My Yogi Lifestyle: Manifesting Your Dreams

After kids yoga the other day, my daughter Maggie asked to throw a penny in the fountain so she could make a wish. Her wish was that she could listen to her mom and dad every single day (Wait, what?? Who is this kid?!) She asked me when her wish would come true and I told her that she already had the power to make her wish come true. We all do, for that matter. The greatest obstacle we face in pursuing our dreams is our own self - our own doubts, fears, and reservations are what really get in the way. The trick, of course, is finding the balance between going after what we dream of and at the same time stepping back to allow things to fall into place. Sometimes, in our efforts to achieve something, we try force the circumstances. But the timing might not be right or we may not fully be ready in mind or spirit, though we usually don't recognize this. The same is true when we do our asana practice. We may be working towards an advanced pose or working to build strength and flexibility and we can do this by believing that we can, but we must also respect our limits.

When I did my yoga teacher training a few years ago, I became very familiar with the term "manifestation." I have to admit that at first, I didn't entirely buy into it. How can we make what we want happen just by deciding that it will happen? Eventually, I came to realize that there is more to it than that. We don't just sit around thinking and saying that our wildest dreams will come true, we actually do have to get up and take steps to make them happen. But then what about all this "accept the way things are," "go with the flow," "be content with what is" stuff?  The truth is, again, its both. Its a delicate balance between taking steps to make our dreams come true and being able to accept the way things actually unfold. We manifest our dreams by shifting our energy from "this could never happen" to "I'm going to work to make this happen." We transform our energy from negative feelings of doubt or fear to positive feelings. 

Our yoga practice helps us to release some of the stagnant energy that we hold onto, that energy that harbors negative emotions and feelings. When we move through the postures in yoga, we open up our bodies to allow energy to move and flow, bringing in the good and releasing the negative. We do our part, but we also realize that we must practice patience as events unfold in the way in which the Universe, not our own mind, intends.

My Yogi Lifestyle: Daily Yoga

A daily yoga practice is about how we are living life every day, moment to moment. On the mat, the yoga postures move our bodies in ways that open up energy channels and move us in ways that allow things like gratitude, presence, mindfulness, love, and clarity to bubble up from our core to the surface of our being. Yoga teaches us perspective. Life happens, and not always in the way that we want it to happen. But what yoga shows us is that by tuning in to what is happening right now, we can find peace in the way things are. Instead of being anxious or worried about the future or the past, we appreciate the beautiful subtlety of right now. We can take it all in, or we can let it all slip away.

My Yogi Lifestyle: The Search for the Authentic Self

Yoga can bring a lot of clarity to our lives; showing us what is truly important, offering us a new perspective, teaching us acceptance and respect towards ourselves and those around us. Yoga encourages us to get in touch with our authentic selves and to live in a way that expresses our best possible self.  And while I stand by all of these things, I do find one part a bit confusing. Or maybe not confusing, but more challenging to put into every day practice and worth addressing. How does one live their authentic self?
It raises the question, "Who am I?" When we try to answer this question, we tend to place labels on ourselves: writer, parent, athlete, nurse, stay-at-home mom or dad, etc. But these labels are no more than an activity that we do. We can be many of these things at once and we can become an entirely new thing at any given time. Our authentic self has nothing to do with the labels we attach to ourselves, although what we do from day to day does help to shape our beliefs, behaviors, energy levels, and so forth, and so they do, in some respects, shape who we are. But what we do on the outside can never define who we are on the inside.
Throughout our life we go through different stages, making transitions from one exterior self to another. For the past 15 years or so I've given myself the label of "runner." I ran marathons, half marathons, and put in 30-40 miles a week. When I was expecting my second baby, life changed and I barely ran for almost two years. I focused intensely on my yoga practice and considered myself a yogi, setting aside the runner label. One week ago today I told a friend that I wanted to start running more again, but maybe just 3 or 4 miles. "I'm not interested in training for another half marathon or trying to put in 5 miles with the jogging stroller!" I had said. Today I ran 5 miles with the jogging stroller and over the weekend I put "run half marathon" on my calendar for Labor Day weekend. So life changes, our energy shifts, we float back and forth between one exterior self and another, now and then adding a new self to the mix. But even with all of these shifts and changes, we don't become a fundamentally different person, we are just one (or two or three) version of ourselves in that particular moment. Today I might call myself a runner, a yogi, a stay-at-home mom, and a teacher, but deep down, I'm the same on the inside, at the very center of my heart, as I have always been. And there is no label for that.

