Yoga Passion and Purpose: Do What You Love and Make Money

Get clearer about what you really care about and want to contribute to the world.

The first step to forging your dream career is getting to know yourself; if you’re truly in touch with your passion and purpose, you know where to invest your energies.

Embodied Yoga Principles begins with the basic idea that we are our bodies. Bodily behaviour is, after all, a manifestation of our personality. It characterises our relationships with ourselves, with others, and with the world. Professionally speaking, how we are in our bodies informs the career paths we choose, as well as the business networks we create.

Awareness of bodily behaviours and attitudes towards the body is also essential to uncovering our passions and purpose in life. Being honest with yourself and being true to your body is the key to a happy career. Unfortunately, the conventions of modern working life encourage us to disassociate from our bodies, whether it’s working long hours in unnatural positions in front of screens, or doing overly intensive workouts in our free time to compensate for our sedentary work days. But you don’t have to fall prey to this catch 22.

The good news is, embodied arts like yoga can help us to live a more examined life, by reconnecting us with our bodies and, in turn, with our behaviour patterns. As an example, let’s do a fun experiment. It’ll only take a moment of your time and may raise a few eyebrows, depending on whether you’re in a public place or not.

Find some space and recreate Warrior II pose (Virabhadrasana II in Sanskrit – see the photo). Try to make yourself at home in that pose.

Then, after a few relaxed breaths, pay attention to how you hold yourself in that pose. Are your arms actively rigid or passively floppy? Are they triumphantly raised above your heart centre, self-assuredly parallel with the floor, or drooping downwards rather dejectedly? Now, is your weight/energy thrusting forward, balanced in the middle, or on the back foot?

Aha! Now you are starting to uncover aspects of your personality that you perhaps weren’t aware of.

Just by doing this one pose, you reveal a tremendous amount about you as a person. If you apply this information to your career, your version of Warrior II (because everyone has their own unique way of doing it), speaks volumes about your leadership capabilities, ability to get stuff done, and motivational drive, to name a few desirable skills.

The Warrior II experiment may also reveal blocks that you’ve been living with for a long long time, such as behavioural patterns that have been obstructing you on the path to success. Recognising these blocks is a first step in Embodied Yoga Principles. With the right support, you can begin to take back control of professional and personal development. It’s that old cliché of knowledge as power.

This experiment is really just the tip of the iceberg. As EYP is an intense therapy in many ways, I wouldn’t advise you to rush to any conclusions based on this one experiment. It is simply a way of demonstrating how ignorant we can all be about our behaviour patterns and, ultimately, our personalities.

If you are willing to delve deeper and make some real positive differences in your life, then Embodied Yoga Principles is for you. We have an upcoming workshop in London: Yoga Passion and Purpose. Using yoga poses, we will explore what our passions in life are and what our calling may be to serve others through work. It won’t be an athletic workshop; EYP is not a physical workout but a journey of self-discovery, incorporating elements of life coaching, body therapy, meditation, dance, and martial arts. So, what are you waiting for? Time to get your warrior on!

Sign-up here: http://www.embodiedyogaprinciples.com/passion-and-purpose-eyp-workshop-lo

Lucy Sabin
Freelance Writer, Web Editor, PR & Social Media
LinkedIn / Blog / @LucySabin