good day practice no. 12
back to mind
Edition no. 12 · October 18, 2026
I’ve felt a little stuck this week.
Not because nothing is happening. Plenty is happening. My mind just keeps jumping ahead to the rest of my life, trying to picture where I’ll be, what things will look like, what comes after whatever is happening now. I’ve caught myself spending so much time mentally somewhere else that it has been difficult to simply be where I actually am.
So Back to Mind has felt less theoretical than I expected.
I’ve found myself taking my own advice more than once. Sometimes literally saying shhh to myself.
It does not always work.
Sometimes I say shhh and, within seconds, I’m right back to thinking about something months from now. But that has also reminded me that the point was never to become particularly good at having a quiet mind. It is a practice. The noticing is part of it.
There is a small moment when I realize I’ve gone somewhere else. I’m planning, predicting, replaying, trying to solve something that is not actually happening yet.
And in that moment, there is at least the possibility of coming back.
Maybe shhh buys me ten seconds. Sometimes longer. Sometimes almost none at all.
Still, there is a little space where there wasn’t before.
I was talking with my dear friend Marnie this week about how often we teach what we are practicing ourselves. Not because we have perfected it. If anything, sometimes we teach something because we are right in the middle of needing it.
I think that is true for me more often than I realize.
The themes I bring into class usually have something to do with what I am paying attention to in my own life. Something I need more of finds its way into the room because I am trying to understand it too.
And I hope there is something useful in that.
Not, I figured this out, so let me teach you.
More, this is what I am noticing lately. Maybe there is something here for you too.
I don’t want to teach from a place of having everything figured out. I’m not sure I would trust myself if I did.
I’d rather practice alongside you.
what happens before WE decide
We played a lot this week in class.
I had people throwing myofascial balls around in what became something between yoga bowling and a hint of unintentional dodgeball.
At one point, someone asked me what the point of catching a ball from an unfamiliar shape was.
My immediate answer was: well, kind of everything.
When you’re in a position where your body has to orient itself differently and then you add a moving object, there is a surprising amount happening. You have to know where you are in space while tracking something outside of you. Your body adjusts force and timing on the fly. The eyes and hands have to communicate quickly. Balance becomes less of a fixed position and more of an ongoing response.
There is proprioception in there. Coordination. The mind and body having to communicate in real time.
But the part I kept noticing was what happened when play started becoming something else. At first, balls went everywhere. People laughed. Someone missed and reached for it again.
Then you could sometimes feel the shift.
A missed catch became frustrating. Someone wanted to know how to do it correctly. The mind started looking for the trick.
Something that had begun with let’s see what happens quietly became I need to get this.
I recognize that shift very well. I do it outside the studio too.
My mind wants to know where things are going. It wants to turn uncertainty into a plan and the present into evidence for whatever comes next. Sometimes I barely let an experience happen before I am asking it to tell me something about my future.
The ball doesn’t really allow for that.
It leaves your hand and goes where it goes.
For a second, there is nothing to interpret. You just respond. Maybe you catch it. Maybe you don’t.
Then comes the compelling part: how quickly does the mind decide what that means?
That is what I’ve been intrigued about this week. The space before we decide. Before an unfamiliar sensation becomes bad, before a missed catch becomes failure, before not knowing what comes next becomes a problem that needs solving.
I would like a little more room there.
Enough to experience what is actually happening before I rush to make something of it.
That is absolutely part of the play too.
The practice
This week, we practiced giving some of that mental activity somewhere else to go.
Lie down and let the floor take your weight.
Notice what the mind has brought with you. The plans that are still running. Something unfinished. The conversation you keep revisiting. Whatever has been occupying more space than you realized.
If it feels comfortable for your neck, gently tip the head back a little.
Imagine the back of the mind opening like a trap door.
Let the contents spill out onto the mat behind you.
You do not have to sort through any of it first. You are not deciding what matters or what can be discarded.
Nothing is being thrown away.
You’re just setting it down for a moment.
Let the head come back to neutral and feel its weight against the floor.
Then notice what happens.
The mind may start gathering everything back up almost immediately.
That’s okay.
Shhh.
Not stop thinking.
Just:
Shhh.
You can settle.
Nothing needs to be figured out right now.
And if thirty seconds later you need to do it again, do it again.
It is a practice after all.
The Soundtrack
the old story
Trevor Hall, Emory
The Poem
After hours
By Friday, there’s a diner
in the middle of my head,
where Monday keeps requesting
all the things I should have said.
Next Thursday takes the corner booth,
though it hasn’t happened yet,
and asks me for a serving
of things I might forget.
One thought keeps calling, Order up!
Another shouts, Make way!
A third sends back a plate of words:
That’s not what I meant to say.
One table wants its check at once;
another can’t decide.
I stack the plates against my arm.
The forks begin to slide.
The phone rings by the register;
the bell rings from the back.
I find the list I thought I’d lost
beneath another stack.
The tickets curl above my grill.
The toaster smokes and pops.
I clear a table, turn around:
the work just never stops.
I stay to count the coffee cups,
to wipe up every spill,
convinced that if I finish here
the whole place might grow still.
Then through the kitchen clatter,
a tapping reaches me.
My bedroom blind against the glass;
I turn my head to see.
Outside, a car turns down the street,
its headlights cross the wall.
I feel the quilt against my knees
and hear the raindrops fall.
A drop slips down the window.
Another follows slow.
They meet against the frame
and disappear below.
The bell inside keeps ringing,
still calling out for more.
I slip my apron off at last
and hang it by the door.
Back in the little diner,
new orders fill the sheet.
The cups are still unwashed.
I take my time to eat.
THE THROUGHLINE
from mind to heart
We’ve spent October moving inward through body, breath, mind, and heart.
Next week, we arrive at the last one.
This week has made me realize how much room the mind can take up when it is trying to get somewhere before I do. It rehearses what hasn’t happened. It wants an explanation while I am still living the question.
And when I let it run far enough ahead, I can start relating more to the life I have imagined than the one I am standing in.
Maybe the move toward heart begins by giving that habit a little less authority. Not silencing the mind. Not asking it to leave.
Just not handing it the whole room.
There are parts of us that do not arrive as arguments. Something can matter before we know how to explain why. We can feel pulled toward something, or away from it, long before we have arranged the reasons neatly enough to say them out loud.
That is where we’re headed next.
For now, I’m still practicing the shhh.
SOMETHING TO CARRY INTO YOUR WEEK
Notice when your mind gets ahead of your life.
Offer it a quiet shhh, and come back to where you are.
Smile & sigh. Yay.
Let’s make a good day of it,
Bevin
come practice with me
If you’ve been coming to my Yin, Slow Flow, or Conditioning classes, my upcoming Strength + Stillness workshop brings pieces of all three together.
It’s meant for everyone, whether strength work is already part of your practice or you’re curious about where to begin. We’ll work with intentional resistance that supports the rest of your movement practice, spend time in stillness and relaxation, and you’ll leave with simple strength work you can continue at home.
I’ve added a new Tuesday 7:30 AM Align/Flow class.
This one will feel a little different from a traditional flow. We’ll move through an alignment-based yoga practice while also borrowing from Conditioning, using weights as props to add resistance and feedback to familiar shapes.
If you’ve been curious about Conditioning but weren’t sure you wanted a full strength class, this could be a really nice place to start.
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