Sadhana

Sadhana is life unfolding with attention toward intention.

It is not something separate from daily life, nor reserved for the mat, the cushion, or when everything is perfect. Sadhana is the way we are in the world according to the person we aspire to be—how we move through the small, ordinary moments as much as the grand, defining ones.

Sadhana is the commitment to practice that continually reorients us to the path we most deeply long to walk. It is the steady remembering. It’s the ritualizing of our daily activities—not to make life rigid or overly precious, but as a reminder that every moment is sacred, every choice consequential, every breath an opportunity to return.

And returning is the heart of it.

Because, well I drift off, I forget. I get pulled away.

We live in a world exquisitely designed to capture our attention and scatter it. Endless information, endless stimulation, endless invitations to react, compare, consume. The dopamine hits come quickly and effortlessly: a scroll, a headline, a text, a small rush of validation or outrage or novelty. None of it is inherently wrong, but left unchecked, it pulls me away from my deeper listening. Away from what I say matters most.

Sometimes I don’t even notice it happening. Other times I do—and follow the distraction anyway.

Sadhana is what brings me back.

With the myriad distractions of modern life, we are so easily pulled away from our deepest heart’s longing. We get pulled off track by the drama around us, and sometimes we chase it, mistaking stimulation for aliveness. Sadhana—the ritualizing of our life—is a way of redirecting, again and again and again, our prana, our life force, toward what we most deeply long to orient toward.

This is not about perfection. It is about fidelity.

Through consistent sadhana, we show up for ourselves through the highs and the lows, in pleasure and in pain alike. Practice helps us touch back into the clarity that already lives within us. But that clarity is often masked—by circumstances, by fatigue, by old patterns and habitual grooves, what the yogic tradition calls samskaras.

I know my grooves well. I know how easily I can default to busyness instead of presence, stimulation instead of stillness, productivity instead of truth.

Even after decades of practice, teaching, and study, I still have to course correct—sometimes many times a day.

And this is where the practice becomes real.

As Pema Chödrön writes in Start Where You Are,
“We are one blink away from being fully awake.”

That sentence has saved me more times than I can count.

No matter how far away I may feel from my awake self—no matter how distracted, reactive, or numbed out—I am always just one breath away from returning. Through the practice of beginning again, I can come back to this moment, to the power of this very breath, in the blink of an eye. I can realign with my deeper wisdom.

My teacher reminded me endlessly that beginning again does not require punishment or shame. It requires remembrance. Remembering the extraordinary gift of this moment. This breath. This chance to choose again.

When I wander off the path—and I do—I practice letting go of self-criticism. I practice releasing the inner commentary that wants to tally my failures or question my sincerity. Instead, I return to my intention and recalibrate my moment-to-moment choices.

The present moment offers a particular kind of grace. There is no time here to berate myself for how I acted earlier today. No room to worry about how I might fail tomorrow. In the present moment, I am my whole self—awake, alive, responsive, and brimming with possibility.

This doesn’t mean the pull toward distraction disappears. It doesn’t mean the dopamine economy loosens its grip. It means I notice sooner. I recover faster. I remember more often why I am practicing in the first place.

Once you touch clarity, does it stay?

In my experience—no.

And that is not a problem. It is the practice.

Sadhana is not about achieving a permanent state of wakefulness. It is about cultivating a trustworthy relationship with returning. Again and again and again. Each return strengthens the muscle of attention. Each recommitment deepens integrity. Each moment of remembering lays another stone on the path.

If I have another breath, I can begin again.

And if you are reading this and recognizing yourself—your own cycles of forgetting and remembering—know this: you are not behind. You are not broken. You are practicing.

Sadhana is not life perfected. It is life met—intentionally, imperfectly, and with devotion.

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