How Much Do We Affect One Another — Even When We Don’t Mean To?

In a recent class, a teacher offered a simple reminder that stayed with me:
our energy on the mat doesn’t exist in isolation. It affects the people practicing beside us.

They invited us to consider practicing not just for ourselves, but for our neighbors.
To let that awareness shape the way we move and breathe — almost like an intention we carry through the practice.

It immediately brought to mind an experience I had earlier this year.

Two students were practicing near one another. One arrived clearly carrying a lot — moving quickly, breathing loudly, pushing hard through the sequence. The other seemed increasingly affected by that pace and intensity. Eventually, they rolled up their mat and left early.

When I later encouraged the first student to slow down and find a bit more ease, the suggestion didn’t land well. There was frustration. Tension. Only later did I learn what they had been carrying into the room that day — a high-stakes test or interview later that morning, the kind that tightens the body long before we’re aware it’s happening.

That conversation stayed with me.

Not because anyone did anything wrong, but because it revealed something subtle and true:
we often show up to practice carrying far more than we realize — and what we carry doesn’t stay contained.

I was in the middle of my own stressful season at the time, navigating uncertainty and change. It made me wonder how often my energy had spilled into shared spaces without my noticing. How often I, too, had practiced while holding tension, urgency, or distraction — and how that may have affected others.

None of this is about blame.

It’s about awareness.

Yoga rooms are shared spaces. Even when we practice individually, there’s an unspoken conversation happening through breath, rhythm, and presence. Loud breathing, rushing, or gripping can be grounding for one person — and dysregulating for another. Quiet steadiness can be calming. So can softness. So can restraint.

The invitation isn’t to suppress what we’re feeling or pretend we’re calm when we’re not.
It’s simply to notice.

To ask, gently:

• What am I bringing into the room today?
• How is it showing up in my breath and movement?
• Can I soften — even slightly — for the sake of the space we’re sharing?

Sometimes practicing “for our neighbor” doesn’t mean changing the practice itself.
It means adding a layer of kindness to it.

A little less force.
A little more listening.
A willingness to remember that we’re not alone — even when the practice feels deeply personal.

We influence one another all the time, often without meaning to.
The mat offers us a place to see that clearly — and, when we can, to choose care.