I am the ultimate creature of habit. Ask anyone who knows me. I am loyal to a fault, and when I find something or someone I like, I am devoted. I write in the same comfy chair at my coffice every day. The regulars—bless their hearts—invariably offer me their seat if they happen to be in it when I arrive. I get stuck on favorite restaurants too. For a while, I ate at an iconic local health food restaurant several times a week until my friends gently hinted that they’d love to eat somewhere else. Anywhere else. The breakfast tacos at the YMCA had me captivated for a season. The waiters at my favorite vietnamese haunt start making vegetarian spring rolls when I walk in the door. I am woefully predictable. And that’s not always a bad thing. There is comfort in routine and some wisdom in the old adage, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!”

But sometimes I’m so comfortable with my well-cultivated ways that I don’t notice they’re not serving me any longer. I have been a devotee of Iyengar yoga for the past 10+ years, almost half of the 22 years I’ve been practicing. It is the bedrock of my asana work and, surely, its focus on proper alignment will serve me well as I age.

Every summer, like it or not, my practice gets a bit of a shake-up when I head to our mountain house in North Carolina. I adore the studio there, and I quickly adapt to whatever style the teachers are offering. This summer it was lots of flowing yoga, and toward the end of the summer, I found myself in a three-hour bhavana workshop. Bhavana is a term found in yogic and Buddhist circles meaning “to cultivate one’s potential through sincere practice.” We practiced, we talked, we journaled, and we had tea. I found bhavana to be as relevant to Christianity as it is to the Eastern faiths in which it developed.

So why now—deep into fall, heading into the holiday season—am I reflecting on that summer workshop? Because yesterday my journal fell open to pages I wrote in that workshop. As I re-read those words, I was struck by the fact that I have manifested the changes that I identified through that journaling. I didn’t let my desire for predictability thwart my bhavana. I was brave enough to change, to do something different that would make a profound difference in my life on and off the mat.

I will share my journal entry here, in hopes that it will spark a recognition deep within you of something that needs to change within your own spiritual practice—whether yoga-related or not. It could be your prayer life feel stifling and needs invigoration. Or you sense the need for a more active practice—perhaps walking a labyrinth; a more mystical one—maybe centering prayer; or you want to include more universal language in the ways you address God.

Sitting on the floor of the studio in the mountains contemplating how I could cultivate my own potential through my practice, I wrote:

I’d like to synch the inner yogic strength I’ve developed this year with my practice on the mat. By necessity, I was gentle with myself during the time of great loss and profound grief.

Now I know deep within—in a way I did not before—that I can survive the unthinkable. I can do things like write my sister’s obituary, plan my nephew’s sixth birthday party and talk for hours on the phone with my sister’s husband about how we go about doing life without her. If you would have asked me, I would say I could never do those things.

But I did. And I am still here.

So now I want my practice to reflect this new-found strength and tenacity. I have been gentle with my physical practice long enough. Now I want to move and breathe and stretch into that inner strength. I don’t want to say, “I can’t” to poses that intimidate me. I want to sweat more, shake more and let my inner strength shine.

As I finished re-reading those words, I wanted to give myself a big hug for listening to my inner longings and for acting on them. For the last two months, I have done sweaty, messy flowing yoga three times a week and have worked out my grief in physical ways that I never could have within the safe confines of my Iyengar practice, with its props to keep us safe and its layered cues to make sure we were doing each posture just right.

When we come face-to-face with harsh realities—like my sister Angie’s sudden, inexplicable death earlier this year—all the props that make us feel safe fall away. We know that sometimes life just doesn’t make sense, and carefully orchestrated and controlled practices don’t express that sense of losing control. So, for now, I move until my muscles are exhausted. I flow without thoughts about precision and perfection. I practice kriyas from the kundalini tradition that are designed to make us uncomfortable, so that we may grow beyond the discomfort. And I sweat a lot. I am out of my comfort zone in every way.

And I am still here.