Why Presence Matters

There was a time when I thought presence was almost black and white.

I would arrive on my yoga mat one of two ways.

Some days, I was completely there. As soon as class began, the outside world seemed to soften around the edges. For an hour, deadlines, responsibilities, conversations, and unfinished to-do lists faded into the background. I noticed the subtle stretch across my shoulders in Downward Facing Dog. I felt my breath filling my ribs. I could sense the difference between effort and ease, between pushing and allowing. I wasn't thinking about yoga—I was simply experiencing it. When class ended, I walked out feeling calmer, lighter, and somehow more connected to myself.

Other days, my body arrived, but I never really did.

I moved through the same sequence of poses, but my mind was somewhere else entirely. It replayed conversations I wished had gone differently. It rehearsed tomorrow's meetings. It solved problems that didn't need solving yet. Before I knew it, class was over, and if someone had asked what we practiced that morning, I honestly couldn't have told them. Yoga had happened around me, but I hadn't really been there to experience it. I simply rolled up my mat and moved on to the next thing waiting for me.

Back then, I believed those were the only two possibilities. You were either present or you weren't.

It never occurred to me that presence wasn't simply a momentary state. It was a capacity. One that could be strengthened. One that could slowly reshape the way I moved through every part of my life—not just the hour I spent on my yoga mat.

For much of my adult life, I measured the quality of my days by what I accomplished. I loved checking things off a list. I found genuine satisfaction in solving difficult problems, carrying responsibility, and being someone others could depend on. My years in corporate leadership rewarded those qualities, and I became very good at them. There were seasons when I could move through twelve hours of meetings, make hundreds of decisions, solve complicated problems, drive home, and barely remember whether I'd eaten lunch. At the time, I considered that dedication. Today, I recognize it as something else.

The interesting thing is that this way of living wasn't failing me—not by the world's standards, anyway. I was successful. I was respected. I was dependable. I could accomplish an extraordinary amount, and people trusted me because they knew I would carry whatever was placed on my shoulders. Had you asked me then if I was happy, I probably would have said yes. I simply didn't know there was another way to experience a life. I had no language for what was missing because I had never known anything different.

Looking back now, I realize I spent much of that time living almost entirely from the neck up. My mind was constantly planning, organizing, anticipating, solving, and evaluating. My body was simply the thing that carried my brain from one responsibility to the next. Feelings often felt inconvenient. If sadness surfaced, I would quietly set it aside. If I was overwhelmed, I pushed through. There would be time to deal with it later, I told myself. There was simply too much to do.

Of course, feelings rarely agree to wait. Instead, they found quieter ways of making themselves known.

I lived with a constant sense of urgency that I hardly noticed because it had become so familiar. My attention was always leaning toward the next thing, the next deadline, the next responsibility. Even small interruptions felt larger than they were because they pulled me away from whatever I had convinced myself needed to happen next. I remember becoming short with my boys over things that, in hindsight, were so wonderfully ordinary. A question. A forgotten backpack. A story they wanted to tell me when I was mentally somewhere else. Nothing dramatic—just those sharp little moments that leave you wondering later, Why did I respond that way? I loved my children fiercely. My impatience was never a reflection of the depth of that love. It was a reflection of how disconnected I had become from myself.

There was another subtle cost that I didn't recognize until years later.

Bad news didn't devastate me. It also didn't really reach me. I could acknowledge difficult things, make a plan, and keep moving. At the time, I would have called that resilience. Today, I wonder if it was simply distance. When we lose touch with ourselves, we don't just become less available to pain. We also become less available to joy, awe, tenderness, and love. We don't selectively numb one emotion. We quietly turn down the volume on all of them.

When I first stepped onto a yoga mat, I thought I was there to learn poses. Instead, yoga kept asking me remarkably simple questions.

Can you feel your feet?

Can you notice your breath?

Can you soften your jaw?

Can you stay here for one more inhale?

For a long time, those questions felt almost insignificant. It wasn't until years later that I understood what they had been inviting me toward all along.

The Sanskrit word yoga is often translated as union. For years, I thought that sounded poetic but abstract. Today, it feels deeply practical. Yoga has become the gradual process of bringing back together the parts of myself that had drifted apart. My thoughts. My body. My emotions. My spirit. Rather than living as though my mind were in charge and everything else was simply expected to keep up, I slowly began learning what it felt like to move through life as a whole person. Presence, I've come to believe, is what makes that union possible.

