Being of Power

A big part of the work I do involves leading weeklong trainings for people who want to learn to teach Baptiste Yoga, be leaders in their communities, and experience personal transformation. On the surface, these are yoga-teacher trainings, but really they’re about individuals breaking through to their real power by clearing out whatever is blocking them from being the most natural, authentic expression of themselves and creating an extraordinary life. People come from all over the world—Europe, Asia, South America, Canada, and even Africa—to participate in seven full days of transformational training, boot-camp style.

But just because the participants have paid their money, have gotten on a plane, and are sitting in their seat or on their mat doesn’t mean that they’re fully committed. Just getting themselves into that training room isn’t always enough to guarantee that they’re fully there. I’ve done hundreds of trainings, and nearly every time those first three days are like trying to swim through molasses. Right along with their excitement and passion, participants bring their resistance, fears, cynicism, and resignation.

Although people begin having mini breakthroughs right away, it’s usually not until day three when each person experiences a bigger, deeper shift in energy. That’s when we get to one of the most important practices of the week: committing to the program. The students engage in an exercise where they use the power of their word as a commitment to create their reality as possibility. It’s at this pivotal point that the lights start going on and real transformation begins.

I call this internal commitment “being a yes.” This practice sets the platform for all the others in the book. Without the inner yes that’s needed to create the context and commitment to transform, it’s as if you never get past the word go. All the other practices will fall flat if you aren’t open to the power that’s available to you by being a yes and taking action with the tools. This is not about positive thinking or sugarcoating anything in feel-good goo. It’s about being confident in your ability to turn difficulty into possibility, upsets into positive energy, and breakdowns into breakthroughs.

Yes is an energetic place. When you’re coming from this energy, it alters and impacts the way you see yourself, your life, your thoughts, and your feelings. It shapes your actions right here in the present moment.

For example, think about how your view changes and your actions are shaped when there’s a new relationship in your life that excites you. Or when you start planning a dream vacation or learn that you’re getting an exciting, new opportunity at work that will lift you up to a new level. You begin to perceive your circumstances in a new light. Your patterns of thought and emotion align themselves with fulfilling the new pathway that you’re able to now see right in front of you. When being a yes, you’re someone who is standing positively for what’s happening in your life and for what you want to have happen in your future—you’re a person who’s up to something bigger. Yes sets the stage for being of power.

We are either a yes or a no. For a lot of us, somewhere along the way, we started out a yes and became a no. A natural skepticism is, of course, healthy and necessary. When I was younger, I was very wary of gurus and New Age teachers, and I think that reluctance made me more purposefully think things through and choose the path, teachers, and life direction that best served what I needed at each point. My suspicion allowed me to take a stand for what I felt was right for me.

Sometimes our ability to say no actually serves our bigger yes. There is no claim to virtue without the clear-cut ability to say no to things that don’t support what we’re up to. If you’re a yes for possibility, that means you’re also saying no to resignation, cynicism, and self-sabotage. If you’re a yes for honest and true communication, you’re a no for things such as gossip. Closing off one opens the other; this is the dance of yes and no. Those points of no are important for grounding. If you’re all yes all the time for everyone in your life—which I hear a lot of people say they are—what authentically matters most to you is harder to distinguish and likely isn’t getting served. Thus, no can be a valuable tool for setting boundaries.

Having said that, and without realizing it, a lot of us tend to be overly wary—even cynical—to a point that limits what’s possible and holds us back from growth. It’s part of our routine to automatically and rigidly say no to life: “No, I can’t do that.” “No, that won’t work … I’ve tried it before.” “No, that’s not possible. This is just the way things are/the way I am.”

I see this all the time in yoga students. They’ll say, “Oh, I can’t do that,” “No, I’m not flexible enough,” “I don’t do headstands,” or whatever their “no” pose is. They get so conditioned to “I don’t do that,” that years and years can go by and they never even attempt it. But then maybe some teacher challenges them in a different way or they’re suddenly inspired to try it, and it’s like Whoosh, up you go! They didn’t even know they’d moved past whatever physical or mental block was in their way. They went from a rigid, limiting belief about themselves into a revelation that something more was possible.

Remember how I said earlier that our thoughts, feelings, and actions are shaped by our context? It’s also important to know that we can only act within the boundaries of that existing environment. Our so-called weaknesses or inabilities can often be products of some disempowering limitation that blinds us to our real power. We limit what’s possible when we look at the world from inside the comfortable box that we call our familiar reality or “the world as I know it.” Wherever we’re restricted in life, we’ve created a situation that’s holding that limitation in place, even if we can’t see it. We have a blind spot.

The problem is that most of us come from being a no when it comes to this kind of self-inquiry, so we automatically reject the idea that we have blind spots and never see these hidden limitations. We feel that we’re trying our best in life, and while things might not be great, they are as good as they can be for now. This subtle resignation further keeps our obstructions held in place.

