Luz Albor
In my years as a teacher I have discovered that the most difficult thing for the student is to establish consistency in their yoga practice. Many begin their classes with the hope of doing an activity different from what they usually do, others because they do not feel well in their daily life or recommended by the doctor they come looking for a remedy that will make them feel better and others with the idea of growing spiritually. But the majority abandon when they were about to achieve the initial objective, which is to create the habit.
Most people lack healthy habits and have a tendency to go from one activity to another without establishing them for a long enough period.
In the Yoga Sutras, Patañjali tells us about the need for the practice of yoga to be stable and for a long time to be able to find its benefits. But in the times we live in, where things happen so quickly and we are subjected to so many sensory impacts, it is difficult for our attention not to wander aimlessly from one place to another and from one activity to another.
Our tendency is to consume excessively without giving ourselves time to digest; This can be observed both in the way we eat and in our way of purchasing and disposing of clothing or household items. It also happens with knowledge: courses and more courses, both in the professional field and in internal development. And just as food makes you indigestible, everything else makes you indigestible. Apathy and discouragement appear, and these two obstacles are difficult to overcome.
If thousands of years ago Patañjali warned us about the dispersed nature of the human mind to establish a constant practice when there were no television, internet, shopping centers... today we could say that it is a real personal challenge to follow a constant practice in any discipline.
And that is precisely what keeps us more dispersed and in a worse state of physical or psycho-emotional health: the lack of consistency in our healthy habits. Therefore, the fewer healthy habits you have, the more unhealthy habits you will have, since human beings function by repeating habits and patterns.
Anything (healthy, of course) that you are able to maintain for a long time will bring well-being to your life for two fundamental reasons:
The first is that where you establish a better habit than the one you had, you will bring well-being to your life.
The second is that the mere fact of setting a purpose and maintaining it develops your will, making you stronger, safer and freer.
Do they seem like good reasons to you?
Well, I assure you that you will find many more that will fill your life because when you develop a purpose that you establish for yourself by your own choice, your conditioning and obsolete patterns disappear, giving rise to new experiences and new resources that you yourself create without realizing it.
I'm not going to talk to you about healthy habits or harmful habits; You will already know many of them, although if you stopped to review your habits you would find that many of those that seem most common to you are less healthy than you think.
Today I am going to talk to you about purposes: according to the Spanish language, purpose is “firm determination to do something”, also “objective that you want to achieve”. I don't know about you, but these definitions in themselves already "turn me on."
The first invites me to feel powerful, bright, enthusiastic...
The second invites me to live an adventure, it makes me feel expectant.
A purpose is a motive that leads you to action; With motivation-action your body immediately reacts and the much-feared apathy disappears. Adrenaline is activated in your brain and a lot of new ideas appear before you, offering you endless opportunities.
Each purpose that you manage to achieve successfully leads you to consider another greater one and so on to infinity.
Surely you are already thinking about a great purpose, yes, the one that will give meaning to your entire life, great! But I warn you as an expert in undertaking purposes that you will need training. You see, I tell you: I have a great purpose, which is to serve as a guiding thread for other people, that is why I dedicate myself to teaching yoga and other knowledge, but to carry out that purpose I have had to achieve other objectives first, such as leaving the job I had before, which was not as satisfying for me as it is to live from my purpose. To develop the necessary determination I have had to impose many small disciplines on myself.
A discipline can be anything you set your mind to and accomplish. It can be exercising regularly, reading a book at least once a month, keeping your closet tidy, walking to work, not looking at your phone when you are with someone, doing a few minutes of meditation a day, reciting a mantra 108 times, practicing a kriya, a regular yoga practice, singing songs to Mother Earth or saying a prayer if you are a follower of a religion. Surely in your daily life you will find many small disciplines that you can consider as a purpose.
The best way to define the purpose is to give it a duration, for example: “I intend to recite a mantra for a month every day.” Remember that for a new habit to establish itself it takes between 21 and 40 days. That habit that you want to establish is the determination you need for your great purpose. You must keep in mind that if one day you do not comply with the routine that you have set as your goal, nothing you have done before will work and you will have to start from the first day.
I assure you that if you start with these practices, each achievement will seem like a mi-achievement because you will be the one who achieves it; You will feel increasingly stronger, more enthusiastic, more vital and happier.
With lots of light.
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