These are just a few key qualities of earth that make up a grounded leader and a consistent business model. Consistency and predictability cultivate trust between you as the teacher and your students, and/or the business and the customer. Observe these qualities in yourself. Are these your strengths or weaknesses? All of us have our strengths, and we can easily rely on them too much, but to be truly successful, we must be willing to shine a light on our weaknesses and have the courage to find ways to strengthen them. Of course, a strong leader is not afraid to admit what are not their strengths and knows they can hire the right people to handle what they don’t have the capacity for. That said, just hiring someone is not enough when you as the business manager are also the yoga teacher. Like a physical product such as a computer, our teaching is also a product. Notice I didn’t say “we” are a product; I said our “teaching”. This is a very deliberate and necessary distinction because you aren’t selling you, you are selling the experience that the teacher in you is providing. So reflect upon that experience and ask yourself how you are rooted into the element of earth.
One way your teaching might be aligned with the earth element is through your sequencing. Perhaps you have a similar class structure every time you teach, or you have the same warm up, or same playlist or vibe. Or maybe you have monthly or weekly themes that students expect. Perhaps your students know that every Monday is going to be a surprise. While surprise is the element of air, the consistency of every Monday is earth.
Also reflect on ways you could improve your teaching within the context of earth. Are there elements of unpredictability that don’t work for you and/or the students? Some of these might be outside forces, which are never in our control, but the way you deal with them is within your control. Reflect.
Moving forward, we will discuss social media, which can be a powerful way to continuously show up and cultivate trust between you as the teacher and regular or prospective students. More often than not, social media is mis-used and confusing. As a result, trying to be consistent with it feels soul-sucking. My goal is to provide you with alternative ways to show up consistently for your students that actually feel good, and one of the mediums we use for that is social media. So let’s do our best to re-envision what social media can do. Perhaps there is a better, more fulfilling way to use it as a form of connection that builds trust and expresses our passion for teaching.
Michael James Wong is well known for his teaching, his innovative ideas, and most especially for his ability to bring people together for a higher purpose. He is a connector, which means he finds ways to involve everyone around him to bring his wildly great ideas to life. I have had the privilege of being a part of his network.
On a beautiful evening in London in 2016, Michael and I met for dinner, where we discussed careers and ideas. I listened to Michael talk about his projects and was inspired by his method and approach. Up until that meeting, I had a Chromatic Yoga manual fully written but didn’t feel right about bringing it to life because it was focused entirely around teaching exactly the way I teach. It felt inauthentic to ask other people to teach like me. This realization brought to life the Chromatic Core Value of Authenticity. On my flight home I revamped the manual and changed it from a “style” of yoga to a “systematic approach”. Rather than asking Chromatic teachers to teach to a set way of executing a class, I developed structures, or tools, like a physical through line, that could be used with the given intention for the day. Chromatic, since that point, has evolved into a global school that is centered around education as the intention and utilizes educational tools to deliver information about the body and mind.
I owe a lot to Michael for serving as an inspiration to me, and it is my pleasure to share this conversation with you.
Water: adaptability, momentum, depth, listening and receiving feedback, reflecting
Fire: transformative, action-oriented
Air: joyful, light-hearted, element of surprise
Space: timing, silence, recreation periods, rebuild, rebrand, research
Growing up with parents who owned their own business, I never imagined I would ever follow in their footsteps. I learned from an early age that business, and making money, was hard and required daily struggle. On the flip side, I also learned that with the right actions, success is not only possible but is inevitable, though it may take longer than we would like.
I carried the story that money is a struggle to make, but it was observing my parents later in life that I eventually was able to discern which actions resulted in success, and which actions ultimately held them back. Unfortunately they were so busy surviving as a business that they had no time to sit back and reflect upon what they could do better.
I made a choice not to work for my parents. Instead, I worked many jobs and was able to see how other businesses were run. I also learned business by being in an independent (no record label) band, finding a way through the tumultuous music business in the late 90’s and early 2000’s, when record labels were collapsing and the rise of free pirated music was happening.