My question for you is this: can you be open, especially in the areas where you’re currently closed, and be a yes to uncovering your blind spots? Can you hold in your heart that idea of being a yes even if it feels uncomfortable and make it a moment-to-moment routine as you try the different tools in this book? You may be tempted to skip over some of the practices if they sound like something you’ve heard before. But if everything you’ve been doing so far has only gotten you to where you are, can you see the wisdom in attempting something that perhaps you’ve already tried but doing it in a new way? Are you open to listening from a new place within yourself?

There is an old Cherokee legend that says we each have two wolves battling for dominance inside of us: a good wolf and a bad wolf. Both desperately want to win. The bad wolf represents the inner voice that speaks to us from a place of survival and scarcity—from doubt, failure, regret, envy, self-pity, false pride, and resentment. It conjures up thoughts like It’s my fault, I’m to blame, I’m not good enough, and I’m all alone. The bad wolf stands for our inner no of resignation and cynicism.

The good wolf stands for our yes of possibility and represents the inner voice of truth—the quiet, still place of inner knowing. Joy, love, integrity, power, peace, abundance, freedom, compassion, and generosity emerge from that good wolf. Its voice whispers from the heart, “Who I am is whole and complete.”

The lesson of this legend is that whichever wolf we feed gets stronger and wins. We could also call this a crisis between the real you and the not you. The real you exists in a state of calm empowerment; the not you doubts, blames, worries, resents, and distrusts itself and the world around it. We can make this crisis conscious and let it transform us by shining light on our blind spots and the areas of our lives where we’re hiding, stuck, shut down, and inauthentic.

When we’re standing in our power, we purposefully create an inner revolution. Rather than living from an outdated context and waiting for life to bring us crashing to our knees, we bring the floor up and cause an intentional spiritual crisis by disrupting business as usual. We give up the resignation, stir the bottom of the barrel, declare a new way, and take a stand for an extraordinary life in which we experience authentic power. This is how we feed the good wolf in us and starve the bad one.

There is a process I use in my trainings to help students distinguish between the voices of the good wolf and the bad wolf. I recommend trying this, even for just one day, to see what opens up for you:

Choose an area of your life where the energy is either somewhat stuck or totally shut down. The first one that comes to mind is usually the one to focus on, since it’s foremost in your consciousness. Now take out a piece of paper and write down the worries, concerns, complaints, or negative thoughts that are running in the background of your mind about that part of your life right now. These are the voice of the bad wolf, the survival mind. They say, It’s my fault. It’s their fault. It shouldn’t be this way. No, never, not possible. I can’t change this—it’s just how things are. I can’t deal with this. It’s not worth the risk of failing, being left alone, or causing trouble. This exercise is stupid. I don’t want to waste my time doing it.

Don’t judge your thoughts or filter them in any way; just tell the truth, and get it down on paper. You’re listening, not to empower them, but instead to notice their presence so you can begin to separate them out and dissolve them.

Next, look for any positive inner sense or thoughts. Get really calm, notice your feet on the floor, and observe if there’s even a tiny sense of “something new is possible” percolating up from deep within your being. Write those thoughts down, too. This is the voice of the good wolf, your inspired intuition, the real you. It says, Yes. Go for it. Take the risk. I can do this even if I don’t know how right it is at this moment. Game on. There is the presence of an inner yes, a sense of being okay even if all outward signs indicate otherwise. This voice has energy and aliveness. It feels expansive and peaceful, even in the presence of fear.

As you observe your inner reality, you may notice that the bad wolf is there—a lot or just a little—nudging you to stay in the shadows. But the good wolf is also there, encouraging you to come out into the light. The bad wolf whispers, Don’t trust. Don’t reveal yourself. You’ll look stupid. You’re not good enough. Hide, lie, pretend. … Yet at the same time, the good wolf is communicating to you in the wordless language of the heart: Why be afraid? You are loved. Be courageous. Be real. Be of power. You are worthy. Take a stand. Have faith. Trust.

By paying attention for a day, you’ll see that the head has its own voice, as does the heart, which asks questions like, “What really matters to me in life?” “Who do I aspire to be?” “What do I value?” and “Who am I choosing to be for others and for myself?”

The head is not at all engaged in that kind of inquiry. It’s always listening to the sea of its own opinions and saying, “What’s in it for me?” It hears through the filters of what’s familiar and has kept you safe in the past. It tells you all the reasons why you cannot do what you dream of doing. It says, “I’m tired, and I don’t even care whether or not I have an empowered life. Maybe I will someday.”

