The Call to Return
to Presence
What if the yoga postures we know today exist only because we have forgotten how to sit?
It’s a question that quietly rearranges something inside. Without blaming or romanticizing the past, it points to a truth of our time: stillness has become unfamiliar. We live in an age of acceleration, constant input, constant stimulation, constant distraction. And in that environment, the simplest human act, the act of just sitting with oneself, has become strangely difficult. Yoga, then, begins not with the mastery of shapes but with the remembrance of presence.
When we turn toward the older teachings, a different understanding emerges. The sages did not craft elaborate sequences or celebrate physical achievement. They offered instead a principle: sthira sukham asanam, the seat of awareness that is steady and with ease. The seat is the ground from which awareness could rise. The body can be the doorway, but is not the destination.
Seen through this lens, it becomes less surprising that the modern landscape of yoga is filled with movement. Our bodies have grown restless because our minds have grown restless. Life today is shaped by chairs, screens, deadlines, notifications, and an ever-accelerating rhythm that fragments attention. The postures we now practice may well have arisen as a response, an attempt to bridge the distance between how we live and the stillness we have forgotten.
And so a deeper inquiry begins:
• What if yoga, as we practice it today, is not the end point but the path back to something essential?
• What does it mean to sit, not just physically, but emotionally, mentally, energetically?
• Can I meet myself without needing to flee, fix, improve, or distract?
This shift in perspective reorients the entire practice. Instead of performing yoga, we begin remembering yoga. Instead of pushing the body toward an aesthetic ideal, we learn to inhabit it. Instead of measuring progress by what the posture looks like, we sense into what it reveals. The body becomes a mirror rather than a metric. The practice becomes a conversation rather than a competition.
In classical texts, this orientation is clear. The Yoga Sutras mention asana only briefly, defining it simply as the way to navigate through life, with its extremes or opposites, skilfully. Early Hatha texts describe just a few postures, each intended to steady the body so awareness could deepen. Posture served presence, never the other way around. Every shape was an invitation to return to the unchanging center within.
To understand why yoga looks so different today, it helps to consider the broader cycles of human experience described in the yugas. These vast epochs, described in Indian philosophy, reflect fluctuations in human clarity, vitality, and connection. In more harmonious ages, Sukha Yugas, awareness flowed naturally. People were physically grounded, attuned to the rhythms of life, able to sit for long periods without strain. As consciousness descended into denser cycles, toward what tradition calls the Kali Yuga or Dukkha Yuga, life became increasingly outward-facing, complex, and distracted. Movement decreased while stimulation increased. We gained convenience but lost connection. We became informed but not necessarily wise.
The pattern is unmistakable:
• We move less, yet feel more restless.
• We have more information, yet fewer moments of genuine presence.
• We are surrounded by tools designed to capture our attention, yet rarely pause long enough to sense ourselves.
In this context, modern asana can be seen as medicine. Movement becomes a way of unwinding the tension accumulated from a fragmented life. Each posture becomes a pathway for releasing stored restlessness. The practice prepares us, physically, emotionally, and mentally, to return to stillness, to rebuild the natural capacity that once came easily.
This raises another layer of inquiry:
• How has my way of living shaped my capacity to be present?
• In what ways have I outsourced my attention rather than cultivating it?
• What might it mean to reclaim my ability to sit with myself?
When we explore these questions with sincerity, yoga shifts from exercise to embodiment, from routine to remembrance. It becomes a dialogue with existence itself, a way of listening inwardly, softening the noise, and returning again and again to the ground of awareness.
Within all of these threads, the evolution of asana, the modern condition, the cycles of consciousness, the forgotten art of sitting, there is one unifying essence: the call to return to presence.
It begins in the simplest place: a breath, a pause, a willingness to meet yourself where you are. No performance, no striving, just the soft recognition of what has always been here. Yoga becomes a remembering, an inner homecoming, a re-inhabiting of the moment that has never left you.
This is the heart of the practice. And from this place, the path unfolds.
Do you feel the call to return to presence?
The online retreat “Let it Be” might be for you, an invitation to rest in the center of your own being, to return into presence.