December 2025 | Saunter

MeditationWritingContemplative PracticePhilosophy

Jan 25

Written By MOSA

NOTE: This was originally published as part of my newsletter in December 2025. Subscribe to my newsletter to receive the next Om Letter direct to your inbox once a month.

I’m back home in the Canary Islands (would it lessen your envy to know it’s been raining intermittently since I got here?), and am wrapping up some admin that fell by the wayside at the end of my teaching year. One of these tasks is to bring my log of teaching hours up to date - as yoga teachers our level of expertise is very much measured in the amount time we’ve spent teaching. Much to my surprise, this year I totalled exactly 600 hours, alongside 75 hours of further education. As the saying goes: ‘time flies when you’re having fun,’ but it’s also left me thinking about our perception of time, and the speed of the mind.

Some of you will know that I tend not to quantify time during practice. I rarely tell you how long we’ll stay in a pose for, and if we sit together in meditation, I won’t offer a precise duration. This preference began with a particular experience I once had during a mediation class. I found myself surprised as our teacher informed us that we had been sitting for 55 minutes (I was convinced a mere five minutes had passed), and that we would sit for a further five minutes. Knowing there were five minutes left made those minutes expand and stretch until they became painfully slow, and felt never-ending. At the risk of sounding dramatic, I remember thinking: ‘this is what Einstein meant when he said time is relative.’

In fairness to my younger self, our experience of time is deeply subjective, and profoundly shaped by our perception. Do you remember being a child or a teenager, and thinking that Summer holidays felt endless? Now most of us over the age of 30 will say ‘this year has flown by’ at least once a year. Time appears to accelerate just as we begin to recognise how precious (and finite) it truly is.

Our mind naturally anticipates, it remembers, evaluates, thinks ahead, and stops meeting the world around us as something ‘new and noteworthy.’ This isn’t unusual, or even a problem really until it becomes continuous, and unexamined. Our attention starts to get pulled away from what is actually happening, and we begin to live slightly ahead or behind ourselves - rarely are we just here.

Meditation doesn’t ask the mind to be silent, but rather to allow space for us to slow down, to pause, and simply just be when we need to. When we consciously choose to slow down we create small openings where the present moment can be felt, not just noticed. Now our awareness can shift from abstract thinking into the concrete body. The texture of the breath becomes vivid. Subtle sensations - warmth, vibration, weight - come into focus. Emotions are no longer just stories we tell ourselves, but lived experiences moving through the body.

As meditation cultivates sustained attention, ordinary sensations regain their richness, and small details become meaningful to us once again. A sense of quiet gratitude can surface without effort. This is a kind of appreciation that doesn’t require extraordinary moments; it arises simply from our intimacy with what is already here.

Eventually, this impacts our relationship to time. Moments feel fuller, less compressed. Time itself doesn’t stop, but we are no longer the ones racing through it. In this softened sense of time there is room for reflection without rumination, our feelings can arise and pass, and life feels like a continuous unfolding.

Here I’d like to extend a heartfelt ‘thank you’ to those of you reading this, and in particular those who’ve joined me in class over the past year. In my personal life this has been a particularly challenging year so spending time with you all, and seeing you flourish in your practice (and life more generally) has been a big source of daily joy for me. I hope this New Year brings you plenty of opportunities to come home to yourself. If you’re looking to prioritise those conscious pauses, then I’ve got plenty of extend practices planned for 2026 - please take a look at what’s coming up below. I look forward to being back in the studio with you soon.

With love,

OM x