Feeling against the seat itself.
Maybe the temperature.
The specific shape of this position you're sitting in.
You're building an association.
Let it register.
This will be your cue for tomorrow.
If you miss tomorrow.
Come back the day after.
That is the practice.
Patanjali did not say without failure.
He said without abandonment.
Long time.
Unbroken return,
Done with care.
E.
T.
Until we practice together again.
