Week 3: What Is Your Why?

“When the why is clear, the how is easy.”

Four years ago, I was posed with the question:

What is your Why?

The answer can be actually be quite simple, but that doesn’t mean its a simple one to answer. Your why is emotional. In fact, it corresponds to the limbic system of your brain that is responsible for behaviour and decision making, but also for your feelings. As a majority of us have doubtless experienced, it isn’t always easy to translate your feelings into words. This is where your body can be a translator of your inner guide, the language of your why: 

Have you ever felt drawn to a particular person or place but can’t necessarily put words to why?

Have you ever received a gut feeling that sent you in a different direction even though logic said the opposite?

Have you ever felt like you just NEEDED to do something, even if it didn’t make sense to anyone else?

When we have these moments, we often try to justify or over-think the answer. Sometimes the truest answer is to simple feel. Luckily, yoga is a practice that can act as a beautiful bridge between the inner self and the way that we show up in the external world. Our movements on the mat have the ability to become the language of the soul; an outward expression of the inner. When we allow ourselves to fully surrender into the practice and let go of the constraints of judgements, expectations and “rights” or “wrongs”, we step into the expansion of freedom.

In the simplest of terms, your why is the practice of listening to your body. On a broader level, your why is connected to who you want to show up as in this world. Your why is the purpose that injects your life with passion and meaning.

However, for most people, we don’t consciously consider the everyday intentions behind our actions. We just simply “do” them. Essentially, we move through life on autopilot, unconsciously making decisions that don’t necessarily align with our beliefs, values, or our ultimate why. When we are not living in our why, we fall into a life of complacency and we inhibit our own power to choose ourselves and ultimately, choose joy. 

Last week I asked you to choose yourself. This week, I challenge you to understand why you are choosing. When we started this challenge together, I asked you to all sit down and write out your intention for this new beginning, essentially your why of showing up. When we become conscious of our intentions, we can start to align our daily choices to reflect the truest expression of ourselves.

So why is this all important?

I believe that in order for us to choose ourselves fully, we need to know why we are choosing to do what we do. Somewhere in between the end of guiding my last yoga teacher training in June and starting this yoga challenge, I became apathetic to life. In the midst of covid-19, I didn’t see any future that wasn’t a bleak outcome as a full time yoga teacher. Some days it was a struggle to get out of bed because I didn’t feel like there was any reason to get up. I felt like I had lost my meaning and passion for life, essentially I had lost my why.

And sometimes it is OKAY to lose your why. Sometimes we need to be shaken so that we can re-evaluate how we are showing up in the world. And so that is precisely what I did. I came back to my why:

To live a life more inspired and be a voice to uplift others in the community.

The reality of teaching yoga full-time has never been an easy lifestyle, and moving forward with these new restrictions and closures made that life that much more challenging. When I sat with myself and truly listened, I was tired; I didn’t want to go back to teaching 17-20 classes a week. 

But, I also felt that my why hadn’t changed. 

So maybe I just had to change what direction I was facing. I realized that I could use my voice in this community in a different career. With my experiences of leading yoga teacher trainings, of guiding students through the philosophy of living a yoga lifestyle and working on their limiting beliefs, I had started to consider the idea of counselling and psychotherapy. Now, I knew that it was time. The moment I committed to stepping back into alignment with my why, it was astonishing to see how everything fell into place. I started my applications for grad school, for my masters of counselling and got into both programs that I had applied for. I also realized that if I was feeling disconnected from myself and in need of some movement therapy, there were probably plenty of other people who also felt that way. From that thought, this challenge was created. I told myself that it didn’t matter if only a handful of people joined, because my why for doing the challenge was to get inspired again and connect with community. My why had no expectations. If anything, I was expecting only a few people to join.

53 of you showed up.

I am so dang grateful for  all of you beautiful humans that believed in my why enough to spend an entire month with me. It has been an incredible reminder that had I stayed stuck in my own apathy because of disconnecting from my passion, we never would have had this platform to connect on. I would have taken away that opportunity from each of you to also step into your own why.

And that is precisely why that is this week’s intention.

Find what fuels your soul, and go after it will reckless abandon.

Love,

LC