It Is Not a Problem.
On Seema, Anu, and the most liberating five words I brought home from India.
celebrating Holi in Haridwar, India. SENSORY EXPLOSION!
Most nights in India, we sat around the table after dinner and opened up this question to our group: What was your sensory experience today? What was new — something you saw, touched, tasted, heard, felt?
On one of the first nights, Ann — a MOST generous, kind, curious, adventurous woman — in our group, replied: CHAI. Chai! CHAI! Her first real chai. So warm, spicy, and nourishing.
The table erupted in laughter.
Ann had also been to the TAJ MAHAL that day, one of the most remarkable structures ever built. A literal WONDER of the world. And the early morning cup of chai that lulled her out of her jet-lag-cat-nap-night-of-sleep WON.
Of course it did. Because that’s the thing about presence: it doesn’t rank experiences. It just receives them.
That’s what those two weeks were in India. Immense beauty. So much chai. The kaleidoscope-of-colors skirt you had to buy because it was made for you, and we all knew it. The hearty, resonant, sound of a table full of women, spanning each decade from 30s to 70s, enraptured in conversation, tears, and deep-belly laughter. A dozen women taking tremendous care of each other from the deep, dark grizzly stuff all the way to the ridiculous sublime. I will be unpacking all of it for years.
But today, I want to give you just one thing. The simplest thing I came home with. And perhaps the most powerful.
After 25 years of practicing yoga, it finally felt right to go to the source. To see and witness and learn more about the lineage I’ve been teaching and living and building a business around for 15 years.
Our hosts were Seema and Anu — the daughter and granddaughter of Harish Johari, one of the most influential yoga teachers of the last half century. (If you did any reading or study of yoga in the 2000s or 2010s, you almost certainly encountered one of his books, or learned from someone he shaped. This was in every yoga teacher training.) We slept under their roof. We ate our meals cooked in their kitchen. We practiced on their rooftop with a view of the Ganga. We celebrated Holi in the courtyard of their family haveli.
Seema stood — and I mean stood — with a presence that was larger than life. Hands clasped in front of her, her golden and gemstone rings catching the light, her face open and warm and utterly calm. A steadiness in her voice that didn’t perform steadiness. It just was. Humble in her power. Not withholding — not the way we sometimes imagine powerful people to be, like they’ve built a wall around something precious. The opposite of that. Capacious. Like someone who had decided, a long time ago, to simply be who she was.
And this is how she moved through every moment of our trip: “IT IS NOT A PROBLEM.”
Your flight is delayed and you need to be picked up at the Delhi airport at 2am? It is not a problem.
You have a very specific food allergy we need to accommodate? It is not a problem.
Your ATM card isn’t working and you need to borrow some rupees? It is not a problem.
You want to practice yoga on the roof where the 85-year-old grandmother walks each morning for her sunrise puja? It is not a problem.
The plans have changed — again? It is not a problem.
There was one moment — one — where Seema said, oh yes, that is a problem. And I cannot for the life of me remember what it was! Which I think is exactly the point. She solved it with ease. And then we were back.
IT WAS NOT A PROBLEM.
I want to be honest with you: I usually live in a world where everything is a problem, or at least seems like it is. Where the days can feel like an endless, low-grade rat race of problem-solving. Anticipating problems. Preparing for problems. Narrating problems. Getting stuck inside my monkey mind hopping from problem to potential problem.
To stand inside that capacious ease — to feel what it actually costs not to brace — was one of the most softening experiences of my life.
And my re-entry has made clear just how much I need this. How much work this continued softening is going to take. And a particular kind of softening, only made possible by a steadiness that is unflappable.
I’ve had wine and chicken since I got home. I’ve lost my temper. I’ve felt anxiety and anger. I’ve behaved many, many times not as my wisest self. I’m not going to get this “It is not a problem” lesson right or perfectly, and that’s not really the point.
The point is that I’m trying to understand how this lesson can actually integrate with my real life — with the kids’ meltdowns, the hard conversations at work, the friction in my closest relationships — because that is where the real work lives. And that’s the work I came back to do.
“It is not a problem,” as many of you will recognize, is also Pema Chödrön’s no big deal — a teaching I’ve returned to a thousand times in my own practice and in my teaching.
The discernment between what actually requires our energy and what we are manufacturing into a crisis with the momentum of old stories and anxious habits. Meditation teaches us that discernment. It’s only of the best places I’ve found to learn it.
I’m so happy to be back in your inbox.
It is not a problem that I was gone for a few weeks from it ;)
Before you go — I want to know: what’s the thing in your life right now that you’ve been treating like a problem, that maybe — just maybe — is not one? Leave it in the comments. I read every word you write!
xo Cath
p.s. My next retreat — a mini little gorgeous snack of a retreat in the Hudson Valley, June 17-19 — has a few spots left. Learn more and register here.
For paid subscribers: Below is a 10-minute guided meditation built around this exact teaching. When the stories start, when the spiral begins, when everything starts to feel like a problem — here is how to practice the phrase that changed everything for me. The instruction is simple: it is not a problem. I can’t wait to hear what happens when you actually try it ;)
