The 1 thing I wish I knew before I began practicing yoga was that it would completely change my life. From the moment I stepped onto a yoga mat for the first time until now, I (and my life) are fundamentally and drastically different.

The self-development that yoga facilitated was necessary and welcomed. The anxiety of my youth and early adulthood was crippling and it impacted my ability to get close to people.
But the life path and purpose changes it caused have completely shook me. I’m the kind of person who ALWAYS knew what she wanted and went after it. (I’ve learned that’s not entirely common so in that way I’m grateful I found what I wanted to study and pursue in late high school. And that was Psychology.)
I’m not exaggerating when I say I’m fascinated by it still, even after 24 years.
The path of a (non-clinical) psychologist is grad school, then a teaching appointment plus research, grants, committees, journal articles, tenure. This whole package was The Plan from Day 1, and then I went out and #DidTheThing. Only I got all the way to the end, and by that point had gone through my 200-hour yoga teacher training, and an internal shift was occurring.
The dream I had of being the inspiring professor and educator that makes you fall in love with a subject was fading, and was being replaced with the imagine of a healer and a teacher and a guide who led experiences, retreats, classes that help people understand themselves (their own psychology), more intimately and with clarity.
"Could I do both? Do I have to pick only one?" I wondered.

One path clearly made me feel awake and ALIVE, nourished from the act of doing the thing AND from the response I received from doing it. It made me feel like I was ready to devour and build and share this knowledge with the world. The other path made me so anxious that I couldn’t eat. I was mentally preoccupied. I felt incapacitated by it; overtaken by it.
And one day I had the thought, “what if I just say no to this and walk away?” I was filled with the most instantaneous sense of SURRENDER. All the heaviness and worry and vigilance and tightness, it ALL just melted at the mere thought of walking away. It was such an intense feeling that I couldn’t unsee it. I couldn’t unfeel it. I couldn’t ignore it.
Which one would you have chosen?

Pre-yoga me would have picked the path she was supposed to choose; the one that she’d spend the last 10 years pursuing passionately.
Post-yoga me knows that the body doesn’t communicate through words but through sensations, and if I look there, then I have my TRUE answer, my spiritually-aligned answer.
For me, this is how I first felt my “Calling”, my dharma, my purpose. And it shook my world.
What about you? What path are you on? The first one or the second one? The path of supposed-to and should? Or the path of surrender, trust, and alignment?
If you want to talk about it, then book a {free} 30-minute Clarity Call with me and we'll create a plan to get you on the path of your purpose.
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