Moving at the Speed of Trust
This September, I am sitting with a powerful line from Adrienne Maree Brown’s book Emergent Strategy: “Move at the speed of trust.”
Brown’s work explores how change unfolds in nature, in communities, and in our personal lives. Not through constant pushing, but through rhythms of trust, relationship, and emergence. It’s a direct challenge to the hustle driven culture we often live in today, where burnout is disguised as accomplishment and exhaustion becomes a badge of honor. This reflection instantly brought me back to yoga. Too often we treat advanced postures as proof of our worth, how much we’ve practiced, how deeply we’ve pushed, how hard we’ve forced our bodies to perform. But yoga, like life, is not about speed or spectacle. It is about presence. Alignment with something far deeper than comparison.
In fact, the very act of undertaking a yoga practice, especially when we look beyond the physical postures is an act of quiet defiance and radical self care. To step onto the mat, or to sit in stillness, is to resist the external pressures of productivity and performance. It is to claim space for self inquiry, grounding, and breath. Yoga becomes liberation not just through shapes or sequences, but through the trust it cultivates within us. Trust in our own foundation, trust in our breath, trust in the possibility of growth that does not demand and force. This is the deeper nature of yoga. Not only physical flexibility or strength, but the unwavering trust we can build internally. It is a practice of learning to move from that trust, and to carry it into how we live, love, and navigate the world.
“Moving at the speed of trust” in my practice this month means:
Taking a few breaths to anchor and arrive fully before leaping into asana.
Trusting my energy level instead of pushing beyond it.
Exploring independently the methods a teacher offers, while trusting my body’s signals above all else.
Trusting in my own timing and letting go of the scroll, the comparison, the noise and prioritising returning to myself.
These are a few ways I’ve been reflecting on how to cultivate trust and self worth in my own practice. Ways that can also bring more joy and presence into daily life. One of the gifts of yoga is that it gives us timeless wisdom we can return to again and again, whenever life feels overwhelming. I love encountering contemporary insights, like Adrienne Maree Brown’s “move at the speed of trust,” and then weaving them into the ancient teachings of the Yoga Sutras.
Take Yoga Sutra I.14, which tells us:
“Practice becomes firmly grounded when well attended to for a long time, without break, and in all earnestness.”
At first glance, this can feel like a call for intensity…Practice every single day, no matter what, and never give up. I’ll admit that I interpreted it this way for years, pushing myself to practice at full capacity even when I was depleted. But over time, I began to realize that this was my ego’s interpretation of the sutra, not its essence. The key word here is earnestness which points not to intensity, but to sincerity. It’s about showing up honestly, with a spirit of dedication and truthfulness, rather than forcing ourselves to meet an external ideal. This shifts the teaching from being about never missing a day to becoming a practice with genuine focus and intention.
For example, some mornings you may feel full of energy and inspired to dive into a strong asana practice. On another day, your most earnest practice might be ten minutes of pranayama, a few Yin postures, or even simply sitting with your breath. All are equally valid when approached with sincerity. In this way, trust becomes the foundation. You are allowed to trust your energy levels, your needs, and your inner compass, instead of comparing yourself to others or trying to live up to an imagined “perfect” version of practice. When we apply this lens, the phrase “without break” doesn’t mean grinding endlessly day after day, or feeling guilty if life interrupts our routine. Instead, it means maintaining a living connection, staying in relationship with our practice in some form, no matter how small. Trust reminds us that every sincere effort, however simple, is part of weaving a grounded, lifelong path.
The Sanskrit word śraddhā is often translated as the heart of trust. With śraddhā, we begin to see that practice is not measured by how much we accomplish, but by how deeply we can be present. We can always return to the faith that our practice, whether through asana, breath, meditation, or study has the power to bring us back into clarity, awareness, and forgiveness.
As I move into the later part of the year, I feel called to let trust take the lead. To shift the focus from external achievements to the inner qualities that sustain practice: steady breath, grounding, compassion, and care. For me, September is an invitation to experiment with what it means to move at the speed of trust and to notice how that rhythm reshapes not only my yoga, but also the way I move through life.
I’d love to hear from you:
What does trust in your practice look like?
How do you remind yourself to come back when life pulls you away?
Are there small rituals or teachings that anchor you in steadiness?
Leave a comment below with your thoughts, tips, or inspiration, you never know who might need to hear your words today. Together, we can keep learning what it means to root our practice in trust.