I don’t know if you practice yoga or not…

I know that many women in my online community do or have in the past, but not all of you.I’ve practiced and studied yoga for years. I get a lot from the ancient wisdom available within the teachings. It’s impossible for me to teach in my way without the influence of the teachers before me seeping in with their insight on how to live a life of peace, health, harmony, wellbeing and joy.Here in the West, we’ve reduced yoga to exercise, but yoga is really more of a lifestyle… a philosophy and a way of moving through the world that goes beyond just putting your body into poses.

There are many ancient yoga texts. One of the most well known is the Yoga Sutras. The Yoga Sutras book is sometimes likened to the Christian Bible and it’s even divided into a chapter and verse structure. And it’s also very old, like the Bible.

You can think of the Yoga Sutras as a guide to what yoga was thousands of years ago and what it’s supposed to be, which is different from how we’ve pared it down in the West.

In the Yoga Sutras, the first chapter and first verse says: “Yoga starts now.”

There is great meaning in those three words:Yoga starts now.

Yoga is intended to be a way of life. So this Sutra is actually saying, “life starts now.”

Not tomorrow, not on Monday, not in 1 hour, NOW.

If we have something we want or need to do, we do it now. We don’t put it off until we have time, or we have a different situation, or until the next time it’s offered, or until January 1st, we do it now.

You may know of the work of Eckhart Tolle and “The Power of Now.” That is based on the first Yoga Sutra.

Back in 2020, when we were shut down and I was in a great period of creating things, I developed a transformational framework that I use in my courses and I named it RIGHT Now:

 

The framework has 5 phases and they’re not linear. It’s how I lead students from where they are currently to where they want to be:

Reality: What the current situation is. The obstacles, barriers, frustrations and other factors that have historically blocked progress.

Incentive: Why do you want to change? When the going gets tough, which it always does, we come back to this to remind us why we’re working to transform in the first place.

Game plan: I provide that as part of my courses, but, on your own, you’ll need to create one of your own to facilitate progress.

Habit change: This is the biggie! I use working with energy as the key to changing habits. Our energy holds our habits close and we use our energy to shift them. It works.

Transform! The final outcome of all of the above.

And, most importantly: Now.

Not tomorrow, not next time, now.