My Yogi Lifestyle: The Power of OM

At the end of the yoga class I taught this weekend, I led everyone in one Om. The sound of Om always gives me goosebumps (in the good way!). It is said to be the sound of the Universe. But it is so much more than a sound. Its a feeling; a powerful vibration of all our shared energy. When chanted together in a group, our energies become one. At the end of practice this weekend, it felt as if the entire room shifted - rising and falling with the sound. Its evidence of how our energy, our souls, are connected. We are separated only by our physical bodies. Our very consciousness is part of the entire Universe. Skin and bone may shape what we look like on the outside but it is our energy and our spirit that defines who we are.

I try everyday to teach this to my daughter, to my students, and to remind myself to live by this. Its this understanding that gives me joy, faith, and peace. Its what reminds me that having faith is realizing that there is something more powerful, something bigger, and something greater beyond this life experience.

My Yogi Lifestyle: Shedding Our Skin

I was at the river museum not to long ago with my daughter and we saw a snake that had shed its skin. My daughter asked why it did that, and I explained that snakes shed their skin so that they can grow. She asked if people can do the same, and I said no, our skin grows with us. 

This conversation got me thinking about how we as humans change, grow, and evolve. The snake shedding its skin is very symbolic to me in that humans too must learn how to shed or let go of the past so that we can grow and transition through life. 

Just as everything in nature is constantly changing and evolving we must do the same so that we can move fluidly with life, dissolving our expectations of how things "should" be and moving with the unexpected transitions that inevitably occur in life. 

Just as our skin stretches and grows as we do, so too must our spirit have the freedom to do the same. In order to emerge from this life in our most true and pure form, we must allow for change and welcome it with open arms.

My Yogi Lifestyle: Faith in Things Unseen

Have faith. Whether or not you consider yourself religious or spiritual, faith is something that exists within each and everyone one of us, though we might not always be able to access it. Faith, I read recently, is "the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." (Hebrews 11:1) Why do we so often think that we need to see to believe? Can we ever learn to rest in the knowledge that sight only goes so far?  That there is something bigger, grander, and more powerful than our human mind and physical senses? Can we continue to set intentions and work towards goals while also being open to letting go of our plan, realizing that it might not be the best one? 

Consider a time when something happened that didn't go the way you anticipated. Maybe you didn't get the job you thought you wanted, or a relationship ended badly, or you had to move across the country for a new job. We tend to plan out our lives, deciding what we see for ourselves and determining in our heads how our lives will look. But in the end, its not really for us to decide. This is where the following explanation of faith, written by Matt Emerson in the Wall Street Journal recently, resonates strongly - faith is "nurtured by patient trust, open to revision." We want things to happen in a certain way and we want them to happen in the time we've determined for them. But again, its not really for us to decide. Not only must we be patient, trusting that all is unfolding with purpose, we must also be open to revision, open to change, open to a different perspective. Things may not always look the we'd like them to but that doesn't mean they are wrong. Whether we can see it or not, each moment of our existence happens just as it should. We must learn to trust and have faith in this understanding and let go of our egoic mind that thinks it knows best. 

We might not always be able to see the good or the light at the end of the tunnel, but we must have faith that its there. Good things come to us in ways unexpected and life evolves and unfolds in ways that we often don't understand. But when all things seem to be falling apart, remember, all things will come together. They will come together exactly as they should, exactly as you need them to, whether you ever fully understand why or how. Eckhart Tolle holds one of my favorite quotes, which I've used many times but use over and over because it is so relevant to all of us at so many points in our lives: “Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at the moment.”

My Yogi Lifestyle_The Unrelenting Urgency

For the past several weeks I've made it my intention to separate myself from my Smartphone as much as possible. I've cheated a few times but for the most part, I've found that this separation has brought me a great deal of peace and presence and has reduced my anxiety and sense of urgency. We live in a world where we are expected to be doing a hundred different things at once. We are expected to be accessible at all times. We are pulled in so many different directions that we are constantly stretching ourselves thin until we snap - harming ourselves either mentally and emotionally, spiritually, or physically, or all of the above. We are not meant to live this way.

There's a sense of freedom that comes with slowing down and letting go of the urgency. We can only be in one place at one time and we can only truly be doing one thing at one time. Our mind tries to pull us in different directions at all times of the day, but if we could just take a moment to clear away those thoughts, to pause and breathe, we would realize that where we are is the most important place we can be. It's the most important place because it is exactly where we are. When we are fully present to where we are and what we are doing, the urgency falls away. I've found that when this happens, life has a tendency to very naturally fall right into place.  Its almost as though life works itself out the moment we stop pushing and demanding that it happen "our way." When we free ourselves from our controlling nature, we free life's energetic flow as well. 

There's no sense in rushing from one thing to the next, simply because life will unfold in the manner and at the pace at which it was intended. Free yourself from the perceived need to be doing 10 things at one time and from the urgency of getting on to the next thing. Have patience with this moment. Feel it, embrace it, absorb every last ounce of the moment into your life, because before you know it, that moment will be gone. Life is not made up of major events, it is made up of every tiny little moments built one on top of another.