Make a Plan for Your Practice

{waves crashing) So the mind loves to plan, she can't help it. So we can use this facility of her to help us get on track with our home yoga practice. We're gonna look at how we can use what's known as the natural planning model to help get us started. Now there are five pieces to the natural planning model. They are purpose, vision, mind mapping, organization, and action.

So step one of getting your mind onboard, is to sit down and write out what's the purpose of beginning a home yoga practice? Now really take the time to dig in here. Because while you might write down, like flexibility, like why do you want to be more flexible? Do you want to be more flexible so you can climb Mt. Kilimanjaro this season with your son? Do you wanna feel more calm?

Why? Is it because you need more space, because family relationships are difficult? Like why do you want what you imagine you might get from the practices of yoga? Really get in there and understand this. Take the time to really make a full list until you find one that feels like, the central core.

Kay? Now two, next step, once you have your purpose, two is the vision. What does it look like if you're wildly successful? Now this wildly successful part's really important, because you really wanna go blue sky on this. You don't just wanna write down what it'll look like if you're mildly successful.

It's like, what is wild success look like? Kay? So, if you really achieved what it was you wanted from your practice, what is that? Really take the time to go blue sky. 'Cause once you have these two steps established, the purpose and the vision of what it looks like, that's when the mind really starts to plan.

She's continually trying to resolve the dissidence between where she perceives she is, and where she imagines she wants to be. In fact, after these two steps are established, there's very little work to be done except to follow the instructions that come. Because this third step, which sometimes gets called mind mapping, or brainstorming, what that does is that just starts to block out like, what are the things that need to happen? What are all the scenarios and possibilities? As well as what are the potential obstacles that need to be overcome?

I mean, this just starts to sorta flood in through your consciousness, and all you need to do is just write it all out. Once you've started to written all that out, then the fourth step starts to happen naturally, the organization. The mind will just start to organize, okay, I've gotta rearrange the living room, and here's what I've gotta do with my five dogs, two chickens and three goats, and I've gotta make sure that, you know, the kids are off to school before I can actually sit down to practice. It'll just start to organize your life to allow you to be able to take the fifth step, which is action. And this is where most of us fall apart.

Because that fifth step, that actual (puff of air) action, is where everything changes. But that's on you. And the thing is, is what will happen sometimes with this model, once you've really gone through this model, and you really see what the purpose is of you taking up a home yoga practice, something strange might happen. You might find out that actually, a home yoga practice isn't the best way to achieve what it is you want to achieve. Let that be the case.

The whole program of yoga is to align us with our heart, and to align all our limbs so that we're really walking the path that we're supposed to. Happy to be here together. Love.