I don’t think human beings are meant to live like this!

I caught myself the other day standing in the kitchen scrolling on my phone while the kettle boiled… then opening another app before I’d even finished looking at the first one.

And honestly, I think that tiny moment says quite a lot about modern life now.

The mind barely gets a second unoccupied before something rushes in to fill it.

A message.
A notification.
A podcast.
A reel.
An email.
Something to consume.
Something to respond to.
Something to improve.

Even rest has started becoming strangely performative.

I notice this in myself sometimes when I’ve spent too much time online or too much time “doing”.
There’s a sort of internal tightening that starts happening.

Everything becomes slightly operational.
I become more efficient… but less here somehow.

And I don’t think we fully realise how much this affects people now.

Not just emotionally, but perceptually.

Because when the nervous system is constantly stimulated, rushed or fragmented, life itself starts feeling different.

You stop noticing things properly.
You lose some humour.
Pleasure narrows.
Attention becomes jumpy.
The body forgets how to settle.

And then after a while people start building identities around states that were only ever supposed to be temporary.

“I’m just a stressed person.”
“I’m just someone who can’t switch off.”
“I’m just a bit flat these days.”

Meanwhile the system hasn’t had a moment of genuine spaciousness in years.

I notice versions of this in practice all the time now too.

Not just physical tension.
Mental restlessness.

People arriving at practice carrying the momentum of modern life straight into the room with them.

You can almost feel how difficult it has become for many people to simply arrive somewhere fully.

And I understand it because honestly… look at what we’re living inside.

Everything now is competing for attention.

Every platform wants emotional engagement.
Every algorithm learns what activates you.
Everyone’s trying to optimise themselves constantly.
Even hobbies have become productivity projects.

Yoga sometimes gets swallowed by this too.

People approaching practice like another thing they need to “succeed” at correctly.

More flexibility.
Better habits.
Better routines.
Better nervous system.
Better self.

But traditional yoga was never really trying to turn people into optimisation projects.

If anything, it was trying to reduce some of the interference.

The sages understood something quite profound really:
human beings perceive differently depending on the state their nervous system is in.

When attention becomes fragmented, life starts fragmenting too.

Not literally, obviously.
But experientially.

Everything starts feeling thinner somehow.
Harder to enjoy.
Harder to fully inhabit.

And because this now feels normal culturally, people rarely question it.

They assume they need:
a better plan
more discipline
another app
more motivation
a different morning routine

Meanwhile they haven’t sat quietly with their own attention for longer than four minutes without reaching for stimulation.

Which now I say it out loud sounds slightly terrifying actually. 😂

And this is partly why repetition matters so much in practice.

Not because repetition is exciting.
Most days it isn’t.

But repetition interrupts fragmentation.

You return to the same shapes.
The same breath.
The same rhythm.
Again and again.

And slowly the system starts remembering something different.

There’s more spaciousness.
More discernment.
More warmth.
More curiosity.
More ability to actually experience life while it’s happening instead of constantly managing it from slightly outside yourself.

As my teacher Octavio says:
“Honestly, it makes you less fuckable with.” 🤭

Which always makes me laugh.
But I also think it’s deeply true.

Because when your attention becomes steadier, you become harder to manipulate.
Harder to emotionally hook.
Harder to pull around endlessly by noise, panic, comparison and pressure.

You become more capable of hearing your own life again underneath all the static.

That’s a big part of what we’ve been exploring inside FireWoven recently.

Not self-improvement.
Not reinvention.
Not becoming some elevated spiritual version of yourself floating serenely above modern life while drinking adaptogenic mushroom powder.

Just becoming more here again.

More able to feel ordinary life properly.
More responsive.
More alive.
More yourself.

I wrote more about this properly in this week’s piece:
​Exhaustion Is Speaking On Your Behalf.​

Particularly the strange way nervous system state slowly starts shaping identity without people fully noticing.

The point where exhaustion stops feeling temporary and starts sounding like:

“This is just who I am now.”

Which honestly I think is happening to far more people than we realise.

With love,

Josie 🔥

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P.S. If practice has drifted a little lately, don’t turn the return into a dramatic self-improvement campaign. Quiet repetition is usually enough. 🔥