For the most part, I never worked for myself. Even in the band, we had a manager who called all the shots and I simply carried out my duties as the guy in charge of social media and building a fan base. Through OBSERVATION of successful and unsuccessful businesses, I started seeing patterns. The successful businesses all seemed to have a similar underlying structure to them, while the unsuccessful businesses seemed to be lacking structure. (There are, of course, unorganized successful businesses as well, and so I started observing that, too.)
Everyone’s definition of success is different and we will get to your definition in another part of this course. For now, I am referring to success as a sustainable business with a large client/customer base, respective to what they are offering, and business profits beyond “just enough” to stay afloat. Sustainable can mean many things. I am not referring to environmental sustainability here, but rather energetic sustainability. Many businesses are not sustainable without the owner present. For example, much of my career required me to be present, alive, and healthy to be financially okay, while many yoga studios might be able to run just fine without the owner present. Becoming sustainable and successful might take many years, and some businesses just never get to that point. However, that doesn’t mean the business has failed, as failure is very dependent on each person’s definition of success. Success, by this definition, also doesn’t mean quality, as this too is defined by each individual. While I would love for you to strive for quality, that is not the purpose of this conversation.
The Elements of Leadership were something I began observing and structuring in my mind long before Elements of Voice. These names were later decided upon after the ideas were developed. Please note that I will use leadership and business interchangeably throughout this course. A great leader understands business, even if there is no financial gain. They find a way to captivate an audience, fill a need, and/or build out their vision. I know many of us associate business with negativity and leadership with a moral hierarchy. There have been very powerful leaders doing terrible things, and many for-profit businesses doing amazing things for the world. The best thing about building a business is YOU get to decide your own moral compass and how your business is built. If you want to give all your money away to charity, you can do that. I am not going to tell you what kind of leader you should be; I am only here to offer you ideas to build out a business that feels good for you.
The Elements of Leadership is a structure I use to reflect upon my business and make decisions about the future. I am the leader within that business, and I use this same structure to decide how I show up each day for myself and others. Should you expect perfection? Never. If you showed up perfectly and your business was always perfect, then we would not need a structure to follow or reflect upon. I am willing to bet that all great businesses follow this structure but have different names for it. I didn’t create the structure; I merely observed and labeled it.
There are Five Elements to Leadership and building a sustainable, successful, and scaleable business.
Earth: trust, consistency, predictability
Water: adaptability, momentum, depth, listening and receiving feedback, reflecting
Fire: transformative, action-oriented
Air: joyful, light-hearted, element of surprise
Space: timing, silence, recreation periods, rebuild, rebrand, research
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that this also applies directly to social media presence. I don’t mean social media for you as a person – your personal life shared with friends and family- I mean social media as a business.
Imagine that you have a working definition of success that your day-to-day actions are already flowing from. Getting clear on this definition can help you understand your own core values (what is of highest importance to you), and it can help you discern what in your life is and isn’t aligned with them.
The irony in getting clear on our definition of success is that while clarity can work well, it may not be enough to move you forward. Let me explain.
A client that I used to coach was very clear with the direction she wanted to go with her business and career, but she was struggling to take action because she had a fear of failure. Fear of failure, in her case, kept her from taking action, which ultimately held her back from success. The What if I fail? and What if no oneshows up? and What if no one signs up? was stronger than her will to take action. As a result, she felt like a failure, and it was eating at her every day. I asked her to take a look inward and ask why she was ok with not taking action and failing on a daily basis, because from my perspective I saw the story like this:
She knows what she wants, and she wants it more than anything…or so it would seem. She knows the actions necessary to bring her vision to life, yet doesn’t take action. She gets down on herself for not taking action, but still doesn’t act because the comfort of the known is better than the risk of failing. So in her mind, not failing was better than succeeding. But this is how I thought of success and failure:
Success: actions leading to intended results
Failure: learning which actions do not work, and preparing for different actions
This was her story as I understood it from my perspective, and no matter how clearly I shined a mirror on what I saw playing out, nothing seemed to change. UNTIL I realized that I was coaching her from my definition of success. So one day I asked, “What is your definition of success?”
