I’ve been teaching yoga for 12 years now, and my favorite moments are always watching people transform their lives. Watching people wake up and live more authentic, full, and rich lives is crazy-rewarding…but it doesn’t always turn out that way.
Yoga can be completely transformational, but sometimes it’s not. Yoga can change your life, but sometimes it doesn’t. It’s all a choice. It’s a life-altering tool of transformation, or it’s a series of stretches and gymnastics tricks. It’s all a choice.
If you allow it to, yoga can give you extensive awareness into the inner workings of your mind, body and spirit. What areas of your life feel less than magical? Maybe you get the sense that you know there’s more out there for you…more fulfilling career opportunities, more deeply connecting relationships, more sparkly mind-blowing experiences, more FREEDOM than what your current life seems to be offering.
Yoga won’t make the hard choices for you, but it will give you the courage to do so and the grace to carry you through. My favorite thing in the world is watching my students and friends choose to be brave. Watching people I know and love make the choices to embark on a life more fully lived is why I do what I do. But sometimes they don’t. Sometimes the brave choice is too hard and the current life of comfort (albeit dysfunctional) is too attractive. And that is the most difficult part of what I do…watching students and friends live far beneath their potential is a unique kind of heartbreaking.
“Live as if you were living a second time, and as though you had acted wrongly the first time.”
– Viktor Frankl
So my call to action is this: be brave. Be the MOST brave! What’s more important than being ridiculously in love with your life? Pleasing other people? Obligation? Expectations of society? Horse shit. The most important thing in your life is YOUR LIFE. So start acting like it! Be brave, and take one small step every day toward the life of your dreams. Ask yourself, “what do I want? What do I *really* want?” And make it happen.
“You can’t just sit there and put everyone else’s life ahead of yours and think that counts as love.”
– Stephen Chbosky
I want nothing more than to continue building a community of remarkably brave, loving people with a strong desire to wake up, forgive, and more fully embrace this human experience — and I would love for you to join me. It’s painful to carve your own path, but a slow death to stay committed to someone else’s.
xoxo,
Brittany
Some say the heart is the most selfish organ in the body because it keeps all the good blood for itself. It takes in all the good blood, the most oxygenated blood, and then distributes the rest to every other organ. So, in a sense maybe the heart is selfish. But if the heart didn’t keep the good blood for itself, the heart would die. And if the heart died, it would take every other organ with it. The liver. The kidneys. The brain. The heart, in a way, has to be selfish for its own preservation. So, don’t let people tell you that you’re selfish and wrong to follow your own heart. I urge you, I give you permission, to break the rules, to think outside the norms of traditional society. I am begging you to follow your heart.
Vishen Lakhiani