---
title: "Our Practice | Church of Yachay Apus"
description: "The prayer is already going. What we practice is awareness, responsibility, letting go, and ten things we are given to live by."
url: https://coyason.org/practice/
updated: 2026-11-01
language: en
format: a Markdown copy of the page at the url above
---

Our Practice | Church of Yachay Apus

Every day

# Our Practice

The prayer is already going. What we practice is where we direct our attention.

[The Four Altars](https://coyason.org/four-altars/) [Connect](https://coyason.org/connect/)

Most of the year

A Spirit Walk is a few days in a year. The practice is for the rest of them.

![A man in a wide-brimmed hat sits on a hillside playing a long flute.](https://coyason.org/media/openings/flute-on-the-hillside-desktop.jpg)

Two foundations

## Awareness, and responsibility

### Awareness

Awareness is naming what is actually there, and not what should be there. Our thoughts are prayers too, and worrying about something is praying for it. The first practice is to notice what we are asking for.

### Responsibility

Responsibility is taking what we experience as ours. Our thoughts and our words create our reality, so nobody else can be made responsible for it.

Through our relations

## The people you find difficult are the practice

A circle puts a person back among their relations, with room to look at them.

The person you are angry with is still one of your relations. What we practice is setting the fight down and asking what we can give, because we heal when we are in service and in community.

Forgiveness here is a beginning. A person forgives so they can start again from where they are actually standing.

![A man in a wide-brimmed hat stands beside a still mountain lake, the clouds mirrored in the water.](https://coyason.org/media/photographs/river-between-the-hills-1024x576.jpg)

Letting go

## It takes as long as it takes

Letting go is physical before it is anything else. The body does it first and the mind agrees later, sometimes years later.

What we are given to live by

## Ten, and then one more

They came to us in this order.

1. The Earth is your mother. Care for her.
2. Honor your ancestors through your actions, not through your words.
3. Open your heart to the Great Mystery.
4. All life is sacred. Treat every being with respect.
5. Take from the Earth what is needed and nothing more.
6. Put the good of all before your own interests. Live with dignity and integrity.
7. Give thanks for each new day, every day.
8. Speak the truth, and speak only of the good in others.
9. Follow the rhythms of nature. Rise and retire with the sun.
10. Enjoy the journey, and leave no tracks.

And an eleventh: do not take yourself too seriously.

Practices to bring home

## A day with one thing in it is a day with a prayer in it

Anything that puts a person somewhere they cannot be distracted counts: playing music, cooking, drawing, singing, walking a long way uphill.

Keep it simple. Any of these is a prayer when your whole attention is in it. Do the one thing, and let the rest wait.

![A row of columns casting long shadows along an adobe wall.](https://coyason.org/media/photographs/columns-along-the-wall-768x1024.jpg)

![A person on a high ridge holds a round frame drum raised against an open sky.](https://coyason.org/media/photographs/drum-raised-on-the-ridge-desktop.jpg)

Next

## Walk it with us

All of this is practiced alone and then carried into the circle. If you would like to sit in one, that begins with an email.

[Connect](https://coyason.org/connect/)