Artfully Planting Seeds – Planning The Vision

Planting is about vision. It’s about being able to step back and see the bigger picture.

Planting is about recognizing what you have, your soil and your ground and making choices to enhance, fertilize and cultivate that which is real and tangible in order to bring about the greatest harvest to serve you and those around you.

It takes great skill and determination to dive fully into planting, especially if your desire is to reap great harvest from your endeavors.

The central discipline to creating a sustainable yoga practice is Planning Vision

I’ve lost my obsessive desire to practice yoga asana. I still love the physical practice, in fact it is an essential part of my life, and I’ll never let it go.

What I mean is that I’ve lost the need or want to do a handstand in the middle of the room, to do 108 drop backs, to hold chattarunga for 3 minutes, to keep on pushing myself to the fringes of what my body is capable of.

Man did I revel in that stuff. It used to give me such a yoga high!

The loss of that time to play was hard for me but it allowed me to recognize a much more advanced yoga practice.

One that rarely offers a yoga high.

One that necessitates pure commitment and service.

One that requires a level of focus and devotion that delights in pure mastery.

This practice is my every day life as a woman and all the roles that this entails.

As I write that my heart swells with an deep achy emotion.

There are days when this refined art dazzles those around me. I sense an inner luminosity that uplifts and grounds my loved ones with only one look.

I shine. I am enough.

There are days when my eyes are hard. My gaze is detached. My mere presence causes dissonance and trepidation in those to whom I mean the most.

I am dim. I feel shame.

Navigating in either end of this embodiment and everything in between is where my current study lies.

I am a fierce and unrelenting student.

I abide – even if there’s nothing “yogic” about my behaviour or that which dwells in my mind.

No matter what happens, I always come back to the mat.

I begin again.

Plan in the Truth of your environment always

Your ability to research, refine, ask questions, and devote sacred time to planning aka visioning is as important as the planting itself.

Without stepping back and truly seeing the bigger picture, you won’t partake in your own harvest, as there may not be one at all.

What is your Environment? What are your normal, every-day surroundings? The area where you exist and live? The area where you are most likely to be found?

Think about your surroundings as multi-layered.

It’s not only about “I am most likely to be found in my studio apartment in NY and I work on the 18 floor of an office building in Manhattan.”

Yes, that is important and it will absolutely affect the kinds of seeds you’ll choose to plant, but that is only one layer of what I call the me-vironment.

Here’s is list of questions to bring a more holistic understanding and greater clarity to your me-vironment. This list addresses the most tangible layer of YOU.

This dense, tangible sheath of YOU is called the Annamaya kosha.

anna = food, maya = appearance, kosha = sheath

1. Who are the 5 people that have the most influence on you, contact with you (good or bad.) These can be people that inhabit your physical space or possibly across time and space.
2. What food and drink is around you the most? What food and drink do you consume the most?
3. What season is it for you right now?
4. Are you currently physically active?
5. How is your digestion aka how are you pooping?
6. How’s your skin doing? dry, oily, irritated, or soft like a babies behind 😉
7. How much do you travel daily: bikes, trains, automobiles…
8. How long are you seated during the day?
9. How is your sleep?
10. How many people (or other living beings) are you currently having to feed, put to sleep, clean up + clean up after, etc. on a daily basis?
11. What products are you putting on your skin on a consistent basis? (from sunscreen to lip balm and everything in between)
12. What shoes are you wearing for the majority of your day?
13. How’s your dental hygiene doing? ie tongue scraping, brushing, flossing, oil pulling consistently?
14. How is your daily water intake?
15. When, how often and how much are you eating?

Being fully truthful in answering those questions to yourself will begin to guide you on how best to plan your garden to grow that which is best for you at this point in time from a holistic point of view.

(Of course this whole garden is a GIGANTIC metaphor…just thought I’d spell it out just in case y’all thought I was all schizophrenic 😉 )

You will then know:

• Your climate: in your personal region, what grows best?
• Your space limitations: what kind of space to plant do you have available to you NOW?
• Your every-day habits: what do you dream of being able to eat from your garden?
• Optimal yield: how many herbs do you really need and will use?
• The beauty: How would you like your garden to look?

This changes all the time, from moment to moment, day to day.

Does this make sense as a starting point to you?

Do you see how making choices to enhance, fertilize and cultivate that which is real and tangible is the key to yielding the results that you desire?

And this is just the beginning…more layers are to come.

Will you be so kind as to share with me how answering the 15 questions about your me-vironment helped you plan your garden? Are there other questions that I missed that deal with your physical environment and how it affects you?

The more we share how we do it, the more we can support each other to grow! I’d love to hear from you!

Tagged as: building a yoga practice, creating a yoga practice, planning yoga, sadhana, vision, Yoga Advice, yoga practice at home