That is when she opened up and a flood of details came to the surface. I learned that her idea of success required perfection. If she was going to do something, it had to be done to the best of her ability, perhaps even beyond her ability.
This was a key factor that I didn’t catch on to. I reminded her that her current “best” regarding this endeavor was doing nothing, paying me weekly, teaching no one, and sharing nothing. It sounds harsh but that was ACTUALLY the best she had done for herself and her vision of where she wanted to be. Sure, she had a great vision of herself in the future, and it was indeed an image to aspire to, but she was unwilling to step TOWARD it and hoped instead to one day fall into it. THIS IS NOT how the path to success works. You cannot fall INTO success; you have to take active steps TOWARD it. You can’t stand at the bottom of a mountain and think yourself to the top; you get there one active step at a time.
We needed a reset because her logic wasn’t working. I asked her to consider a new definition of success. What if success was actually her taking action and not the outcome of her actions? What if success was her stepping toward her potential, not the potential itself? What if taking imperfect action was actually success?
She agreed to try on a new definition of success and to celebrate small steps forward, no matter the outcome. We got off the call and she took her first step, and we celebrated. IT WAS A MASSIVE VICTORY! That win inspired her to take the next step, and the next and the next. Now she has a toolbox of self-awareness. She understands that her perfectionist side can serve her well in the quality of her actions, but she now includes taking imperfect actions when she feels herself procrastinating.
Journal Questions:
What is your current definition of success?
What aspects of this definition are working for you, and what aspects are holding you back?
In business coaching, you will often hear the question, “What is your niche?” All this means is, what is the specific focus of your business? However, the problem in these discussions is that more often than not the emphasis is on everyone else. You will hear questions like, “ What is your target audience and what do they want from you?” These questions can be helpfu, but in my opinion they should be a very small piece of the puzzle.
I remember when my wife, Rebecca, was trying to find her niche years ago. I knew the importance of her finding this out for herself and not having me telling her what was so obvious to me. Her niche was so simple because it’s what she has been doing since she was three years old. She was trained as a dancer, but in her head, dance and yoga were two different things because, to her, they held separate identities. As many of you know, her teaching now is entirely around “Mindful Movement”, calling attention to transitions from posture to posture, which is the essence of dance. It was so obvious and yet because of that, it was so hard to see. Thankfully it all came together, but the process of witnessing her search for her niche gave me tremendous clarity on this: there is another way of going about finding this thing that everyone in the business world calls “niche”.
So I reflected upon my own success as a yoga teacher. I never defined my niche…ever, BUT I am very clear of what I am passionate about within the yoga practice, and I share that with everyone I connect with. I am aware of what I LOVE about the yoga practice, and I find ways to bring that to life in my teaching so that others can experience the same joy.
It is from my perspective that your “Niche” should not be ANYTHING other than what you love about the yoga practice. It should indeed be specific! If your “audience” doesn’t align with what you want to offer, then build a new audience. If you try to cater to an audience that doesn’t want what you are authentically interested in, you will lose your passion and your desire for teaching.
The most successful bands continuously change their sound on every album or every other album, because they themselves are evolving, and they want to express what is in their hearts at that time. AND ALWAYS you hear from fans that don’t like the new stuff. This is a problem for the fans, not the artist. So long as the artist stays true to their path, the fans will either catch up and get on board or they will fall away, making room in the arena for the new fans.
In yoga, we teach about letting go of attachments, but there is so much attachment to keeping our students. This needs to change, or teachers are just going to continue to burn out. SWITCH YOUR MINDSET. Move away from what you think others want from you and move toward what YOU WANT TO SHARE. Then and only then will you attract the right people to what you’re sharing. When you do this, the momentum of your business will sky rocket.
