One of my favourite parts of yoga happens before the class has even begun.

I usually arrive about fifteen minutes early, not because I’m worried about finding the perfect place in the room, but because those few quiet minutes have become part of my practice. I leave my shoes at the door, unroll my mat and simply sit. Sometimes I close my eyes, sometimes I watch people arrive, but more often than not it’s the first time all day that I’ve done absolutely nothing.

I’ve often wondered if other people come early for the same reason.

As the room begins to fill, there are all the familiar sights and sounds that anyone who practises yoga will recognise. Mats unfurl across the floor. Someone quietly adjusts a bolster. A teacher moves through the room greeting familiar faces.

And then there are those I affectionately call the geese.

Every studio seems to have them. They arrive together, continue a conversation that clearly began in the car park and somehow manage to make everyone else an unwilling participant. They’re not being rude; they’re simply catching up after a week apart, blissfully unaware that their conversation has become the soundtrack to somebody else’s silence.

So does the occasional water bottle that decides, entirely of its own accord, to roll majestically across the studio floor. If you’ve been practising yoga for any length of time, you’ll know exactly the sound I’m talking about. Every head turns. The owner smiles apologetically. Someone eventually stops it with their foot, the bottle is reunited with its owner, and the room quietly settles again.

None of these things really matter, at least not on their own.

Life happens. We’ve all been late. We’ve all forgotten to silence a phone. We’ve all dropped something at precisely the wrong moment. I have no doubt I’ve been the cause of someone else’s distraction more than once.

What I’ve found myself thinking about recently isn’t the interruption itself. It’s the person we rarely notice: the one who arrived quietly fifteen minutes before everyone else, the one sitting with their eyes closed while the room slowly fills, the one who may have come not just for the yoga, but for those few precious minutes beforehand.

We never really know why someone is there. They may have come straight from a stressful day at work. Home may have felt particularly heavy that week. They could be grieving, exhausted or simply hoping for an hour where nobody expects anything from them.

That’s why I’ve started to think differently about the quieter customs of yoga.

I no longer see them as etiquette.

I see them as consideration.

Silencing a phone isn’t just about avoiding an interruption. It’s about protecting someone else’s moment of stillness.

Keeping conversations until after class isn’t about discouraging friendship. Some of the loveliest conversations happen after yoga. It’s simply recognising that the person on the next mat may have arrived hoping to find a little peace before the practice begins.

Even traditions that seem small, such as removing our shoes before entering the practice space or, in many studios, turning our feet away from the front of the room during Savasana, speak to the same idea. They remind us that yoga has always been about more than our own individual experience. It has also always been about how we share the space with those around us.

Over the years, I’ve come to realise that these small things matter to me, not because following them makes us a better yogi, and certainly not because forgetting them makes us a bad one, but because they quietly acknowledge something we rarely stop to think about.

For the next hour, we are practising together.

The postures may be individual, but the atmosphere belongs to everyone.

Next week I’ll probably do exactly what I always do. I’ll arrive a little early, leave my shoes at the door, unroll my mat and sit quietly for a few minutes before class begins.

The only difference is that, as I sit there, I’ll probably find myself quietly appreciating everyone else who has helped create those few moments of peace before the class has even begun.

🤍