3 Ways to Spark Wonder

Your body is your house—home to every physiological, psychological, and soulful aspect of you in this lifetime. We experience our lives in this personal container that needs regular tender care to be enjoyably habitable. Yoga is about cleaning, maintaining, and enjoying your home. In this way, by manipulating our physiology through yoga, we can change our psychology to dispel woe and enjoy wonder. Part of learning to really enjoy yourself is realizing how you’ll always experience a kaleidoscope of emotions. It's powerful to learn that yoga can be used to better enjoy emotions on any part of this spectrum of the human experience. It’s a practice that will help you rebound from times of grief and sadness or to more wholeheartedly reference joy and freedom. Because the mind-body is a continuum, yoga is most powerful in its ability to teach us that emotions don’t simply manifest in the mind, they also greatly affect the body. Here are some ways to care for your home and spark wonder in your life.

1. Open your windows

Figuratively and literally. Better yet, open two different windows and enjoy cooling down in a cross breeze. By virtue of opening a window you welcome new air and a circulation of things through the unseen aspect of space. This wind can carry great things to you. Or, it may carry unseen, stagnant energy away. To dispel sadness and stagnant energy while filling up on joy that you’d like to bring to yourself, take a seat, bring your hands overhead, make your hands into cups, take a big breath in, and enjoy 100 short exhales.

2. Listen

Once the windows are open, you’ll start to notice more of the sounds around you and within you. Listen in to your body to understand more of your true nature—what you like and what you don’t like, what comes easy and what’s hard for you. We don’t use this knowledge to construct a world where we only do what we like. It’s actually a great way to know what we might be avoiding, and how that avoidance can keep us in our pain, dysfunction, or woe. From this information, you’ll start to see what makes you tick and also what helps you grow. Listening out the window means that you can also start to listen beyond your own story or body. Do you hear the crickets in the grass or maybe the creek that rushes over the rocks? Do you wake to the joy of the birdsong in the morning? Listen to what’s out there for you. And, when you listen out there you start to dream of what could be.

3. Imagine

Exercise your imagination. Begin to believe in the unknown. Source inspiration from the questions that you can’t answer perfectly. Unfold your potential in your yoga practice but also in your mind. Start to stare out the window of your mind in a bright and hopeful way. Hope and worry both require you to believe in the unseen future. Create recipes that encourage your imagination towards hope. Aspire and act in alignment with your imaginations greatest dream.