January 2023 | Trust
NOTE: This was originally published as part of my newsletter in January 2023. Subscribe to my newsletter to receive the next Om Letter direct to your inbox once a month.
The start of a new year is, in many ways, a strange time. We often bring with us a lot of plans, good intentions and a certain amount of anticipation for the year ahead. Of course, these first few weeks often make it clear to us that actually, despite all our willpower, things rarely go to plan and our intentions are not always actionable. We see this reflected in all the new faces that have joined us in class - of which some will stick around, but most will gradually fade away. By the end of that first month I can sense people feeling deflated by the initial disappointment.
Year after year I’m unsure of how we might better navigate this malaise, but what tends to carry me through any lull is a sense of trust in the overall direction that life is pulling me in. Many moons ago, while I was still at university and feeling a little rudderless, a conversation with a close family friend and well-known typographer gave me a sense of comfort that I often remind myself of.
Art and design are vast fields with many different specialist areas, so when I asked him how he knew that this particular aspect was his life’s calling he told me that he never really chose this path for himself, but that it seemed unavoidable. Even when he would try to do something entirely unrelated he’d end up in the same place. Eventually he just stopped fighting what appeared to be destined for him.
In ayurveda, yoga’s sister science, this inevitability is known as prakriti. Think of it as your inherited genetic code, which remains a constant throughout life and in many ways determines the choices you make from birth.
Despite this fixed blueprint, we all naturally experience many changes throughout our lifetime - age, work, health conditions, stress, changes in diet, weather and even the time of day can profoundly affect how we feel. This interaction of our prakriti and its external environment creates an ever-changing overlay referred to as vikriti (sometimes translated as our ‘conditioning’). One of the main aims of yoga and ayurveda is to restore and keep these two aspects in balance with one another so that we can move through life more harmoniously.
I remember my teacher introducing these concepts to us during our teacher training and one fellow trainee feeling particularly deflated by the idea that our entire life might just be predetermined by our DNA (for balance, the scientific community might have something different to say about that).
Personally, I felt there was a sense of comfort in knowing that we always end up exactly where we’re supposed to be. It’s easier to surrender to the unknown aspects of life when we have less reason to wrestle with the potential outcome of every fork in the road.
Just like everyone else I still have to remind myself to savour the in-between phases, but that is where a steady yoga practice can provide a red thread through many years or decades of life. Let that first moment as you step on your mat offer up a momentary pause in which you reference back to previous times in which you’ve done the very same thing. Let it become a small opportunity for daily or weekly reflection and gift yourself with the memory of an achievement that once seemed insurmountable, but has since become commonplace. Know that it will happen again.
With love,
OM x
Monthly Mantra
“I trust the timing of my life. What is meant for me will be.”
Monthly Playlist
A warm and ambient playlist to provide a soothing backdrop to these grey days.
Featured Flow
Fill your cup with movement and head into your day feeling energised, but don’t skip that freshly brewed cup of Monmouth coffee (the Londoners will know what I mean!)
Reading Recommendation
In this seminal work, the physician Dr. van der Kolk plainly illustrates trauma and its knock-on effects. A challenging, but illuminating read for anyone interested in gaining a better understanding of the body-mind complex.
Thank you for reading - if you have any questions please feel free to reach out via email.
Copyright © 2023
Oceana Mariani
