The power is in Yoga is in just turning up 🧊

So I’m sat around thinking about habits 🫣. And how small changes → create habits that → create long lasting change. That’s what I think about when I’m sat around doing nothing. Being forced to watch Strictly. (That, and how Mbappé should have won the Ballon d’Or ⚽️). But anyway....

So I ran to our bookshelf and picked up Atomic Habits to remind myself what James Clear’s insights were into this very subject. Habits.

We all know the feeling of starting something new (like yoga), wanting to change, setting our minds on a new path, and then hitting a wall where nothing seems to happen and nothing has changed. Thinking to yourself, I’m the same jabroni I was a month ago 😭. And in modern Western culture, we’re heavily trained to look far ahead, fixate on distant goals (and dreams), and demand immediate proof that our efforts are working. There’s a LOT of power in that ambition, but it often (for most people) sets us up for big frustration.

Ancient Eastern wisdom and yoga philosophy, on the other hand, have always tried to guide us toward a different way. Teachers like the Buddha and the ancient sages spoke extensively about letting go of our obsessive attachment to outcomes and the fruits of our actions, anchoring ourselves instead in the present moment. The here and now.

This ancient insight mirrors the modern science of change found in that book. James Clear says we naturally expect effort and results to rise together in a neat, straight line. And when they don’t, we enter what Clear calls the plateau of latent potential (the hidden waiting room where our progress builds beneath the surface). We can practise week after week, but our body feels pretty much the same, leading us into what he calls the valley of disappointment (the emotional dip where motivation collapses right before things actually start working). I know. this guy loves a conceptual label 😏.

His analogy is of an ice cube 🧊 in a room where you slowly raise the temperature from minus fifteen degrees up to minus one. Nothing changes, the ice looks completely solid. Then the room hits zero degrees, and suddenly it melts. That final degree did not do all the work by itself. It simply revealed all the heat that had already been stored.

“Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. No single instance will transform your beliefs, but as the votes build up, so does the evidence of your new identity.”

I see our yoga practice in the same way. Turning up to class, even just once a week when you feel tired, is never wasted work.

To make this sustainable, we have to move away from fragile goals and focus instead on identity (who you believe you are). The book says stop saying “I want to be flexible” and start stepping into class with the realisation that “I am a yoga practitioner.” When our practice becomes part of who we are, it stops being a chore. James Clear says remove the friction (the hidden obstacles and mental resistance that make it hard to start) by leaving your yoga mat at the front door the night before, or committing to just two minutes of movement.

The tiny, unassuming habit of turning up for yourself each week compounds massively in the background. And when it does, the shift reaches far beyond your muscles and body fat. Way, way beyond. The science would in fact leave you gobsmacked as to what yoga will do for you, all the way down to the tiny cells 🦠 that make energy and make us who we are. This changes not just how we walk, how we talk, how we think, how we react, how we see ourselves, and how we view the world around us. All of this and so much more changes for the better.

The takeaway is to drop the heavy burden of distant goals and just trust the power of turning up. And as James Clear says in his book, “You should be far more concerned with your current trajectory than with your current results.”

Namaskar

Zahir

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