Part of the practice of yoga, is to bring awareness to ourselves about ourselves, so we can minimize or eliminate damaging samskaras, and consciously choose the imprints we want to leave on ourselves and our world. 

Call it your soul, essence, the divine spark, is doesn't matter. What does matter, is that there is an intelligent, loving and creative force within you waiting to be seen, felt, and activated.

There comes a time, when you have to say NO to all the little, soft whispering Nos, to make room for the big, loud, resonant YESes.

The body speaks the language of sensations; the thoughts, feelings and physical sensations you experience, are your body's way of communicating with you. They are showing you parts of yourself that you may have never seen before, and serve as a compass to help you navigate your way through life.

What you do everyday matters more then what you do once in a while. It's the cumulative effects of our daily, seemingly small choices, that create our "practices" and experience of life. Do you want to be more loving? Practice being loving and carry it out in your actions. Do not only practice being loving when it's easy and you have a reason to, but practice what responding with love would feel and look like when it's not so easy.

Be patient toward all is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, liked locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not seek now the answers, which cannot be given because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer"

There are no guarantees in life and no one knows how long they will be on the planet. What we do have is autonomy over how we author our experience of life. May every day be lived fully free of fear, and infused with loving awarness.

Although we do not have control of what happens in life, we always have the power to choose how to respond and how to be in any situation. My teacher Hareesh offers this: How you react to what happens to you is not determined by what happens to you, it is determined by your inner work. 

When we stop trying to control events, they fall into natural order, an order that works. We’re at rest while a power much greater than our own takes over, and it does a much better job than we could have done. We learn to trust that the power that holds galaxies together can handle the circumstances of our relative little lives.”

How often do we choose to remain eggs because it's more comfortable? How many times do we choose to stay within our perceived limitations of what's possible because it's all we've ever known? We fear pain as the adversary of joy and freedom, when it may actually be it's midwife. Even the emotions we call negative, when approached in the right way, allow greater access to the heart.