5 Reasons to Practice Yoga

As a yoga instructor and practitioner, my experience is clients generally come to yoga for 5 main reasons:

1)  Physical self-improvement

They are motivated by the prospect of toning the physical body in a gentle way. This may be an unconscious effort to appease or appeal to others or desire to meet the expectations of others.

2) Health

They are told practising yoga will bring them more energy, balance and overall well-being

3) Rehabilitation

They may have an injury and are working to regain range of motion, more mobility or stretch.

4) Personal growth

They may be on a spiritual journey, turning inward, sensing vibration, raising awareness, engaging in practices like mindfulness and meditation.  Yoga serves as a stepping stone to live life more consciously from universal principles.

5) Intuition

They come guided by something they cannot explain, a deep urge to let go of fear and inhibitions, or as a stepping stone to other things.

Choose Soul-based decision-making

My child is unhappy at daycare, growing noticably more anxious, and getting sick more often. I will regret it forever if I don’t leave my job, change my livelihood, to care for my child at home.

“I feel stressed in my workspace. There is so much negative energy among colleagues, even discrimination. I don’t know where to go for grievances. Just know that I can’t stay.”

“ I feel an urgency to pursue my dream. I have a vision but lack full clarity.”

I can relate to quandries about parenting and work-life balance, as well as roles in public and private sectors.  As a coach, clients consult me for guidance about life change without always knowing the next steps on their journey. What they and we all come to realize if open and receptive, is that our body-mind is constantly giving us signs and signals. We can learn to read them. Part of us knows what is not aligned with our soul. The messages are loud and persistent, to where they are difficult to ignore.  The voices invite us to give up the needs of our ego – earned job title, predictable income, security, maybe how and where we live and take leaps of faith without knowing how things will turn out! Its an exercise in trust. Can you relate to that inner urge to change?

With the onslaught of the global health concerns, wildfires, environmental calamities, political upheavals, and far more, we are repeatedly to prompted to act differently.  The inner voice is getting louder. As we begin to see our lives in terms of energy, the stakes are high when we are out of alignment! How can we learn to make decisions that are aligned with collective wisdom and that reliable intuition?

Six Modes of Decision-Making

In the book The New Leadership Paradigm, Richard Barrett talks about Six Modes of Decision Making.

1. Instinct-Based
2. Subconscious Belief-Based
3. Conscious Belief Based
4. Values-Based
5. Intuition-Based
6. Inspiration-Based

Question is, in day-to-day life, what sort of decision-making evokes more joy and freedom? If we are guided by internal feelings, or the soul, then these modes take us closer or further away from the best choice on our path.

1.    Instinct-Based Decisions 

This is about biological survival. For example, babies instinctively know how to suckle and cry when they are born, in order to help them gain the food and attention they need to survive. As adults, your instincts kick in when you are in danger, such as the fight or flight response.  In this realm, actions proceed thought. You are not consciously in control of your decisions.

2.    Subconscious Belief-Based Decisions 

This is about personal memories and experiences from the past and are often driven by emotions rather than rational thought. When you make subconscious decisions based on beliefs from the past, you are often responding to unmet ego needs.  In this realm, action still proceeds thought and you are still not consciously in control of your decisions. The key decision driver is your personal experience rather than your biology.

3.    Conscious Belief-Based 

This is where the realm of rational decision-making based on conscious thought, information, and experience.In this type of decision-making you switch to thinking before you act. You are in control. Yet, you still tend to make decisions based on past experiences and feelings, rather than on your future and infinite potential.

4.    Values-Based decision-making

This involves examining your past beliefs and experiences and letting go of what no longer serves you anymore. When you move into values-based decision-making, you can create a future that resonates with who you truly are and want to become.  Values-based decision-making is based on your personal values and the future you want to create. You are in control of your actions and consult with others to consciously create the best outcome.

5.    Intuition-Based decisions

This is about allowing you to tap into a deeper and collective wisdom of a larger group. This may involve giving up your personal preference in service of the whole. You shift away from your ego-system into a larger eco-system view.

With intuition-based decisions, you expand our awareness of the whole, suspend your judgment, empty your mind, and are open to thoughts that arise and reflect a wisdom that is greater than your own.

6.    Inspiration-Based decision-making is responding to the promptings of our soul. This decision-making enables your soul to fulfill its purpose in this world. Barrett mentions that some forms of depression arise from ignoring these insistent promptings of the soul.

In this realm, thoughts seem to appear from nowhere, they are persistent, and there are emotional consequences for not listening to them.

