Le Temps des Cerises (The Time of Cherries)

A childhood memory of cherry trees in the South of France, and what it taught one yoga teacher about presence, the body, and what we are losing.

Reading time: 3 minutes

Come Back to Your Senses This Summer

The other day, I came across a photo of children perched in a cherry tree, picking fruit, and my whole body reacted. Suddenly I was back in our garden in the South of France.

We had three cherry trees, and when they gave fruit, they gave abundantly. There were the perfect cherries we placed gently in a basket. The irresistible ones we ate straight from the branch. And the dark, almost black ones, if the worms hadn't beaten us to them, they would end up in a cherry clafoutis.

That memory is so physical: climbing barefoot, stretching for the fruit, juice running down my fingers, the sweetness of summer sun on my back.

A world that keeps us in our heads

Then I look at my own children today. We are raising them in a world that keeps them in their heads, a world where imagination is outsourced to screens, where risk is limited, and where the body's natural urge to explore is constantly tamed.

I feel it in myself too. This subtle pull away from real experience, from the directness of touch, breath, movement, and play.

Last Winter, I read The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt, and it gave words to what I had long felt: our children are growing up with less and less space to move, feel, and connect in the physical world. And it is not just our children. It is all of us.

Yoga as a way back

Yoga is often called the study of the mind. But more than that, yoga is the art of experiencing life through the body, through the senses, through presence.

Not just postures or techniques. A way to remember. A path back to what is simple and true, to our breath, to the sensations in our body, to the quiet joy of being fully alive in this very moment.

To try new things, or rediscover old ones. To feel the earth beneath our feet. To eat the cherry. To feel the sun. To be here, completely.

This is what I come back to every time I step onto the mat. Not performance. Not achievement. Just the radical simplicity of arriving in the body again.

An invitation

This summer, come back to your senses.

Breathe, stretch, and reconnect — with yourself and with the world around you. Let this be the season of cherries, of presence, of rediscovering the pleasure of being human.

Yoga, as I teach it, is not a withdrawal from the world. It is a deeper way of meeting it — through the body, through sensation, through presence.

The cherry trees are waiting.