I went to a yoga festival to slow down….and nearly forgot to!

It’s slightly ironic that I found myself rushing around at a yoga festival. Anyone who knows me knows how I love a timetable. However, with so much variety to choose from, on the first day I found myself dashing from one session to the next, never really stopping to let anything settle.

It wasn’t until I sat in a Kirtan (something I hadn’t planned to attend) that I noticed myself checking the time on my phone, calculating when I needed to leave to secure a spot for the next class. In that moment I realised I’d slipped into my default mode: doing more, filling every gap, as if productivity were the point. And yet what I actually needed was the opposite, a little space to sit quietly and do nothing.

That recognition landed hard. How often do we turn up physically but live mentally somewhere else, already planning the next task, the next meeting, the next training session? The festival simply held up a mirror to a habit I practice all the time.

I’m currently exploring being present in my meditation practice, and this weekend gave me plenty of opportunity to notice when I wasn’t actually present. The useful lesson I’m learning is that presence isn’t about forcing concentration or policing the mind into silence. More often it’s gentler, simply noticing when I’ve drifted, and bringing myself back without being hard on myself.

For busy people and athletes who push for results, this matters. Presence doesn’t cost you time, it restores it. A few minutes of genuine attention can make the next task clearer, movement more efficient, and rest more restorative. The practice is simple and practical. When you catch yourself planning while you’re meant to be resting, pause. Take a breath. Let the next action arrive when it needs to.

Stretching your limits isn’t just about pushing harder, it’s also about learning when to do less, to be still, and to return, again and again, to the present.