To this day, when I am having a conversation with someone or leading a training, I work at staying conscious to the questions such as, “Who [or what] in me is talking right now? Who is listening right now?” With practice, we get clearer about which wolf is present as we speak and listen, and we can consciously choose which one we want to feed and strengthen.

Regardless of your circumstances, if you’re a yes for possibility and declare it, embody it, and align yourself to the vision that inspires you, this creates energy within you and around you that will bring your intention into reality. In yoga we call this “taking your seat.” Gandhi called it “being the change.”

Your success in anything is ultimately a matter of intention. Committing to an intention is powerful because it pushes you to grow into something. You have a clear vision of “I’m going to do that” or “I’m going to be that.” Once you dedicate yourself in this way, you put both feet in, both buns down, and, somehow, you have to dig deeper. You draw out an inner kind of strength and confidence to create your life more powerfully. Isn’t that what you’re here for?

One of the barriers that many of us run up against in ourselves is an avoidance of making commitments that could shift our compass in new directions. Let’s face it: we may be uncomfortable or even unhappy living inside the box we’ve created for ourselves, but at least we know our way around in there. There’s a tendency to stay vague about what we want and act somewhat tranquilized, because we know in our guts that the motivation and power to break out of the box comes from clarity.

One of my students told a story about how she avoided questioning what she wanted in a romantic relationship, since deep down she knew that if she took that kind of inquiry to the situation she’d have to end it. How many of us have been there or in a similar situation, be it in our relationships, our jobs, or any other life circumstances? The head avoids clarity at all costs, because being clear takes us into the unknown and can get risky. This is a very important point, one worth reinforcing: Our power to create at the next level of any area in our lives lies in our clarity.

I have students who say, “I want to have a breakthrough.” Well, that’s great, but it’s not enough. A breakthrough in what? You want to get really specific here. Think of an area in your life where you would like to see progress. Maybe it’s in your work, relationships, or overall way of being. For some people, it can be about having closure regarding something from the past or getting peace of mind around a troubling issue. It could even be making progress toward happiness, inspiration, or courage. Just get very clear on what it is, and spell it out. Write: I commit to having a breakthrough in

. If you want to get powerful in your life, you have to ask for it. Putting it down on paper is like penning a wish list to the universe.

When you commit in this way, you create an opening, and into that opening little fragments of light start to filter through. It’s not magic; it’s a matter of awareness. For example, when you’re thinking about buying a certain kind of car, all of a sudden you start to notice that same make and model showing up everywhere you go. Breakthroughs happen exactly like that. You simply open yourself up for one, which clears a pathway for grace to come in. We’ll talk about that a little more in “Practice #4: Give It Up to Get Empty”—about how we create space for grace. For now, all I want you to do is commit to your intention: to be a yes with your full heart and let the rest of the tools in this book do their work on you as you engage with them.

It was day five of a teacher training in Mexico. A student stood up at the mic to share something, and since speaking and sharing in front of the group was an everyday part of the training, I was a little surprised that I didn’t recognize her. I quickly found out why.

“This is my seventh Baptiste teacher training,” she said, with a tone of quiet confidence. Her whole being was radiating grounded presence. “I’ve come to six others, and throughout all six, I’ve never stood to speak—not once. Each training has given me amazing results, but I kept coming back specifically because I wanted to have a breakthrough in my fear of speaking in front of the group. Up until now, I’d convinced myself that I wasn’t ready. But now I am ready!”

There is no “you” that can’t do something that seems possible. There are only thoughts and feelings that pop up and try to stop you. The truth is that you’re always ready, right now. The thing that inspires you deep in your heart is what you’re ready for. Anything else you believe is just a story that you made up about how you can’t—one that’s dictated by the bad wolf and kept alive by a fear-fueled inner no. If you’re reading this book, it means that you’re up to something bigger in your life, and whatever breakthrough is on the horizon, you’re ready for it—right here, right now. This is it. The beginning of being of power is when we move away from “Someday, maybe, I want to …” to “I am committed to

.” Anything that’s really important to you, any result that you really want for yourself that you can envision as a possibility, is not a maybe/someday/however kind of thing.

How we language our intention has a big impact. What we want to get to here is the distinction between “I want” and “I am.” Many of us can spend years in “I want,” as in, “I want to lose 20 pounds,” or “I want to fly an airplane.” “I’m trying to lose 20 pounds” is very different from “I am losing 20 pounds in 10 weeks, 2 pounds a week” and actually doing the practices that create the real results. Sure, I may want to fly an airplane … someday. But if I’m really ready to do so, I’ll do the research, find an instructor, and take lessons—whatever it takes. Simply wishing or hoping to do something doesn’t work. When we make a statement as a wish or a desire for someday, but not now, it yields little results. We must either commit to doing something or not. It’s that simple.