Three Ways to Align Decisions with the Needs of Your Soul

Here are some tips you can practice to begin shifting to making decisions aligned to the needs of your soul:

1. Be Aware of the Level at Which You are Making Decisions 

• Do you tend to get stuck in rational decision-making based on your past experience, without considering values? When is that appropriate? And when might you need to shift to exploring the involved in the situations.

2. Consult others 

• Through consulting with others and becoming more aware of diverse perspectives, you begin to expand your own knowledge, gain deeper levels of understanding, and tap into a collective wisdom that is greater than your own.

3. Meditation, Prayer, Spiritual Practice

• Tapping into values, intuition, and inspiration is a spiritual practice. Take 5 minutes per day to quiet your mind, be present, and seek wisdom from your ancestors in the spiritual realm and the wisdom of the universe. Ask for guidance in decision-making. It may come in a dream, while immersed in nature or in a quiet moment. Listen carefully and pay attention.

At what level do you tend to make decisions? At what level would you like to make decisions?  What is most effective for you in different life areas?  Would you benefit from coaching along these lines? Contact us.

Tune into Divine Insights

Notice divine insights are descending into matter, activating dormant systems and radiating pure light. Through meditation, we consciously connect with and strengthen this light, and mindfully direct the power of intention. At some point, it dawns that heaven, light and love emerge from within. We shape every moment of our existence through thoughts and feelings. Reclaim true power. Live consciously. Deepen moment-by-moment awareness. Be open to receive streams of divine insights. Allow the unreal to fall away.

5 Ways to Strengthen Relationships

Those who struggle to create and experience lasting relationships may be unaware of the power we each hold to reframe or turn our lives around.  This requires introspection, shadowork, deep honesty.  Before making hasty decisions, consider 5 Ways to explore new approachins to existing relationships:

1. Give & receive without judgement

2. Treat others as you would like to be treated (or better)

3. Derive strength and inspiration from relationships

4. Act to enable your partner to feel seen, heard & valued

5. Cultivate courage to speak your truth with compassion, understanding and love

Now, doing the above whole-heartedly opens you to deeper insight within yourself. If, when you communicate, you still do not feel loved, valued or heard and still do not feel on the same wavelength, then this invites you to step back and recognize your needs are not being met and other actions must be taken.  Positive, lasting change can only result when you consistently listen and align with your true self. 

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This is of course, the tip of the iceberg. Connect with us to join one of our related courses to help renew, revilaltize or reframe key relationships in your life. 

The Point of Meditation

Notice meditation is about opening the sacred heart or Third Eye. This is not a vestige or organ living in the head. Its a blossoming of awareness that presents based on expanding consciousness. One aspect is not the part of you that identifies the "I" that associates you with the limited physical body. As we examine this first "I" more, it is a mosaic of childhood conditionings used to fulfill agendas that even this "I" does not understand. It does not know what it says and is completely unaware of what is beyond it. The second eye is an entity frozen in time, the Inner Child, the self you were long ago that refuses to dissolve, that runs the show to gain power or sensory gratification that it did not have as a child. It has many different agendas. It is anti-love, or resists love for it knows not what love is. This second eye arose from a sense of rejection. It was created in an environment that was not unconditionally loving. It may not know its gender or whether its alive or dead. Until this unfulfilled or empty ghost is flushed out and seen as it is, it cannot be dissolved. Until then, the second eye perpetuates itself through activities of the first "I" (unbeknownst to the first "I") that projects the second eye in the form of "the other". Things go on with the second eye that the first "I" doesn't know. The second eye enjoys the vex, suffering, self-defeat. To get beyond suffering, you cannot simply analyze the first "I" because the second eye controls the thoughts the first "I" is allowed to retain. The truth keeps falling away, yet it consistently slips away as the first "I". The key is surrendering to the Third Eye, pure awareness, love and the unborn, eternal Self. It sees all. As one turns inward, the first "I" comes to surrender to divine nature and the second eye can be fleshed out, cherished and integrated into the whole. The first outranks the Third Eye. Only as the rightful owner of the mind is allied with the conscious mind can all vexations and unconscious agendas be overruled and absorbed by the Divine. It is not "I" that actually lives within us but Supreme Reality, that which is beyond any name or form. We can point to it but it only reveals itself as we make our way through the winding web of illusions and love ourselves fully. We can surrender to it. If you are meditating and the mind refuses to be quiet, this is simply resisting the ever-present divine within you, the very life of our Being. To surrender through the act of silence can overcome the ani-love force that has created illusion, ignorance and the wheel of reincarnation. Liberation arises as one accepts oneself fully and knows one has been the divine all along.