Letting Practice Be Enough

My friend Julia Napier, a talented writer, teacher, and practitioner, calls it the good enough practice. It’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot these past few months, and I was particularly reminded of it this week.

Lately, I’ve been cramming myself into our tiny hallway to practice. This 1,100-square-foot house is shrinking before my eyes—baby gear arriving regularly, Paul working from home, Christmas gifts piling up. I barely fit in the hallway, but it offers a little pocket of quiet. Earlier this week the baby was sleeping, and I miraculously got an hour and twenty minutes on my mat.

I’ve started working on Third Series again after an eighteen-month hiatus. Is it pretty? Hell no. Does it feel good? Also no. But it is good enough. And that pretty much sums up my experience of yoga in 2025—my experience thus far as a new mom. My practice is good enough.

I’ve always said, if you practice, it’s good. I believed it and taught it. But underneath that belief, I still carried expectations. I expected my body to feel a certain way, to move into certain shapes, to look a certain way. I wanted progress. Even after major setbacks—surgeries, illnesses, accidents—I assumed the overall trajectory of practice would keep moving forward.

And then I had a baby.

Nothing has humbled or reshaped my relationship to yoga more.

Before, practice was the highlight of my day. I controlled the timing, temperature, and atmosphere. I chased depth, precision, expansion. I could spend two hours on standing if I wanted to. I was laser-focused.

Now, practice feels like entering a room where everything is moving and none of it is in my control.

Some mornings I get five minutes.
Some mornings I get forty.
Every now and then I get ninety minutes and it feels like I’ve won the lottery.
But I never know.

My mat has become a multipurpose arena: climbing gym, teething zone, rolling station, toy display, sometimes a pillow. Most mornings, I unroll it with a baby crawling toward me like a joyful little disruptor. I don’t know if I’ll make it through Surya A before I’m needed.

My body is squishier. Weaker. The other day at a shala, I realized my boob had leaked. A few days later, Craigy spit up in my hair while I was on my mat. The days of matching sets and Instagram-worthy poses are not now.

I’m not resentful. But I do recognize that this is good enough.

The real work for me has been stopping the comparison—to myself two years ago, five years ago, ten years ago. Letting go of the idea that practice needs to deliver me somewhere.

It is good enough if it happens at all.

Good enough means I showed up, even if I didn’t finish.
Good enough means I can’t do a pose I’ve practiced for half my life because I’ve spent the entire day holding a baby, and my shoulders won’t open.
Good enough means I skip poses, pause often, or stop to pee.
Good enough means I hold my baby—and then begin again.
Good enough means giving my body permission to be exactly where it is.

In these postpartum months—eight months of broken sleep, short practices, softness, and surrender—the real yoga has been letting go of the part of me that needed practice to be impressive, complete, or progressive.

Motherhood has shown me that the practice lives in the interruptions. In the letting go. In the starting again. And in starting again differently.

There is a tenderness required now that I never cultivated before. Not from advanced poses or long practices, but from accepting impermanence—of body, schedule, energy, priorities.

My relationship to yoga is changing in real time. It’s quieter. Gentler. Less performative and more lived. Less about pushing and more about allowing. Less about the full series and more about presence in whatever sliver of time I’m given.

Practice is different now. But it is still good.

Yoga used to be something I went to do.
Now it’s stitched into the fabric of my day—interrupted, messy, integrated, real.

I practice while someone sits on my lap.
I practice while someone chews on a block.
I practice while someone cries, and I pause to soothe them.
I practice while wondering how many minutes I have left.

And somehow, all of this has softened me rather than hardened me.

I’m not chasing poses or progress right now. I’m not chasing the version of myself who could snap into a pose and feel invincible. She existed. I loved her. But I’m not trying to resurrect her.

I’m meeting the version of myself who is here now—with dark circles, a baby on her mat, a practice that looks nothing like it used to, and a heart that is fuller than ever.

If practice happens, it is good.
If it’s short, it is good.
If it’s messy, it is good.
If it’s interrupted, it’s still good.

Motherhood stripped away every illusion I had about control—and in return, it gave me the gift of the good enough practice. A practice that is human, adaptive, alive. One that doesn’t demand perfection. One that sits beside the life I’m actually living.

And somehow, impossibly, beautifully—it’s enough.