The Art of Skillful Living

The Art of Skillful Living

Seven Things I Have Discovered in a Lifetime of Yoga

As we celebrate International Yoga Day on 21st June, it seems a good moment to reflect on what yoga has taught me.

After more than thirty years of practising, studying and teaching yoga, people often ask what yoga has given me. Not how to stand on my head. Not how to touch my toes. But what difference it has made to the way I live.

That question matters because yoga was never intended to be just a form of exercise. At its heart, yoga is a practical method for living well. A way of meeting ourselves, others and the world with greater awareness, creativity and ease.

Looking back over a lifetime of practice, these are seven valuable lessons I have discovered. There are plenty of others. They are not rules to follow or truths to believe. They are simply observations gathered along the way — lessons that continue to shape how I live, work, create and participate in the world.

Perhaps one or two of them might resonate with you too.

1. You Can't Control Very Much at All

Most of us spend a great deal of our lives trying to control circumstances, outcomes, other people and even ourselves.

Yoga showed me that control is largely an illusion and often the source of our frustration, stress and disappointment.

You can influence things. You can prepare, practise and participate. But life remains wonderfully unpredictable.

The tighter we hold on, the more we suffer. The more we learn to work with reality rather than fight it, the more freedom we discover.

So let go a little.

Stay present.

You might be surprised by what has been waiting for you all along.

2. It Doesn't Need to Be Perfect

Perfection is exhausting.

I know because one of the reasons I came to yoga was the mistaken belief that everything I did had to be perfect.

Yoga taught me that growth happens through practice, not perfection.

Every posture, breath, meditation, project, conversation and challenge is an opportunity to learn rather than perform.

The goal is not to become perfect.

The goal is to become present.

When you discover that, everything changes. You stop forcing life and begin collaborating with it.

Zen philosophy calls this wabi-sabi — the beauty of imperfection, impermanence and spontaneity.

It's a remarkably liberating way to live.

3. Experience Is Everything... But

Yoga is ultimately experiential.

This is why I teach yoga first and foremost as a method of perception. Learning to pay attention to attention itself. Becoming aware of being aware.

As practice deepens, perception becomes clearer, wider and more vivid.

But yoga revealed something that in the west seems paradoxical. 

You are not simply the body or the mind. Beneath both lies something deeper: awareness itself.

And ultimately there is no separate experiencer standing apart from experience. There is simply experience arising within awareness. 

It sounds counterintuitive at first, but once glimpsed it changes everything.

Yoga becomes less about acquiring experiences and more about recognising the awareness in which all experience appears. This shift changes everything. 

4. Everything Changes Except You

Thoughts change.

Feelings change.

Bodies change.

Circumstances change.

The entire world is in motion.

Yet beneath all that movement there is something remarkably stable: conscious awareness itself.

The poets call it the still point.

It is present everywhere, including within you.

From this place, change no longer appears as a threat but as a field of possibility.

Like a surfer riding a wave, you learn to move with life's constant flow rather than resist it.

My years as an architect taught me that everything is always changing. Yoga taught me that beneath that change there is something that never moves.

Finding that place changes everything.

5. Eat Things That Are Alive

Yoga taught me to pay attention to what I consume.

Not just food, but food is a good place to start.

Fresh, living foods seem to support life within us. They connect us back to nature and to the wider web of life.

Over time, yoga practice helps many people notice their diet, habits and desires begin to change naturally. Not because of rules or discipline, but because awareness grows.

You become more sensitive to how food affects your energy, your mood and your relationship with the world around you.

You don't need to become vegetarian to practise yoga.

But yoga has a way of changing your relationship with life itself. You see and feel consciousness everywhere in all living things which means no more killing spiders but gently catching them and letting them go outside. 

And that often changes what ends up on your plate.

6. Creativity Is the Thing

For years I lived two parallel lives: architect and yoga teacher.

Eventually I realised they were not separate.

Yoga is a creative act.

So is teaching.

So is building, writing, painting, leading, parenting and living. Even walking the dog or shopping in Aldi. 

Creativity is not reserved for artists. It is one of the most fundamental expressions of being human.

Whenever we create, we participate in life more fully.

When we stop creating, something vital begins to fade.

Yoga continually reminds me that creativity is not a luxury.

It is part of our nature.

7. Taking Part

Perhaps the most important lesson of all.

Yoga is not an escape from life.

It is preparation for life for a life lived skilfully. 

The practice helps us become more present, resilient, compassionate and awake so that we can participate more fully in the world.

To be in the world without being consumed by it.

To contribute rather than withdraw.

To show up.

To care.

To take part.

And after all these years, that still feels like the greatest lesson yoga has to offer - particularly now.