The Ongoing Practice of Being Human

I think that is something I have come to appreciate more and more over the years.

I do not share these reflections because I have mastered them. But I share them because I continue living them.

There is a subtle but important difference between the two.

Everything I create, every retreat, every programme, every class and every conversation, begins long before it reaches another person. It begins in my own life. It begins with questions that quietly linger, with patterns that reveal themselves when I least expect them, with moments of uncertainty that invite me to look a little closer instead of immediately searching for an answer.

'Yoga in het Leven' (the Dutch course ‘Yoga in Life’) never began because I wanted to explain how life works.

It grew out of my own curiosity. Out of the questions I found myself returning to over and over again. Out of experiences that gently reshaped the way I looked at myself and at the world around me.

When I look back now, I realise that everything I have ever shared first asked something of me. Every teaching became part of my own practice before it became part of my work.

Perhaps that is why I have never felt comfortable with the idea that a teacher is someone who has arrived.

The longer I walk this path, the more I notice that teaching has very little to do with having all the answers. For me, it has become an ongoing willingness to remain a student of my own life.

Maybe that is one of the most beautiful expressions of Swadhyaya. Not only studying ancient wisdom, but allowing your own life to become the text you continue reading, returning to familiar passages again and again, each time discovering that they reveal something new because you are no longer the same person who read them before.

Life keeps changing. We keep changing.

The teachings remain beautifully alive because we keep meeting them from a different place.

That feels incredibly comforting to me. It means there is no final version of ourselves waiting somewhere in the future. There is simply another invitation to become a little more honest. To notice another pattern. To soften another layer. To become a little more ourselves.

One of the patterns that has been quietly asking for my attention over the past year has to do with learning. I love learning. I genuinely love reading books that challenge the way I think. I love discovering perspectives that suddenly make something inside me settle into place. I love meaningful conversations that continue echoing long after they have ended, and I find endless joy in philosophies that encourage me to look at life from another angle.

For a while I wondered whether I simply placed too much value on productivity. The more I reflected on that thought, the less true it felt. It wasn’t productivity that was driving me. It was something much softer. Something much more personal.

I realised that I am deeply hungry for meaning.

I read because I love being surprised. Because I want to remain curious. Because I want to continue wondering about this extraordinary experience of being alive.

There is something deeply life-giving about allowing yourself to be moved by an idea, by another person’s story or by a piece of wisdom that suddenly helps you see the world with fresh eyes.

I don’t think that longing is something that needs to disappear. In many ways, it is part of who I am. Yet yoga has a beautiful way of inviting us to look beneath even the things we love most. Because sometimes the places that bring us the greatest joy also become the places where attachment quietly begins to grow.

I started recognising a subtle movement within myself. A quiet voice that whispered that perhaps one more book would help me understand life a little better. Perhaps one more insight. Perhaps one more conversation. Perhaps one more experience.

The voice was never demanding. It sounded almost loving. Yet underneath it lived a very subtle suggestion. Maybe I would feel a little more complete afterwards. That realisation stayed with me for quite some time.

Learning has enriched my life in more ways than I could ever describe.

The question simply became different.

From which place does my curiosity arise?

Is it born from love?

Or has it quietly become an attempt to add something to myself that I believe is still missing?

That question gently opened the door to a deeper understanding of Aparigraha.

For years I understood Aparigraha as letting go of possessions or learning not to cling to things outside ourselves. These days it feels much more subtle. Sometimes what we hold onto cannot be seen. Sometimes we hold onto an identity. Sometimes to an idea of who we think we should become. Sometimes to endless self-development. Sometimes even to growth itself. And perhaps one of the quietest forms of grasping is believing that we always need one more experience before we can fully rest in who we already are.

There is another pattern that continues to make me smile whenever I notice it.

People often ask me where the inspiration for new retreats, new classes or new ideas comes from. I understand the question, because from the outside it can sometimes look as though inspiration appears through discipline, through reading another book, attending another training or spending another afternoon behind my desk.

My own experience has been remarkably different.

The moments that have shaped my work most deeply have almost always arrived when I had quietly stopped looking for them. During a walk without a destination. While watching the ocean. While sitting in silence without expecting anything from it. During an ordinary conversation that unexpectedly touched something inside me. Or in those beautifully uneventful moments when nothing in particular seemed to be happening at all.

