How We Inhabit Time
September 10, 2026
by Karen Andersen, BSc (Behavioural Neuroscience), E‑RYT 500, YACEP
While scrolling through old pictures yesterday, I came across a photo of our backyard from 2017, taken almost ten years ago. A laurel hedge borders the west side, which is now home to many lost soccer balls and frisbees. It’s probably at least double my height, but in this photo, I was surprised by how squat the bushes were; I could easily have peered over them into the neighbour’s yard. I don’t remember the day when it became a privacy wall. And although I don’t have any deep emotional attachment to the laurel bushes, seeing their growth reminded me how easily the little changes we live with every day go unnoticed. Much of what feels familiar does so because it appears unchanging. But this stability is an illusion. Beneath the surface of our awareness, we are continually adapting to changing circumstances, re-establishing our sense of normal.
What Escapes Our Awareness
There’s another way we can miss what’s changing. Our moment-to-moment experience is in constant flux. We often feel bombarded by demands from immediate and distant sources. Working memory can hold about three to five items in most adults, a capacity that quickly reaches its limits amid competing demands on our attention. Our experience can be so saturated with information and stimulation that meaningful signals become difficult to detect amid the noise. On the inside, our moods, sensations, thoughts, and motivations are ephemeral, responding to countless influences. On the outside, the environment around us changes in ways we can’t possibly keep track of. Fortunately, our mind selectively admits just a fraction of this information into awareness. When this attentional filter is working well, it leaves us with enough headspace to get through the day. But our attention tends to favour what’s most salient or relevant to our immediate needs, and those needs are continually shifting.
What I’m getting at is that it’s not easy to notice the long-term, meaningful changes in our lives. Whether change is too gradual to notice or too variable to make sense of, much of what is happening within and around us eludes our awareness. But why does this matter?
The Value of Noticing
Awareness of change gives us ongoing feedback about the consequences of our actions. Without this recognition, we have fewer opportunities to learn from experience and make better choices. In the philosophies of Buddhism and Yoga, avidyā, or ignorance, is a root of suffering, while viveka, or discernment, offers a path toward wisdom and understanding.
Awareness of change is also a powerful motivator. Think of a goal you have, and what sustains you in achieving it. Noticing changes helps us recognize our progress and renew our intentions. But we may also avoid recognizing change. Change can feel unnerving when it conflicts with our desires, whether it’s beyond our control, like growing older, or more within our control, like falling back into a habitual pattern. But attitude matters. Approaching what we discover with curiosity rather than judgment can give us the courage to look honestly at where we’re at, in relation to where we’ve been and where we’re headed, and maybe make peace with what we find.
The Practice of Paying Attention
This is what makes yoga practice sacred and also pragmatic. On your mat, your senses are exposed to a relatively stable environment, with fewer competing distractions. I often remind myself how unique this situation is, now more than ever. For the reprieve alone, it’s a gift to ourselves.
But then we engage through action and feeling. The practice isn’t just happening to us; we are immersed in a stream of interactions between attending and engaging, sensing and releasing, movement and stillness. Yoga is a practice of embodied mindfulness; it gives us opportunity after opportunity to observe our actions and their consequences, which would otherwise be easily obscured. This is the “on the record” content of our practice.
When we practice yoga, our experience is usually very ordinary. We reduce the situational complexity: it’s calm, and we stay within a two-by-six-foot space, moving through patterns with the breath. But even so, inner distractions don’t disappear. This is the “off the record” content of our practice. These moments of mind-wandering and returning to our breath and bodies are at the heart of the training. On the mat, we’re developing the ability to recognize distraction and sustain our attention for longer. As this capacity grows, we can perceive more clearly, distinguishing the signal from the noise, even in the more complicated circumstances of everyday life.
But noticing where we are isn’t the same as understanding it. Mindfulness can be myopic; we can pay close attention to our immediate experience without understanding our longer-term trajectory. With repeated practice, however, we may recognize patterns in our observations that provide context and help us understand how and why we’re changing.
Extraordinary experiences may be what we associate with life’s most transformative moments. But they are just that, extraordinary. Most of our lives unfold in the ordinary and familiar. This is the connective tissue of life, where our relationships evolve, our bodies adapt, and skills and wisdom are forged. It’s where, with a little practice, we can recognize meaningful change.