UNCOVER YOUR PASSION! It’s not something that needs to be created; you already have it. You wouldn’t have signed up for the training and wouldn’t be reading this if you didn’t. You might need to dig deep into what you love, and you may have to ask yourself to get more and more specific, but you absolutely can do so.
REMEMBER, your passion can include many directions over time, but start very narrow and specific and add to it over time.
The vision exercise we began with for your life was primarily a way to get your mind in the creative, non-linear, innovative, forward-thinking state. This exercise could, and in my opinion, should be done in multiple ways to increase clarity and accuracy. In addition, your vision can change quite rapidly, so eventually you can make this exercise a consistent part of your mental or written practices.
Some people find it hard to visualize anything. Creative thinking is a muscle that maybe hasn’t been exercised yet. If this is the case, you might find great benefit in a vision board. Cut out images from magazines or newspapers, or print out images and quotes that resonate with you and not only represent where you want to be three years from now, but also represent the steps you need to take to get there. Starting a podcast? Cut out a picture of the microphone you need to purchase. Going to start a sangha? Maybe a picture of a flyer to remind you to create one to circulate.Then collect these images and form a collage on a poster board so you have a tangible vision of your future to help motivate you every day. This may work better for you than journaling, but I still recommend doing that exercise first, vision board afterward.
One way to get more specific and accurate is to give your vision a timeframe.
I remember offering a timeline exercise in one of the Chromatic Trainings and one of the students was using a five-year timeline for his business. He felt that within five years he could switch his business from teaching community yoga classes and private fitness training to offering only private yoga and training. Part of that vision unintentionally included teaching to wealthy people. This was just what he saw; it wasn’t really something he even knew that he was interested in. I am writing this two years after this vision session, and he is now firmly rooted in an established business of teaching private yoga to clients that are all very wealthy financially – a strange detail but an important one to recognize when it comes to this process.
Often the strange details in our vision hold more momentum than the big picture itself. These details may seem irrelevant so you may be tempted to NOT make note of them. Sometimes they may trigger negative feelings of self-doubt or judgment. The student in the story above had financial triggers, so admitting that his future clients would be wealthy was hard for him at that time. USUALLY our potential includes facing karma, or unresolved internal struggles. For in our potential exists a side of us that is more evolved that our current self.
Let’s get detailed!
Three Year Vision Plan
Not everyone in this training is a full-time yoga teacher, so it would be beneficial to do this twice if you have a full-time job and yoga teaching as a part time job (or not yet a job but hobby). If you are doing yoga as a non-profit, the same exercise applies.
Everything above the line: What co you love about your current job or business? Role play as if in someone else’s business. Include what/who inspires you, and what feels aligned with your core values.
Everything below this line: What drains your energy in this current job, is not inspiring, or exciting, doesn’t feel aligned with your core values?Is there a way to change this? i.e…new perspective, job promotion, new job, your own business?
Consider these four forms of inner resistance. We consider them to be true in the heat of the moment, when we are triggered by something and don’t want to admit to it. We sit in righteousness even if it holds us back from happiness or success. I remember a teacher once saying, “We would rather be right than be happy.” Unfortunately there is so much truth to that, especially in pursuit of a happier future. After my teacher mentioned this, I started noticing how often I would choose defending my limitations rather than sticking up for my potential. Defending limitations: when you come up with all the reasons why it’s better not to take actions toward your potential, choosing stifling and ordinary comfort over the fire of transformative action.
I believe that we have these resistance tactics ingrained in our DNA as part of our survival instinct. These responses keep us safe from the unknown, where scary things might lurk. But this is a physical survival instinct manifesting itself in the mind. More often than not, we blame and avoid when the only threat to us is the one we’ve constructed in our minds.
I am not a neuroscientist, but I think it’s helpful to share what is called a “bottom-up response.” This is a patterned behavior that is essentially a survival instinct and lacks all autonomy of decision making. When bottom-up is triggered, typically as a fear response, we behave primitively and either fight the thing causing us fear (blame), or run away from it (avoidance).
