And Now, Yoga

There is a teaching in yoga that says there is only one moment.

The now moment.

I’ve taught it. I’ve contemplated it. I’ve experienced its truth in meditation countless times.

Yoga has never been something I simply practiced. It is how I understand my life.

When something happens, I don’t ask, How do I get past this? I ask, What is yoga showing me here? What's my opportunity?

Then I broke my wrist.

The injury happened in a single moment. The surgery happened in a single moment.

Months later, my wrist and hand are still stiff. The soft tissue still hurts. My nervous system still protects it. The fracture is over, but its effects remain.

I found myself asking a simple question.

If there is only one moment, why am I still living with what happened months ago?

The answer slowly revealed itself through direct inquiry.

The past isn’t here.

Its residue is.

Every moment leaves something behind.

A conversation leaves residue. A betrayal leaves residue. A loving embrace leaves residue. An injury leaves residue.

The body remembers. The nervous system adapts. Relationships carry unfinished conversations. Life leaves impressions.

If I’m honest, I’m tired of my wrist.

I’m tired of thinking about it. Measuring it. Working around it. Wondering when it will finally feel like mine again.

I’m tired of it hijacking so many moments.

And yet...

Somewhere in that frustration, I began to notice something.

The residue wasn’t changing very quickly. But my relationship to it was.

For most of my life, I have met challenge with effort, discipline, and determination. If something needed to shift, I worked harder. I pushed. I forced.

This injury would not allow it.

Every time I tried to force the process, my wrist reminded me that the body has its own intelligence. Force was part of how I got here. It was not the pathway out.

Looking back, I can see that something deeper had shifted.

Yoga has a language for this.

Karma is the unfolding of action and consequence. Saṁskāras are the imprints left behind by our experiences. Vāsanās are the tendencies that arise from those imprints.

The injury left saṁskāras: the scar, the changes in function, the altered movement, the nervous system's protection.

But something else became visible.

A vāsanā.

My tendency to force things. To believe enough effort could overcome life. That I could make things happen if I just kept pushing and doing.

That tendency was interrupted.

Not because I became passive, but because reality kept asking something different of me.

The residue of the injury remained. My relationship to it changed.

Perhaps that is where practice lives.

Not in escaping the past. Not in pretending its residue isn’t here. But in discovering that this moment is the only place where the cycle can change.

There is still only one moment.

Not because nothing came before it.

But because this is the only moment where the residue of the past can be met differently.

Perhaps that’s what the present moment really is.

Not a place where the past disappears.

A place where its residue can finally be met differently.

And now, this moment.