Practice # 3:
Identify your intention- a quality that you would like to develop more in your life. Go outside. Take some relaxed breaths. Receive the earth, sky, trees-whatever is around you. Let your intention repeat as a mantra. When you feel an inner urge to stand, let your body take you on a meditative walk. Hold your intention in your mind and heart and simply notice what hap- pens. Let the deeper experience of the intention come to you with- out knowing how it will happen.
Example using abundance as an intention:
“I fee the abundance of sunlight on my skin and the sounds around me as I sit on the hillside. I notice that the field holds abundant blades of grass. The breeze stirs the trees and wind chime, creat- ing nuances of sound I have never noticed before. There is more than enough air to breathe. It fills my lungs fully. The colors around me are abundant—shades of brown and green of early spring. This moment is an eternity—abundant time. As I touch, feel, see, hear, taste, smell, breathe, I am filled with the gifts the universe brings.”
Intention in daily life:
I recently had an offer of a consult- ing job. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to take it. Life seemed too complex. Instead of receiving the offer as a blessing it felt like too much. My unconscious filter was fear. I was stringing everything that came to me on a thread of fear. I realized that I was so focused on fear that
I was missing the opportunity to experience gratitude for the offer. I formed an intention to experience gratitude. I looked for gratitude in the rain, the warmth of the wood stove, the delicious supper I prepared. When a fear thought entered my mind I experienced the fear and then remembered my intention and shifted my focus to gratitude. As I practiced receiving gratitude for all that was coming to me the fear dropped away and I had clarity. Although nothing ex- ternal had changed I had changed my perspective. I had aligned with Spirit coming through the intention of gratitude.
Intentional yoga is not about mak- ing something happen, resisting, or avoiding. It is about listening to inner messages and calling forth that which you want. Intentional yoga enables you to identify with yourself in new ways. You come into “asana”, right position, right attitude, right relationship, with all components of the self, moving willfully toward the experience of union—of yoga, the ultimate intention.
Marcia Goldberg PCC is the founder of Designing Your Destiny Coaching and a senior teacher at Kripalu Center. Her next workshop at Kripalu is Designing Your Destiny: Using Your Inner Compass to Thrive, July 25-28, 2010 www.
designingyourdestiny.net. Contact Marcia at
Marcia@designingyourdestiny.net for information about personal coaching and workshops.
This article is reprinted from the KYTA Bulletin Spring 2000
aspiremag.net
51
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100