Fortunately AWARENESS helps us catch when we start moving toward bottom-up. First take a breath, then ask yourself how you want to feel. The third step is to CHOOSE an action, even the smallest one counts. And step four is to ACT. Stopping reactive behavior of blaming or avoiding is ultimately the key to nailing “top-down” behavior instead. Top-down means you are using the prefrontal cortex, which is the decision maker. This is the part of your brain that strengthens when you meditate and helps keep you present in the moment. If you’re interested in learning more about neuroscience and the psychology of behavior, I suggest starting with Daniel J. Siegel’s book called Mindsight, and The Huberman Lab Podcast. Both address top-down and bottom-up behaviors.
There are four phases of vision. The first is stepping into the future by being honest with yourself. It may take several repetitions of this exercise to fully step into your deeper desires. There can be a lot of self-worth and limiting beliefs that stand in the way of simply looking forward. There are typically two types of people in the world:
Those that are able to see their vision of their future so clearly, but are intimidated by the bigness of it. Overwhelmed, they sit at the bottom of the mountain and never take those first steps up. These people tend to overthink.
Those that take multiple actions, but with no direction toward something bigger than their current reality. These people are prone to burnout .
There is a third scenario! Those that are truthful with themselves and put effort into strategizing action steps AND actually take those steps.
Sit with yourself in deep honesty and acknowledge what your talents are. From the depths of your heart, ask what is it you are here to do. What is a need waiting to be filled? Once you answer those questions, it’s time to start strategizing and stepping toward the vision.
The Four Phases of Manifestation
(or materialization for the linear thinkers out there)
Awareness
Will/Honest Desire
Knowledge
Action
Awareness: permeates our entire being. It is at the core of who we are as beings of nature. What stands in the way of awareness is our lack of practice in introspection and self-inquiry. Our focus is almost always on outside things, the past and the future. Meditation and contemplation practices can help turn your intellect toward our inner experience.
Will/Desire: Desire HAS to be there to bring anything to life. YES you can hire support staff to carry out tasks (actions), but YOU must have the will/desire to hire the right people, do the research, take the action of hiring someone etc. In most cases, DESIRE DRIVES ACTION. But you only have so much desire, so be smart about how you use it. Also, here’s an important note on desire. Sometimes the action has to COME BEFORE the desire. This is especially true in the implementation phase. You won’t always FEEL like doing the things you have to do. When you feel yourself in this tamasic state, engage your rajas to fire yourself up. Once inside the momentum, you will start to feel the desire.
Knowledge: strategy, skillsets, information. What are the tools and equipment you need prior to climbing the mountain of your vision? Attain the skillsets, study the texts, take the trainings, do the research, ask that friend, map it out, etc. These are all necessary steps and valid parts of making your dream come true. Just be sure you don’t get stuck in the equipment-gathering. This part of the work can become a way to procrastinate and avoid next steps.
Action: Deciding to take action or mapping out the steps is not the same as taking action. Set deadlines, challenges, goals, whatever you need to hold yourself accountable. Then START. Nothing will come to life without intentional, well-executed action. Some actions will fail; this is normal. Sometimes you need to go back to the drawing board. That is normal, too, and all part of your growth.
Having a big picture vision is essential to developing a structured business. Even if your business is not for profit, fund raising, or no financial exchange whatsoever, the success of it will increase exponentially when you can let go of your limited beliefs about what is possible, and awaken your creativity to see a bigger picture for you and your business.
The goal is to get into a creative mindset. Not a linear, rational creativity because that is always limited by what you have already accomplished. The logical, analytical side of your brain, known as the right hemisphere, will join forces with the Ego, which does not like change, and continuously remind you why imagination is silly and your dreams are impossible.
Says Ego: You aren’t capable of that. You aren’t good (smart, young, pretty, strong, kind, lovable, capable) enough for that. Who do you think you are?
