sankalpa

As 2013 draws to a close, I’m of course drawn inward to the gratitude I feel to so many who’ve been key in my life this year. This year, this 2012 year of the Water Dragon did not disappoint from its promise of tumultuous and heart-breaking and heart-opening change. Change is in every year, and this year was no different. We know this, yet each coming change often throws us off guard, into a tailspin like we think its not supposed to happen. Yea, I went there too this year.

Gratefully there were many things in place to help hold ground, both for me and for others. I messed up here and there, but I am still here, still practicing yoga of awareness, of consistent threading of my life as a practice of this awareness, and I’m proud.

I’m also ready to forge ahead. Sankalpa is a sanskrit word for ‘intention’. Intention is really anything you fill your actions with. Some days, your yoga teacher prompts you at the beginning of class to ‘set an intention’, pick a purpose for your practice today as an offering to your own transformation or enjoyment. Some days that intention is to just open, be more at ease and see what comes up.

What I’ve been noticing about my own intentions is that none of the good ones can really appear or manifest until I get rid of the stale habits still in place. In the great book Invoking Lakshmi, by Constantina Rhodes, we are introduced to the teaching and practices of invoking abundance and blessing into our life, seen here in the form of the Goddess Lakshmi. Like intention setting, it involves an entire change of your perception outside, and reestablishing it to your inner state, which is rich and full. Taking on what is known as prosperity consciousness means willingly shifting awareness to a state of being full. This is done through the practices of yoga, meditation, prayer, and chanting.

When Lakshmi is dull though, Constantina describes what is present as Alakshmi, or the blocking of your ability to be at the baseline of fullness, richness and feeling of prosperity. From a Shakta Tantra perspective, the baseline of existence is made up of the qualities of Lakshmi, and is always present, abundant and lacking nothing. Alakshmi is present when we dull it by doing or even thinking things that block our view of experiencing it. We get lazy, we hoard (things, but even emotions), and we live in a fear state rather than let it move through us. All of this by choice or sometimes by default and habit. Like Lakshmi’s darker twin sister, when Alakshmi is in the room, Lakshmi is not.

So my intentions for the year of 2013 involve banishing Alakshmi. I love this word ‘banishing’ – it’s got such bravado and insistence to it, and that’s quite how I feel now after this wildly challenging year of 2012. I’m not gonna waste much more time on things that stop me from getting better and making things shift. So I’m banishing from my behaviors and vocabulary and thinking those things that block my flow of being my best.

And as always, these intentions are blanketed by a sweetness that knows I will waver, I will not always do right, I will misspeak, I will get narrow in my thinking about the world and my place in it, I will get afraid.  And I will go back again to the teachings of Lakshmi, the practices and words and people and thoughts that clear Alakshmi, send her out of the room, and bring me settled into the reality that is the baseline of my being.

Huge gratitude to my students, locally and around the globe, for making my job so filled with purpose and meaning. I love to help you see your own awesomeness.

Gratitude and blessings to all yoga teachers here in NYC and around the country, doing the same thing, filled with enthusiasm and love for the practices that changed their lives. We’re on a team, you know. We are partners, not competitors. I respect all you do, and we do it together making people a little happier, a little lighter. Thank you.

Great adoration and gratitude to beloved friends near and far, who always make me laugh, lighten up, and helped me through a very difficult time.

Great gratitude to all the stars that aligned, and the clouds that cleared to introduce me to a wonderful, wonderful man.

And full gratitude to my teachers, past and present. I thank you every class. You’re in my heart.

Happy New Year 2013 everyone.