Start Close In

On how small steps, taken consistently, become something more

There’s a poem by David Whyte called “Start Close In.” I won’t reproduce it here, poems like that deserve to be read in full rather than borrowed in fragments, but the instruction in the title has stayed with me for years: begin with what is actually in front of you, not the grand leap, not the distant, dramatic version of the change you’ve been imagining.

I’ve been thinking about it again because at the beginning of September I taught my first public yoga class. Ten people, a church hall in New Barnet, a Friday morning. From the outside it probably looked like a leap. It wasn’t. It was the next close step in a story that started well over ten years ago, and it’s taught me a lot about how something authentic gets built.

The Part That Took Ten Years

I found yoga during a Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction course I did with a teacher called Norma Kirwan, more than a decade before I ever thought about training to teach it. It sat alongside my meditation practice for years, not a separate pursuit so much as a different door into the same room. Movement as mindfulness in motion, the same nervous system settling, just reached by a different route. I never set out to become a yoga teacher, even after I had trained to be a mindfulness teacher. I just kept practising, kept turning up on the mat, and at some point, it started to feel natural to want to share the benefits of yoga with other people too.

That’s usually how the real transformation happens, I think. Not as a five-year plan announced to the world, but as a quiet accumulation that eventually becomes tangible. Signing up for the yoga teacher training wasn’t really the beginning. It was just the moment that beginning became a doorway I could hold open for others too.

I want to celebrate anyone whose practice, whatever it is, lives mostly on an app or in the carved-out moments of a busy day. It’s exactly how many pathways begin, mine included. I’ve had a daily solo mindfulness practice for a long time now. That said, I have always found support in joining regular groups, retreats and opportunities to spend time with like-minded people. There’s a palpable energy to being in a group, an atmosphere created simply by people showing up and practising alongside each other and this can inspire us to keep showing up, to keep taking the next step. These are the gifts that practising with others gives you, alongside a fixed day, a fixed time and other people who notice when you’re not there. It’s much harder to skip a session you’ve committed to with a room full of people than a solo sit you were only ever answerable to yourself for. The structure is often what makes the practice actually happen, week after week, for long enough that it compounds into something meaningful.

What It Actually Felt Like

Teaching my first yoga class wasn’t effortless. I’d hoped to arrive early and run through my lesson plan one more time, and instead found myself teaching a room of ten people, five I knew and five I didn’t, having barely had a moment to settle myself first. At one point, I forgot to specify which side to stretch first, so half the room ended up doing something different to the other half.

Despite these challenges, the session still landed. Someone told me afterwards she felt so relaxed during the closing relaxation that she nearly fell asleep. Another participant said I seemed calm, confident and knowledgeable, which surprised me, because from the inside it had felt far messier than that. Every week since has felt a little more natural.

The Learning Isn’t Finished

My yoga teacher training finishes in November but I don’t think that milestone will change how ready I feel nearly as much as I once assumed it would. What’s really made the difference has been close to what I wrote about in a previous post: honouring the step that’s actually in front of you. The teacher training may be coming to an end, but in some ways the learning is just beginning. That’s simply what practice looks like.

This, I think, is the whole path: no leap, just small steps, taken consistently. They quietly add up to what turns out to make a real difference. Not just my journey from student to teacher. But also from someone who used to carry the day’s stress home with her to someone who’s now more easily able to let go of rumination and genuinely appreciate life’s small joys. The change has been so gradual that it can be hard to notice, but when I look back I can see a true transformation. If this is possible for me, it’s possible for you too. It’s the cumulative effect of consistently turning up for practice again and again.

It’s often easier to practise alongside others, and both of the regular sessions I teach offer exactly that — which one feels like the most natural next step for you?

I now teach Friday Morning Yoga, 9:30–10:30am at St John’s Church Hall in New Barnet, all levels welcome including complete beginners, if movement feels like your way in. You can find out more and book here.

My Thursday evening drop-in meditation continues too, online or in person in Barnet, 6.15pm, no experience needed, if sitting still is more your rhythm. North London Yoga has the details.

Either way, which door you choose matters less than walking through one, and then simply taking the next step.

Ruth McDonald is a BAMBA-registered mindfulness teacher and yoga teacher (BWY, training completing November 2026). She teaches a weekly meditation drop-in and Friday morning yoga, and works with individuals and groups in London and online.