live your dreamsBy Dr. Paul Jerard, E-RYT 500, YACEP

Could you really live your dreams with Yoga practice? Serious practitioners and Yoga instructors seem to manage to live their dreams, but what about the rest of the world? What if our students do not see teaching Yoga as the gateway to living an optimum life? Perhaps, students have no desire to participate in an intensive Yoga workshop or training course. There has to be a way to guide students toward living their best life other than becoming a Yoga instructor.

 

If an individual takes a trip through the self-help section of any given bookstore, he or she will be bombarded with a great deal of books promising to hold the secret to live your dreams. These are consistently best sellers, often with millions of copies in print. Yet, if one looks around, how many people appear to really be living their dreams? It has been said that less than ten percent of humanity is happy with their lives. Yet, learning how to live your dreams gives one a sense of purpose.

 

There is certainly nothing wrong with reading and learning from other successful people. This journey of study is often a very enriching practice. However, any theory must become some form of practical action in order to make a measurable impact on day-to-day living. I propose that daily Yoga practice is one of the best steps for individuals looking to make the dreams of their heart a reality. This may sound radical or strange at first but I assure you that it makes perfect sense.

 

One of the greatest obstacles to living one’s dreams is lack of knowing yourself. If you don’t actually know yourself or your dreams, how can you hope to make them a reality? Imagine a man wanting to buy something, but not knowing what it is or where any of the stores in town are. He takes off driving aimlessly. Will he find the thing he wants to buy? Probably not – Without knowing what he is looking for, he won’t know what type of store he should try to find. Yet, he will end up somewhere eventually. Will he achieve his goal someday? Unfortunately, he will never attain a goal, if he has no particular goal in mind.

 

Yoga guides people to become self-aware, if only for a short period of time. They must stop living in their mental fog and pay attention to the movements during their Yoga asana practice, otherwise they will fall over, hurt themselves, or twist something the wrong way. This little seed of conscious awareness will bloom if given enough time. The other giant obstacle to personal achievement is fear. The ego is petrified of anything that threatens its sense of self and often sabotages the best efforts of individuals to evoke positive changes in their lives.

 

If the ego has attached the label of ‘fat’, ‘poor’ or ‘unhappy’ to itself, it will do everything in its power to make and keep it that way because anything else is a threat to its identity. Learning to live your dreams is a threat to the ego, because you would develop self-empowerment along the way. Yoga training automatically creates distance between the real individual and their “second guessing self” (the ego). Prolonged periods of distance, and deeper levels of consciousness, often free an individual from the grip of a cynical ego. This, in turn, releases the hidden resistance to change.

 

The other aspects of Yoga that lead to one’s dream realization include the feeling of releasing trapped vital life energy, increased health, and states of renewed vitality as a result of the practice. Many times, individuals express guilt over their daily Yoga because they are ‘doing something for themselves’ and they feel they really should be doing something useful, but these thoughts are false. Finding a method to live your dreams allows you to feel gratification and gives you the ability to help others live their ideal life.

 

What could be more beneficial or practical than setting the stage for achieving one’s dreams on a daily basis? The journey of a thousand miles really only consists of a single step, a step that is repeated every moment. Yoga brings people in touch with reality, which leads to positive and permanent change. One point to consider, if you want to live your dreams: It’s not a part-time activity. Serious practitioners use many methods in training. Asana, meditation, pranayama, Yoga Nidra, and mantra are a handful of the methods used, and the path is one of daily practice. Many people are not able to sustain constant practice. It’s best to be honest with one’s self. Be realistic about your ability to devote time toward your happiness.

 

© Copyright – Aura Wellness Center – Publications Division

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