To create a vision requires that you step out of the box that Ego desperately tries to keep you in. Knock down the structured walls of linear thinking and dream…really DREAM. YES of course you will need your structured, linear, analytical left brain to figure out the HOW of realizing this dream, but it needs to take a back seat long enough for you to tap into the freedom of forward, innovative thinking.
Anyone who has ever quieted the Ego knows the power of it, and yet for whatever reason, still faces resistance to doing it. So if you have never done been able to do ,this before the resistance will tend to be high. Then once you begin to dream of possibility, it is likely that you will be challenged by resistance again in the execution. That is where deliberate, linear action is necessary.
Regardless of whether you are a strong linear or creative thinker, you absolutely have access to both right and left hemispheres of the brain. Becoming aware of your resistance and strengthening your weaknesses will not only strengthen your capacity to tap into the other side, but you will find great mental and emotional healing in doing so. This is the nature of all healing: targeting our weaknesses and making them our strengths.
Vision Exercise
Above the line :
Write down what inspires and excites you. What in your life make you feel energized, alive, free, loved?
Revisiting the five (six) layered self will make the following class more powerful, and will simultaneously serve as review for your final exam. This was filmed live for public viewing. As such, there is some useless promotion here and there. My apologies for that. You can fast forward through that if you’d like.
This class uses a theming technique I call “funneling”. It introduces a lot of information and slowly tries to simplify it over the course of the class, until the main point is delivered. I intentionally do not teach you how to do this because it can easily turn into a sloppy mess if you aren’t very clear on your trajectory. I consider this more advanced, and at the same time when it doesn’t go well, it feels very amateur. In any case, I want you to know it exists and that I use it a lot in my teaching. Sometimes it goes well and other times it could use improvement. I wanted to share this class so you can see the structure.
Dharma Talk
Asana
Savasana
Pranayama
Meditation
Closing
This is the heart-centered class structure I ask you to teach for your final exam so please pay close attention. Savasana is optional for your final, but should you want to offer it, it should come either before pranayama or after meditation.
How do you choose if you should offer savasana and where it should go?
A good rule of thumb is to always offer savasana because most people love and expect it. Sometimes more practiced yogis will benefit from a transition from asana straight to pranayama and meditation. Sometimes it’s also great to transition straight from meditation to closing. You won’t get it right for everyone, unfortunately, because there are different body/mind types, and every person’s day was different, so they may need something on one day and something else another. Here are some guidelines to consider:
What was the asana practice like? If it was very rigorous, the body may need time to integrate the experience. In that case, savasana is important.
What is the energy like after asana? is it really high? If so, do savasana to help stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system.
Is the energy low and sleepy? Maybe going straight to an energizing pranayama, like bhastrika, would be good instead of savasana. On the other hand, maybe a savasa NAP is a good idea to recoup and be awake for meditation.
In some cases you can change the order entirely. An early morning practice might be better to start directly with meditation and then move into a slow and steady asana practice. Please don’t use this structure for your final exam. You would do this to take advantage of the dream-like state that the mind is in while simultaneously being affected by the rise of pingala – chemical hormones in the brain that are present when we wake up, like norepinephrine. Because students are both dreamy and being stimulated to wake up, this can sometimes create a great recipe for meditation practice.
If you decide to go from asana to pranayama to meditation without savasana, you may decide to do savasana at the end to relax the body after it just worked hard to stay in a seated position.
These are just some ideas for you. There is no right or wrong, but you will get skillful at decision making over time. It is easier to decide what’s best for a group if you are with them in person for longer periods of time, as in a retreat or training, where everyone is in a similar rhythm of wake, sleep and focus time.
As you practice with me in the video, I would like you to take notes on a few things.
Take notes on theme. If you like something that is said, simply jot it down for yourself.
Notice the structure: dharma talk, sequence, pranayama, meditation.
There is no savasana in this particular class. Sometimes I leave it out in order to transition right into pranayama practice. I will share another where I put savasana prior to the pranayama and meditation so you can experience the difference.
