There is a question I keep returning to, both in my own practice and in the classes I teach. It doesn’t come from a book or a lineage, exactly — though it lives inside all of them. It’s simpler than that.
Yoga asks us this question: How available are you?
Not available in the calendar sense. Available in the deeper sense — open, present, receptive. Able to receive and fully be with what is right in front of you.
We live, most of us, with the mind running the show. The mind has preferences, parameters, limitations. It is planning the next thing, replaying the last thing, filtering the present through the lens of what it already believes to be true. And in doing so, without us realizing, it keeps us from seeing what is actually here.
In yoga philosophy, we can understand the heart space as the seat of availability. (We might also see the mind as the lack of availability.) The heart is always open, always present, always awake to this reality. So we talk a lot about the heart in our yoga practice—connecting with that space and learning to live through it.
We can even consider yoga as a practice that de-centers the mind and centers the heart in our lived experience.
So opening to the heart is the same thing as becoming fully available to life. Instead of missing it, because we’re lost in the mind, we are totally here for what’s right in front of us. We are capable of seeing that all the answers we’re seeking are right here. All the resources we need are right here. The heart space is the home of abundance. And abundance is a state of awareness.
What I find again and again, both on my mat and in observing practitioners, is that the universe is not withholding. The moment is not empty. There is always something here: something to feel, something to receive, something to learn. The question is only whether we are available for it.
This is what the practice teaches us to do: step out of the mind, and expand presence. Learn to truly see. To see that what we are looking for — rest, clarity, connection, aliveness — is not somewhere else. It is already here. It has always been here.
So the next time you step onto your mat (or sit at your desk, or stand in your kitchen) try this. Set aside the preferences and parameters of the mind, just for a moment. Connect with your body. Follow your breath. And ask yourself, genuinely:
What is this moment trying to give me?
Then stay long enough to find out.