What is practice? I have found, through my own practice and through the writing of George Leonard and Michael Murphy, that this question resists a tidy answer. What follows are some observations from that path.
What I keep noticing
Practice seems to be less about what you do and more about the quality of return. The musician comes back to the scales. The meditator comes back to the breath. The Integral Transformative Practice (ITP) practitioner comes back to whatever they have said yes to, the movement, the stillness, the conversation they are ready to have, the affirmation written months ago and still being lived into. Not once, not when inspired, but repeatedly.
What I have come to appreciate, after more than fifteen years of returning to the basics of this practice, is that understanding something and being genuinely changed by it are two different things. For most of that time, I would say I understood ITP more than I lived it. The ideas made sense. They felt coherent and right. But it is only recently that I have noticed something shifting, a fuller, more integrated experience of what it actually means to attend to the whole of myself, body, mind, heart, and soul, not as separate parts but as one. That has not come from doing more. It has come from returning, consistently, to the fundamentals, and staying with them long enough for something deeper to open.
George Leonard wrote about this in a way that stopped me when I first read it. He was not particularly interested in peak moments or breakthroughs. He was fascinated by the plateau, those long, ordinary stretches between the highs where nothing dramatic seems to be happening. His sense was that this is where the real learning takes place, quietly, below the surface, in the faithful act of return.
"The master is the one who stays on the path. The path itself does the teaching."
– George Leonard, Mastery
Michael Murphy brought a different lens to the same territory. His research into human transformation across cultures and traditions pointed consistently toward something like this: Genuine change in a person seems to require sustained, whole-being attention over time. Not heroic effort or occasional intensity, but something steadier and quieter, a willingness to show up with all of what you are, repeatedly, with some degree of intention.
I got a clear reminder of what that might mean during a personally challenging stretch in 2024 and into 2025. I made a deliberate choice to create space for what I needed, leaned into my own practice, and gave myself permission to say no when I would normally have said yes. What I found was that the practice had more in it for me than I had realized, not because I discovered something new, but because I needed it differently, and it was there. Life is not necessarily less challenging on the other side of that period, but I feel more equipped to meet what comes, more willing to be my own ally, and more at home in my own skin.
I am also aware of how much of what I have learned about myself has come not from solitary practice but from the people I have practiced alongside. There is something particular about being in a room, or on a call, with others who have said yes to this kind of engagement. The reflection that comes from deep listening to another practitioner's experience, and from being genuinely heard in return, has shaped my understanding in ways I might not have arrived at alone. I am grateful for that.
That may be what sustained practice offers: not a transformation you can point to, but something like a steadier relationship with yourself and with what matters.
What the practice holds
There are many practices available to us, and most people drawn to this kind of inquiry have already found some of them. What I find myself drawn to in ITP is something specific: It is an integral practice, meaning it attends to the whole person rather than one dimension of experience. It offers a complete framework that is also genuinely modifiable, used in full or in part, practiced alone or alongside a community of others. No one's practice looks exactly like anyone else's. Each person is, in the fullest sense, the leader of their own path.
The four dimensions Leonard and Murphy explored gesture toward the whole person:
Body – Physical practice, movement, and aerobic conditioning. An invitation to experience the body as an instrument of awareness, not just function.
Mind – Meditation and inquiry. Sitting practice and contemplation. An opportunity to observe the mind with a little more steadiness and a little less reaction.
Heart – Community and relationship. Practicing in the presence of others. Being witnessed. Allowing transformation to be something shared rather than entirely private.
Soul – A conscious, written vision of who we are becoming, returned to daily and trusted, perhaps, as a kind of inner compass over the long arc of a life.
My experience has been that engaging across all four dimensions opens something that attending to just one or two doesn't quite reach. I can't say exactly why that is, and it may be different for others.
What practice is not, or at least what it hasn't been for me
Something worth naming: Practice in this sense may not be best understood as a self-improvement project, not about fixing what is broken or measuring progress against some external standard. The way I have come to think about it, practice is closer to what a gardener does, creating conditions, tending the soil, trusting that what wants to grow will grow when the ground is ready.
This distinction has mattered to me, especially lately. When the world feels unsettled, a self-improvement framing can start to feel exhausting, because there is always more to fix and always a new urgency pulling at your attention. Practice as ground-tending seems to hold differently. You come back to it not because everything is fine, but because it is where you remember what is essential. You sit in meditation not because you have achieved stillness, but because sitting is how you stay connected to something in yourself that persists beneath the noise.
Leonard and Murphy seemed to believe that this kind of faithfulness leads somewhere, not as a destination you arrive at, but as a way of moving through a life with more wholeness and more presence. I find that worth sitting with, and maybe you will too.
Practice may not be what you do when you have time. It might be closer to how you inhabit your life, returning, attending, becoming, one day and one choice at a time.