As we come upon your final exam, you will be asked to teach a Heart-Centered yoga class, so I am offering this class for structure purposes.
Why: What is the purpose for doing the pranayama? Can be short and sweet or detailed and elaborate. Be authentic and real with your students.
How: What are the techniques you will be sharing with this particular pranayama?
What: What are the results, what is the experience, what is gained? This is important to encourage a self-reflective mindset. The observation of the results is not meant to be goal-oriented or comparative, but simply a noticing of what is. This is a key transition to meditation practice. *
*R.O.P.E: (helpful reminder acronym for the what) Observe the Results, and Process the Experience. (ORPE doesn’t work as well)
Satsang: “Holding Space” for Transformative Reflection
Set guidelines, expectations and boundaries.
Avoid trying to “fix” problems.
Tie questions back to the dharma talk.
It’s ok to not know.
Allow for rebellion.
Ask questions to dig deeper.
Setting expectations and guidelines for the Satsang can be incredibly helpful for new groups. Once established, you may only need to state reminders or refinements as necessary. Setting boundaries can really make the experience better for everyone. What boundaries to set will become obvious with experience, and they will be specific to your unique approach and the way you share Satsang.
Try to avoid fixing people’s problems. More often than not, people just want to be heard, seen, or understood. Through a self-reflection process inside a respectful and supportive community, they will find the way to make changes in their life that support their overall well-being. That said, if they ask for advice directly, feel free to offer if you have an appropriate suggestion.
KEEP the conversation tied to the dharma talk; it will give the talk purpose and direction that the whole group will feel.
Get comfortable with humility in the role of leader; it is ok to not know and still hold a seat of leadership.
Allow for rebellion in the processing section of their experience. The ego will fight back against change. If you allow for it, the ego will soften. If you try and argue against it, then you risk a triggered battle. The best suggestion is to ASK questions that cause the student to reflect upon their own questions and have them dig deeper. If they are rebelling, it’s because some part of them cares about what you are sharing and wants to agree but they aren’t ready just yet.
The Five Acts of Consciousness: Five Aspects of Kriya Shakti
READING IN TANTRA ILLUMINATED: Pp. 111-123
THE DIVINE DOES THE FOLLOWING:
Creates
Sustains
Dissolves
Conceals
Reveals
This is the process for which all things in the manifest world undergo. Resisting them causes suffering; the mind resists the process. To embrace the natural cycle means to acknowledge that all things are created and sustained, but then dissolve, fade away, are destroyed or get forgotten about. Once we make peace with that fact, then we can fully enjoy our experience of life. Instead of subconsciously living in resistance, we can now consciously focus our attention to what we want to create and sustain in the limited time that we have in this body. Gratitude overwhelms us every day we wake up because we recognize that each moment is actually a gift, a momentary revelation of life’s ability to create and sustain.
The Five Acts can help put life in greater perspective. You may relate to them immediately, or it may take years for this to settle in. It certainly has taken time for me. First step is to simply observe these five acts in nature. Once you see them everywhere else, you will start to see them in yourself.
Coming up next you will be asked to teach three sections to prepare for your final exam. Note, if you are taking this course as a stand-alone, meaning not as part of your pursuit toward your 300-hour certification, then you are not required to do any of these videos. Of course, if you want to get the full experience that this course has to offer, please do! Your final exam is to teach a Heart-Centered Yoga Class, featuring meditation, pranayama, and theme, along with a dharma talk. There will be a detailed instructional from me for each of these sections.
BLACK FRIDAY SALE!
Congratulations, your 30% discount code has been applied and will be reflected at the very bottom of the checkout page.
All Immersions & Immersion Bundles are included in this sale.
To get more info on each immersion click on the photo.
On Demand and Lifetime Access To all
BLACK FRIDAY SALE!
Congratulations, your 30% discount code has been applied and will be reflected at the very bottom of the checkout page.
All Immersions & Immersion Bundles are included in this sale.
To get more info on each immersion click on the photo.
On Demand and Lifetime Access To all
