Trust Your Gut
Trust your gut. Listen to your heart. Follow your intuition.
Has anyone ever advised you to do one of these vague things, when faced with a difficult decision?
Should I take this job?
Is this the right person for me?
Am I making this up or is this really what’s going on?
Your head is spinning, thoughts confused. Everyone you turn to seems to have an agenda. How do you know who to trust to help you make the best decision?
What if you have learned how to turn to yourself?
I can only speak for myself here, but it’s through my yoga practice that I have learned to do this. It takes time, and cultivation. Learning and working through the practice of grounding and centering myself so that the stories are quieted, nervous system regulated. Then going inward to find the answers for which I used to search the external world far and wide.
When the answers come from within, there can also be a sense that I need to learn to be OK with them, and work through any anxiety, disappointment, excitement, or nervousness that may arise. For, a real yoga practice does not always make us feel better (right away). It can challenge us to face things that we were hoping would look differently, or it may show us that we are on the right path already and that we need to do the hard work to keep going.
This did not happen for me in, or even after, my 200 hour yoga teacher training. Sure, I learned to listen to my body - I had already learned that to some extent before YTT, when I helped myself recover from a long bout with a series of serious illnesses.
In January 2024, at our Pranakriya reunion in North Carolina, Yoganand Michael Carroll (dialing in from Panama) reminded us that we should be practitioners first and teachers second. Our teaching is only as strong as our own engagement with the practice.
I have been gradually working my way through my 300 hour certification with Pranakriya, and I will admit that in 2022, I took two courses* just to meet the requirements of the certification. “Cultivating Intuitive Presence and Boundaries” and “Ethics & Creating Inclusive Spaces”. They are still requirements, and those are the programs that I took, somewhat begrudgingly, to meet that aspect of the 300 hour program.
Well, I was wrong to put up resistance to taking these courses. As it turns out, they have been - and I tell the instructors this same thing all the time - one of the most critical elements of my yoga education to-date. I consider them, and the philosophy courses, to be the most important foundations of my yoga practice and teaching, but on a daily basis, what I learned in these two courses is front and center.
Is this the direction the School should be going?
Can I handle taking on this new thing?
Is this the right thing for my family right now?
Can I envision what this looks like when the dust settles?
Through those courses, I actually learned what it feels like in my gut when I am making decisions and how to read that so I can figure out where to go. How to help my students learn how to do this for themselves. When to make adjustments in a class or support my students because the vibe feels off with the space or the group or something that is going on. How to take a step back when I reach a decision point that, no matter where I turn, feels like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.
It does not mean that every night I go to bed thinking I made every perfect decision today. Far from it! It does mean that I have learned how to bring my yoga off the mat in different ways, and that I know that if I made a decision, I did the best I could with what I had at the time, and that’s all I could do. If I make a decision, uncentered and ungrounded, having listened to the advice of others rather than at least equally listening to myself, and it doesn’t work out the way I wanted, I acknowledge that. Oops. That’s an old pattern. It felt rushed, it didn’t feel right, and next time I am going to watch out for that and go back to the practice.
Moving on.
That’s pretty darn good for being a human being in this day and age!
We are going to offer these two courses in February 2025. Online, to do from the comfort of your own space. I encourage you to take them.
Not because I am the Executive Director and I am pressuring you to take courses with us. Not because they are requirements for the 300 hour certification (though they are). But because I am a fellow human being, yoga practitioner and teacher, and epic overthinker, and they have changed so much for me, for the better. And I want that for you, too. In fact, that’s why I work hard to keep Pranakriya alive and growing and relevant: because this practice has so much to offer us for the betterment of our lives and those of our students, friends and families. That’s what it should be about!
If you have questions about these programs or anything about the Pranakriya practice, yoga school, certifications, or my experience, please never hesitate to reach out: pkexedir@gmail.com.
Be well. Jai Bhagwan!
Cultivating Intuitive Presence & Boundaries
Ethics & Creating Inclusive Spaces
*These two courses used to comprise some of the content of “The Client Relationship”, a 300 hour requirement. We have since revamped them into two 5-hour courses, keeping some of the original content, moving some to other programs, and including new material that is important to consider today.
