What This Practice Has Taught Me About Letting Life Move

Yoga has taught me a lot of things over the years. How to breathe when I want to tense. How to stay when it would be easier to check out. How to notice what’s actually happening instead of what I think should be happening.

Lately, though, the lesson feels different. Quieter. More personal.

My oldest turns 17 on the 26th.

I’ve been a parent long enough to know that every age comes with its own letting go, but this one hit me sideways. Seventeen feels close to something irreversible. Close to adulthood. Close to the moment where time no longer feels expansive, but specific.

I didn’t expect the grief that came with it.

Not dramatic grief. Just a steady ache. A realization that these years, the ones where my kids still live under my roof and reach for me without thinking, are already moving.

And once again, my practice is the thing holding me steady inside that truth.

Staying present when time wants to rush

When I was younger, I practiced yoga to become something. Stronger. More capable. More certain. Somewhere along the way, the practice shifted. Now it asks me to stay.

To notice when my mind jumps ahead. To feel my feet when my chest tightens. To soften when my instinct is to grip.

Parenting teenagers has a way of forcing this lesson. You can’t control the pace. You can’t slow it down. You can only decide whether you’re actually there for it.

So I’m using my practice differently these days.

I’m using it to pause before responding.
To listen longer than feels comfortable.
To notice the urge to fix, explain, or brace myself for what’s coming next.

Presence, I’m learning, isn’t passive. It takes work. It takes choice. And it takes a willingness to feel things you’d rather skip.

Growth rarely arrives the way we expect

This has me thinking a lot about business too.

We like to talk about growth as something we plan for. Something we optimize. Something that happens on our terms. But some of the most important growth arrives without asking permission.

A child grows up.
A business outgrows its original shape.
A role that once fit no longer does.

You can resist it. You can cling to what worked before. Or you can pivot, even when you didn’t ask to.

Yoga has never promised comfort. It’s promised honesty. The practice doesn’t stop the change, but it teaches you how to move with it. How to adapt without losing yourself. How to stay rooted while something real is shifting.

That’s true on the mat. It’s true in leadership. And it’s deeply true in parenting.

Learning to meet the moment instead of managing it

As my kids get older, I feel less interested in managing outcomes and more interested in meeting moments. The conversation in the car. The quiet after dinner. The fleeting chances to connect before they disappear into their own lives.

This feels like the real work now.

Not doing more.
Not holding tighter.
But staying open enough to experience what’s here.

Yoga prepared me for this in ways I couldn’t have predicted. It taught me how to stay with sensation. How to recognize when fear is disguised as urgency. How to breathe when something meaningful is changing.

I don’t want to rush through these years. I don’t want to numb out or look past them because they’re tender or bittersweet.

I want to actually be here for them.

And so I keep practicing. Not to perfect anything, but to remain available. To my kids. To my work. To the version of myself that’s learning, again, how to grow.

Because sometimes growth doesn’t feel like expansion.

Sometimes it feels like surrender.

And sometimes, that’s exactly what allows us to move forward with integrity.