This month, inside The Practice, we’re working with something simple and not at all easy: staying. Staying with our experience, whether it’s pleasant, neutral, or unpleasant. Staying present whether something is exciting or boring. I’ve come to believe presence is what lets us show up for the actual details of our life — and there’s so much information living in those details, information we simply miss when we check out.
I built this month’s anchor meditation, Calm Heart Kriya, around exactly that idea. It uses a breath pattern and a simple hand mudra — gyan mudra resting at the heart — and asks you to hold the breath, first on the inhale, then on the exhale, for as long as you can comfortably. Not longer than that. Just to the edge.
And that edge is really the whole practice. Somewhere in that hold, almost every time, some part of you wants to let go early. I want to check out. That impulse isn’t a problem to fix — it’s the exact material we’re working with. The invitation is just to notice it, meet it with a little friendliness, and see if you can stay one breath longer than you expected to.
I think of it as dancing with the edge of comfort and discomfort. Not pushing past it. Not white-knuckling through it. Just finding it, and hovering there, curious about what’s actually happening instead of already halfway out the door.
Breath holds are intense in a way that’s hard to fake your way through. There’s nowhere to hide, no story to tell yourself about how you’re handling it — you’re either staying or you’re not. That’s what makes the practice such an honest teacher. Each hold becomes a small rehearsal for something much bigger than breathing: a rehearsal for staying present when life asks the same thing of you outside of practice.
We opened the class with a moment of gratitude — for clean water, safety, the basic conditions of a good life — because I think staying starts with actually noticing what’s already here, rather than reaching past it for something else. So much of our suffering comes from wanting more before we’ve let ourselves feel what we already have.
By the end, what surprised people wasn’t the difficulty of the breath holds. It was the calm that showed up afterward — a settling in the heart that came directly from having stayed, not from having avoided.
If any of this is landing for you, the full Calm Heart Kriya practice is in the portal now, along with the rest of October’s practices exploring staying — through movement, stillness, and daily life. Come find your own edge with me.