Looking back, those moments have become some of the most creative seasons of my life.

They have also taught me something about the way my own mind works.

The moment I notice that spaciousness allows something beautiful to emerge, another thought quietly appears. Perhaps I should create more spaciousness. Perhaps I should sit in silence more often. Perhaps I should meditate a little longer. Perhaps this is where inspiration lives.

Without even realising it, I have gently turned stillness into another project.

It fascinates me how subtle that movement is. There is nothing wrong with wanting to meditate. There is nothing wrong with creating space. There is nothing wrong with going on retreat. Yet the intention underneath those choices quietly changes when they become another way of trying to arrive somewhere.

It reminds me that the mind has a remarkable talent for turning almost everything into something that can be improved, optimised or achieved. Even rest. Even silence. Even presence. I find that deeply human. Rather than criticising that tendency, I have slowly learned to smile when I recognise it.

It reminds me that the practice is still alive.

That there is another opportunity to become curious instead of judgemental. Another invitation to pause before automatically following an old pattern.

Perhaps this is where Santosha has gradually become less of a philosophical concept and more of a lived experience.

For a long time I understood contentment as appreciating what is already present. Today it feels more intimate than that. It feels like sitting with life exactly as it is unfolding, allowing this moment to be complete before asking it to become something else. Some days are filled with ideas, creativity and clarity. Other days feel wonderfully ordinary. Sometimes words arrive effortlessly. Sometimes they don’t arrive at all. Sometimes silence reveals something unexpected. Sometimes silence simply remains silence.

The longer I walk this path, the more I realise that every one of those experiences belongs equally to the practice. Each of them has something to offer when I am willing to meet it with enough patience.

Perhaps this is why taking more time off away from work has felt so significant. From the outside it looks like a holiday. For me it feels like a quiet commitment to continue living the teachings that have shaped my work for so many years.

It is an opportunity to give myself the same invitation that I have so often offered to others.

To create space without already deciding what that space should give me in return. To read because I am inspired. To walk because walking feels nourishing. To spend time with my family because those moments never need to justify themselves. To sit in silence without wondering whether an insight will appear. To simply allow life to meet me exactly where I am.

Perhaps beautiful ideas will emerge. Perhaps they won’t.

I have a feeling that both possibilities deserve the same warm welcome.

When I look back over the years, I realise that yoga has never asked me to become a better version of myself. It has gently invited me to recognise the layers that no longer feel true, allowing them to soften in their own time so that something much quieter can naturally come forward. Something that was never absent. Something that never needed to be created.

Only remembered.

Maybe that is why this path continues to feel endlessly alive to me. Every season reveals another layer. Every conversation offers another perspective. Every challenge quietly asks another question. Every moment of honesty brings me a little closer to myself.

The practice keeps evolving because life keeps evolving.

I keep evolving with it.

Perhaps that is also why I no longer feel drawn to the image of the teacher who has everything figured out.

There is something deeply comforting about recognising that we are all, in our own way, continuing to learn what it means to live.

I don’t want to stand in front of people as someone who has reached a destination.

I would much rather walk beside them, sharing the questions that continue shaping my own life, trusting that they will recognise some of those questions within themselves.

Maybe that is the most sincere thing I can offer.

Presence, and an honest exploration.

A willingness to keep returning to the teachings that continue asking something of me, allowing them to become part of my own life again and again before I ever attempt to share them with someone else.

Because perhaps that is where real teaching begins.

It begins in the quiet moments when we recognise that the wisdom we are offering is still shaping us too. And perhaps that is the greatest gift of this path.

It keeps reminding us that there is nowhere we need to arrive.

There is only life, asking to be lived with a little more awareness, a little more compassion and a little more honesty than yesterday.

What happens when we realise we still need the teachings we share with others?

Perhaps we become a little gentler with ourselves. Perhaps we become more willing to admit that we are still learning.

I don’t think we become less of a teacher.

If anything, I believe we become more human.

We become a little more willing to recognise ourselves in the people we guide.

We become a little more open to our own questions.

We become a little less attached to having the answers.

And perhaps that quiet willingness to keep learning, to keep returning and to keep meeting ourselves with honesty is exactly what allows the teachings to remain alive.

Perhaps this is the ongoing practice of being human.