We've all heard the spiritual teaching that we need “to be present” to live a full and kind life — and we believe that teaching is important and powerful.
But in this two-part talk, Judith Hanson Lasater takes a different approach. Rather than telling us once again why presence matters, she turns the question around: what is it, exactly, that keeps pulling us away from it — and from the inner calm we're so often seeking?
With her signature warmth and a good dose of humor, Judith takes a closer look at the small, often silly habits that quietly hijack our attention all day long — the reflexive phone check, the mind already three tasks ahead, the conversation we're only half in because some other worry got there first.
Yoga philosophy has a name for these patterns: the kleshas, the root causes of suffering that cloud our natural state of peace and keep us reaching, resisting, or simply somewhere else. As Judith puts it in her own teaching, the real question isn't just “What am I going to get from this moment?” but “What am I allowing to have my attention right now?”
This is, in many ways, the same question restorative yoga asks of us — just from a different angle. Where restorative practice invites the body into stillness so the nervous system can finally exhale, this talk turns that same inquiry toward the mind, asking what keeps us restless even when we're lying perfectly still on a bolster.
Presence, Judith reminds us, isn't a technique we master once and keep forever. It's a daily, ongoing practice of coming back — again and again — to this breath, this moment, this one strawberry we get to taste before it's gone.
Drawing on the same philosophy behind her Living Your Yoga books, Judith offers this talk not as a lecture on trying harder to be present, but as an invitation to notice — with curiosity rather than judgment — where our attention actually goes, and why.
Join her for this candid, funny, and quietly profound exploration of what stands between us and true inner calm, and how simply seeing those habits clearly is often the first step toward living our yoga off the mat, not just on it.
This course qualifies for 2 CEs.
