good day practice no. 06
Again and Again
Edition no. 06· September 6, 2026
This week, we're working with a theme called again and again.
And again and again this week, I have had absolutely no idea what day it is.
We're all trying to get back to our routines while also refusing to waste what could be a beach day indoors. Everything we let melt off our plates in high summer is waiting for us again, and we're down to the bottom of the cone now, getting very economical with our bites.
September gets treated like January's understudy. New systems and a plan to become a more disciplined person before Labor Day weekend ends, usually starting with a trip to Staples for a planner that will never get opened past the first week. Notice how most planners only start in January or September.
I'm not that interested in the reset. I'm interested in the return.
Most of the things I want right now are things I already know.
I know which routines make mornings better. I know I feel different when I move. I know there are people I like myself better around.
I just got away from some of them for a while.
The Yoga Sutras are about two hundred short lines, gathered a couple thousand years ago by a figure we know as Patañjali. They were written to be memorized and carried around, which is why each one says so little and holds so much.
Two of them sit next to each other and give us abhyāsa.
1.13 — tatra sthitau yatno 'bhyāsaḥ
Practice is the effort to remain steady.
1.14 — sa tu dīrghakāla-nairantarya-satkārāsevito dṛḍhabhūmiḥ
It becomes firmly rooted when it is tended for a long time, without interruption, and with care.
Abhyāsa usually gets translated as "practice." Which is not wrong, exactly, but so much falls out of these words once they are translated into English. The Sanskrit is doing something a single English word was never built to hold. The root of abhyāsa means something closer to sitting near. Coming alongside something and staying close to it, over and over, until you and it get familiar with each other.
Two more words in the second line carry a lot.
Nairantarya. Without interruption. Continuously. You don't say that to people who never leave. You say it to people like us. Who do leave, and more importantly, come back.
Satkāra. Care, reverence. Not grinding a habit down until it sticks. Coming back to something with real regard for it, the way you'd greet a person you're glad to see.
So here's how I'm using it this week. A long time means this isn't a week's work. Without interruption means the interruptions were expected. And with care means the way I come back matters as much as whether I do. A practice takes root through the accumulation of returns, none of which have to look alike.
September is a returning season. Most of what we're reaching for is already ours.
The practice
tadasana
Stand at the top of your mat, or the bathroom floor, or the kitchen. Feet together or hip width, whatever lets you stand for a while.
Lift and spread your toes. Feel the four corners of each foot. Legs strong without locking. Lengthen through the crown of the head and let the arms hang.
Ten slow breaths. Feel the breath slowly pour into you, filling up your ribs and lifting the shoulders slightly, and then feel the breath slowly release, causing a real settling.
Tadasana is the same every time. You are not.
You come back to a pose you already know, carrying whatever has happened since you last stood in it. Nothing gets erased. Nothing starts over.
You will get pulled away from your practice. The point isn't to become impossible to move. It's to know the way back to what steadies you.
Again and again.
The Soundtrack
Most of these are songs I find myself coming back to, well, not to sound redundant, but again and again.
When my mind is too scattered to settle, putting something on in the background gives me a rhythm to follow instead of one to invent. It's a tool for getting back in. There's always room for silence too. But on the days silence feels like too far to travel, start here.
Practice Makes Progress
MC Yogi, John Pattern
I Am Blessed - Acapella
Desiree Dawson
Everything You Need
Rob Riccardo
The poem
You think you are starting over.
You are not.
You are only going back
to the place that kept the light on,
the small room in you
that never once
believed you were gone for good.
The chair is still pushed back from the table
at the angle you left it,
mid-sentence, mid-motion,
as if no one told the room
how long it had been.
Beginning asks for clean paper.
Returning finds the old sentence
and sets the pen down
where the ink stopped.
The page kept no account
of the time between.
You come back carrying
whatever happened while you were gone.
A different body, perhaps.
A few new sentences
you cannot unsay.
The first hour will be clumsy.
The words will arrive out of sequence,
the breath ahead of the body,
the body ahead of the will.
Write it in the order it comes.
Then you put your hands
where they used to go,
and the knowing comes up
through the palms, unspoken:
I know this place.
I know what my hands do here.
So you go back tomorrow.
Not to promise you will never leave again.
You go back because going back
is the practice.
The room is warm.
The door was never locked.
And each time you come back,
you are easier to find.
THE THROUGHLINE
Here's the thing I keep noticing: the longer we're away from something, the bigger we make the return.
A two-year gap starts to feel like it deserves a two-year effort to come back to. So we hold off on the ten minutes that makes a difference and wait for the version of ourselves who can do it “right.”
I'm guilty of this. I wait for the cleared schedule and the aligned stars, which never arrive, and meanwhile the anxiety about getting back in keeps building. There is no perfect moment to pick something up. I only ever feel better once I've started.
Patañjali asks for something that sounds, at first, impossible. A long time. Without interruption. Nobody keeps a line truly unbroken across years of a life.
But I don't think he was describing a person who never leaves. I think the returning is what makes it continuous. The gap doesn't cut the line. You come back, and the practice is still there, exactly where you left it.
SOMETHING TO CARRY INTO YOUR WEEK
What did you set down this summer that you'd like to sit near again?
Don't go looking for the answer. Just ask, and see what shows up.
Smile & sigh. Yay.
Let’s make a good day of it,
Bevin
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