A practice I use with my students to shift away from the vagueness of “want” into the clarity of “ready now” is claiming the power of declaration. When we speak with directness—“This is who I am and what I’m committed to”—and your heart is in it, you’re using the power of your word to integrate who you are, your way of seeing, your thoughts, your feelings, and your actions. You’re lining up the forces inside and around you. When you declare what’s important with focus, intention, and clarity, you create new pathways of possibility. The action of declaration works.

We’ll use this practice a few times throughout this book, but for now, it’s enough to just begin to play with the energetic power of declaration. A student at a training recently told me, “I just want to let go of having to be strong all the time.” I asked if she was open to being coached on that, and she said yes, so I asked her to drop the “I just want to” and instead use “I give up having to be strong all the time.” As soon as she said this, she seemed to embody a sense of ease and confidence.

Claiming something, even if right now you don’t fully believe it to be true, sparks a brighter quality of aliveness in the body. Go ahead and try it. Think of an area of your life in which you desire a breakthrough. Say it out loud first with “I want” in front of it. Maybe it’s “I want to find a new job that I love” or “I want to get healthy.” Now drop the “I want” and replace it with “I am” (or “I will”). This time, say, “I am attracting work that I love and the financial resources to support me fully,” or even, simply, “I will find a new job that I love.” Can you feel the difference? That subtle distinction in language will make a tremendous difference in your capacity to transform.

The beauty of this is that you really don’t even need to believe it—not right now. That’s not what this is about. Actually, whether you believe it or not is irrelevant. It’s like gravity; you don’t have to believe in it, but does that mean it doesn’t exist? Being intentional and declaring what you’re up to as though it is already in existence and happening in reality creates an energetic shift. Little by little, you start showing up in a new way—everywhere and with everyone. You just stand for your intended result and act from that. This is how you transform. Not by hoping, willing, or trying, but by establishing the space within yourself for a breakthrough into a new place of possibility. You construct your reality from that new way of being without any resistance to it, and soon it’s no longer a question of believing, because what you want shows up right in front of you as a tangible result.

The idea in yoga practice is that you just do it. Do it from awareness, but just do it. You get on your mat and through doing, breathing, and working the tools, you start having these deep fundamental shifts. Things start opening, strengthening, and shifting in body and being, because you’re engaging. But—and this is a big but—we can only have those kinds of breakthroughs if we stay in the practice.

Whether you’re on the yoga mat or in everyday life, right in the moment when you’re about to have a breakthrough, one of two things happen: The heat—what we call Shiva’s fire—roars in and blows the lid off, and you have some kind of opening in your awareness or your body. You experience that essential moment where you break through into a new place, a new world, a new freedom and vitality, a whole new awareness in which you see yourself and your life in a different light. Or, cold air kicks in right before you’re pierced by that magic moment, and you take yourself out.

It’s amazing how many students suddenly have to use the restroom as soon as the pose they hate the most comes up. It’s as if they say, “Oh, now’s a good time for me to go.” I’m not saying you shouldn’t get up to go to the bathroom if you need to. If you’ve got to go, then go—there’s no story to it, you’ve just got to go, right? But if there’s something else, like finding an exit in a moment of difficulty, then that’s the time to stay right where you are, because it’s a signal that you’re right on the verge of breaking through.

When the resistance comes up and we stay rather than run, feel rather than flee, we find those golden portals of growth. Our resistance dissolves by relaxing with what is and holding that space for something new to open up. In the Baptiste community, we have a saying: “If you can, you must.” This a great tool that gives us access to our deep wells of courage and dissolves our resistance in the moments when we feel tempted to give up.

The word courage comes from the Latin root cor, meaning “heart.” To be courageous means to live with and from the heart. Being of power means we drop the safety and cushion of reasons and excuses. It’s important to understand that bravery isn’t the same as fearlessness. The practice of courage is feeling fear and acting anyway in the face of it. It’s being a yes when the bad wolf is howling for you to run away, hide, control, resist, or say no. It’s the pathway to authenticity and personal power.

Ultimately, what will sabotage and stop you from authoring a new way in any area of your life is the little voice in your head that says, “This good result won’t last,” “Why bother?” or “Who are you kidding? This is stupid.” You want to stay aware and notice when this pops up to stop you. Your job is to get powerful at giving it up and letting it go every time you see, hear, and feel the voice of the bad wolf rear its ugly head.

Will you have setbacks and moments when the road gets especially tough? Of course. As the famous yoga master and my teacher B.K.S. Iyengar says, “No thorns, no roses.” Being of power requires the courage to keep moving through those thorny patches that can cause us to spiral down and away from the radiant realm of what’s possible. It happens to everyone. Those times are exactly when we need to take our seat, realign, and recommit, again and again.

The answer to how is always yes. Can you be a yes, not just here in the beginning, but always and forever?