I once met a man called Hugh who did a lot of yoga.

We were on a yoga weekend and ended up sitting next to each other at lunch; apropos of nothing I commented that on the days I practised yoga, the day seemed then to roll out more evenly and beautifully afterwards, as if there was all the time in the world for everything (as opposed to that horrible, I'm-never-going-to-have-enough-time-for-all-I-need-to-get-done-today feeling that has become the default setting for too many of us).

Without missing a beat he replied that yoga makes you realise the things that matter and the things that don't, so that after you have practised, you don't waste time on the small stuff. You breathe more deeply, you take more time, you trust more that everything will get done in its own right time.

I'm not sure that I had put two and two together before and made this realisation, but it was so obvious when he said it and of course, he is absolutely right. Yoga reframes your day, and when you have practised regularly for long enough, it reframes your life. Yoga helps you to acknowledge what is important and to leave aside the other stuff. It teaches you to live with your brain fully engaged with whatever it is you are doing and that helps you to do things better, more successfully, more easily. You rush less and make fewer silly mistakes. You deepen the quality of the attention given to any situation and this improves both the way you perform in that situation and your experience of it.

Try to remember that the days when you feel that you have no time for yoga, are likely to be the days that you need yoga the most.

Commit to the idea that it is within your power to take 20 minutes out of your day for yoga and thereby to make your whole day better.

Many days put together become a life.