Today, if someone asked me what presence means, I don't think I would define it simply as living in the present moment. I would describe it as embodied awareness—the quiet practice of remaining connected to myself deeply enough that I can recognize what is happening inside me before habit rushes in to answer for me. It is noticing the tightening in my chest before I call it stress. Feeling tears gathering before I explain them away. Recognizing that I'm tired before I become impatient with the people I love. Presence hasn't taught me to control my emotions. It has simply taught me to notice them while they are still whispering instead of waiting until they have to shout.

As that awareness grew, something unexpected happened. I became less productive. At least, less productive by the standards I had lived by for decades.

This is something I don't hear talked about very often, and I want to be careful because I don't believe this is everyone's experience. I know many people who move through the world with tremendous presence while also accomplishing incredible things. I simply know what has been true for me.

With my particular flavor of ADHD, I often find myself living in one of two worlds. I can hyperfocus and accomplish an astonishing amount. Hours disappear. Projects are completed. Lists shrink. But when I live there for too long, I begin losing touch with myself. I stop noticing that I'm thirsty. I don't realize my shoulders have tightened. I forget to eat. I become less aware of the people around me because my attention narrows until almost nothing else exists.

Presence asks something very different of me.

It asks me to pause long enough to notice the breeze moving through an open window. To really listen when someone is speaking instead of composing my response. To stop working because my body is asking for rest rather than because the to-do list is finally finished. It asks me to watch the sunset without feeling guilty that I could be answering emails instead.

The irony is that I probably accomplish less this way. 

But I experience so much more.

Somewhere along the way, I stopped asking whether I had done enough that day. A different question quietly took its place. Had I actually been here for my own life? Had I noticed beauty? Had I laughed? Had I listened well? Had I experienced gratitude while it was happening instead of promising myself I'd appreciate it later? It's a very different way of measuring a day, and if I'm honest, one that my younger self probably wouldn't have understood.

Perhaps nowhere has this transformation been more meaningful than in my relationships.

I don't think I could experience the relationship I have with Eben without this practice of presence. Not because either of us is perfect, and certainly not because we've figured life out. Rather, we've both spent years learning to stay connected to ourselves. That changes the way you meet another human being.

When he offers kindness, I'm actually there to receive it. When one of us is hurting, we don't immediately rush to fix it. When one of us is joyful, we know how to linger there together. I've come to understand that love isn't only about what we give one another. It's also about our capacity to receive it. Years ago, I'm not sure I knew how. My attention was almost always somewhere else—on the next responsibility, the next problem, the next thing that needed fixing. Presence has given me the gift of actually being there when love arrives.

The same has become true throughout the rest of my life. It has changed the way I parent. I still make mistakes. I still have impatient moments. But I notice them sooner now. I recognize when stress—not my children—is speaking through me. I apologize more quickly. I reconnect more easily. Presence hasn't made me a perfect parent. It has made me a more available one.

It has changed my friendships, too. I find myself listening with fewer distractions and less urgency to offer advice. Sometimes people don't need us to solve anything. They simply need someone willing to stay.

And it has transformed the way I teach. Years ago, I probably cared more about sequencing the perfect class or saying the right thing. Today, I'm much more interested in whether I'm truly with the people in front of me. I notice when a room needs more silence. I trust myself enough to let go of the plan if presence seems to be asking for something different. I've discovered that attention is one of the purest forms of love we can offer another person.

Ironically, I probably get fewer things done than I once did.

But I laugh more.

I cry more.

I notice beauty more.

I have more patience.

I feel more gratitude.

Most of all, I like my life more.

Not because my circumstances are perfect. Not because I've somehow mastered presence. I lose it every single day. My mind still races ahead. I still disappear into work. I still have to return again and again.

But now I know the way back.

When I first started practicing yoga, I thought presence was simply something that happened—or didn't happen—for an hour on my mat. I had no idea that yoga wasn't just asking me to pay attention to a pose or a breath. It was patiently teaching me how to pay attention to my life.

Perhaps that is what yoga has been inviting us toward all along. Not simply greater strength or flexibility. Not merely a quieter mind. But the kind of union that allows us to be fully here—mind, body, heart, and spirit—for this one beautiful, ordinary life we've been given.

Because in the end, a beautiful life isn't something we build someday, after we've accomplished enough, healed enough, or become enough.

It is something we learn to inhabit.

One breath.

One ordinary moment.

One quiet return at a time.