Yoga on the Road
Across continents and changing landscapes, my yoga mat became a small patch of stillness wherever the road took me
For ten months, one slightly improbable piece of luggage was strapped to the back of my motorcycle: my yoga mat. Whether we were camping in a desert, beside a river, high in the mountains or squeezed into a small room, I tried to make space for a practice that had long helped me find stillness when everything around me was moving.
Yoga didn’t arrive as a cure. It arrived as a continuation of that learning. At first, it was physical; a way to move, to stay strong. But over time it became something steadier – breath, attention, grounding. A practice of staying present when things were uncomfortable, of noticing rather than reacting. It taught me how to pause. How to listen inwardly. How to inhabit my body without needing to push it.
I remember proudly telling my yoga teacher, “I’m getting stronger.” He looked at me and said, “You need to get softer, Sonja.”
That stayed with me.
As we rode across continents, I took that learning with me. Emotionally. Physically. And literally. My yoga mat was strapped to the back of my bike.
I practised almost every day – in deserts and on mountain tops, beside rivers and oceans, in campgrounds and on rooftops. Nature became my studio when it could. When it couldn’t, I made space where I was.
For years, yoga has been my constant. A way of coming back into my body. Of breathing when things feel tight. Of grounding myself when everything else is in motion.
Yoga gave me stillness.
The road gave me perspective.
Excerpt from : The Accidental Motorcyclist, 2026
