I unroll my mat.

My feet meet the ground. My hands move with my breath. For a while, attention gathers around the body: where I place a foot, the length of the spine, the beginning of an inhale.

These are some of the most familiar parts of yoga to me.

Yet increasingly, I find myself interested in what happens between them.

Between movement and stillness.

Strength and softness.

Effort and rest.

The body and the mind.

I pick up a tomato at the market and turn it over in my hands.

It is heavier than I thought it would be.

Its shape is uneven, gathered into deep folds around the top, one side fuller than the other. The skin is red, but not evenly so. Near the stem, a little green remains.

I hold it for longer than I need to.

Perhaps choosing food begins before we taste it.

I hear the leaves before I look up.

The sound moves somewhere above me, passing through one part of the tree and then another.

For a moment the branches are still.

Then they move again.

The leaves are long and narrow, hanging towards the ground. Against the blue sky, I can see the smallest ones turning. Sunlight catches their edges and disappears.

I stand beneath them and listen.

It is strange how differently we hear when we are not waiting for anything in particular.

In Swan Pose, very little appears to be happening.

One leg folds in front of the body. The back leg extends behind. The hands come to the ground.

Then we stay.

At first, I notice the obvious things.

Where the body meets the floor.

Where there is space.

Where there is resistance.

The breath.

Then, as the minutes pass, the experience of the posture begins to change.

This is one of the things I love about Yin Yoga.

It gives us time to notice.

I have practised yoga for more than thirty years.

Over that time, the shape of my practice has changed many times.

There have been years when I wanted to move. To learn another posture. To stay longer. To understand more.

Vinyasa has remained an important part of my practice. I still love the feeling of the body moving with the breath, the warmth that gathers through repetition, the concentration that comes from following one movement into the next.

But somewhere along the way, I began making more room for something else.

Rest.

What grows around us seems to meet the season we are living through.

As the days remain warm and the earth becomes drier, I find myself drawn towards foods with freshness and moisture. Berries. Tomatoes. Cucumber. Leaves picked from the garden. Food that requires very little before it reaches the plate.

The body has its own way of noticing the year.

Appetite shifts.

Thirst changes.

A breakfast that felt right in winter can feel too heavy now.

No single moment announces the arrival of a new season.

It reveals itself through small changes that gather day by day.

Returning to the same place allows us to notice them.

A flower opening.

Another releasing its seeds.

The grasses becoming paler beneath the sun.

The practice often begins with movement.

A foot steps forward. An arm reaches overhead. The breath follows the shape of the body.

We arrive carrying the momentum of the day. The body is already moving. The mind is already moving.

Then something begins to settle.

Attention returns to the breath. The gaze rests on a single point. The body learns how to remain in one place for a little longer than before.

The chair sits in the same place.

Morning light moves across the floor.

The apricots ripen a little more each day.

Most of life changes so gradually that we hardly notice it happening.

We notice the blossom when it appears. We notice the fruit when it arrives. We notice the strength in a posture when one day it feels easier than it once did.

What we often miss is the accumulation.