5 tips for setting intentions in your yoga practice - and the reasons why intention setting is super powerful & transformative
If you come to my classes you know that I always ask you to set an intention for your practice at the beginning, and come back to it at the end (except in Ashtanga!!). That being said, this blog is also for the Ashtangis because Ashtangis also need to set intentions.
Why? Because intention setting is powerful!!
When you step on your mat you are clearing a space for yourself to practice yoga, connect with your breath and ultimately create a moving meditation so you create a wonderful feeling afterwards and set the world right.
Self observation is a huge part of our yoga and breathing practice, and sometimes we can forget about that when we are practicing and instead allow our mind to wander away on literally anything else
(did I send that email….oh I forgot to buy that at the grocery store….I need to call so and so after class…..I’m hungry, what will I have for dinner?…..I don’t want to be here anymore, how long is this class?…..This class is too slow, this class is too fast, this class is too hard, this is too easy, I can’t do any of this stuff….etc….etc….etc….). Or you can also lead your mind towards achieving the ‘perfect’ pose and become incredible hard on yourself when you feel like your body is not cooperating - feeling weak, stiff, tired, unbalanced etc.
These types of thoughts are of course natural and the postures are meant to elicit some sort of thought or emotion, and THAT is where our practice of self observation is meant to come in, otherwise we can easily become distant and disconnected in our practice, or fall into a self harm or comparison mindset instead of meeting ourselves where we already are. When you notice yourself thinking - notice what you’re thinking of - instead of wandering away on that train of thought or emotion, notice how powerful your mind is, notice how easily you can become distracted, notice what types of thoughts and emotions come up in specific postures. When we observe our practice from this perspective, it is absolutely fascinating to see what we create in our mind, and the self dialogue we create that can easily take away our practice into many different directions.
This is where intention setting comes in, it can be a super powerful tool in your yoga practice, for you to come back to over and over again whenever you find yourself distracted and thinking about other things.
My advice for setting an intention is to pick one thing to focus on in your practice. Keep it simple, here are some guidelines you can think about when you are choosing your intention (and remember this list is not exhaustive, this is just how I approach setting my intentions and the advice I can offer to you that may or may not work for you):
1. Tune into how you’re feeling when you’re standing on your mat & about to begin.
I start all of my classes in standing with eyes closed and hands placed at the centre of the chest. There is a reason why I do this - firstly, I don’t think that any preparatory postures serve much purpose - especially if you’ve come from a busy day, your mind is racing, and you’ve been sitting or inactive most of your day, I think the most effective way to draw our attention inwards straight away is through Sun Salutations. Of course my way is not the only way, I just personally don’t find any benefit to doing many postures before Sun Salutations: your body is not warm, your mind is most likely busy, and if you’re anything like me….you are just thinking “omg can we please just get on with it”…(I’m naturally a highly anxious individual and it’s why I teach the way I teach). When you are standing on your mat with your eyes closed, you can start to take deep breaths and instantly connect to how you are feeling IN THAT MOMENT. Do you feel tired? Do you feel stressed? Do you feel like your heart is beating fast? Are you sore all over? Do you question why you came to your mat in the first place? Is you mind totally somewhere else..(maybe you’re going through a break up, bereavement, job loss or any other big change on your life)? Use that first moment of seeing how you feel to then decide what your intention is (..trying to calm down, trying to stay focused for the hour, trying to feel your emotions and be honest with them…etc…)
2. Are there any injuries or anything else of concern you’re dealing with?
If you have any bodily aches or pains, you are still able to practice, you just need to practice being very nice to yourself and backing off your ‘normal’ practice (strength, range of movement..). Coming to the breath and paying close attention to physical sensations may be your intention. Or recognising if you have any injury on your left side, that you are also treating your right side about the same. Practicing patience and gratitude to your body may be your intention, as if you’re injured, you also know what it feels like to not be injured and to be grateful to your body for being able-bodied (if that’s the case). Practice with an intention to heal, and direct breath and compassion and awareness to the place(s) you’re feeling pain or injured, your body will naturally start to heal (obviously this depends on the severity of the condition you are working with - but keep in mind that your body wants to heal, and if we provide a relaxed state of mind and body through our practice, you will inherently be promoting healing). I’ve had many injuries I have had to work through in yoga, they have been valuable for learning about patience, compassion, and that you can’t force your body to do something that you are not ready to do, to learn to pay closer attention to your breath and follow the breath, not the desire/thought constructed by your mind. Reframe your mindset like this and you may experience some of your most blissful practices. Otherwise if we continue to force/punish/push with injuries, we are totally missing the point of practicing in the first place. I know that it’s easy to believe that someone who can do a handstand and hold it may look like an experienced yogi - but this is 100% not the determinate factor. As a teacher I find it very interesting to watch students practice and I can gain insight into how “advanced” someone’s practice is - not from your ability to do any fancy posture, but by your ability to move with grace, ease, focus and breath. Some one huffing and puffing and looking around the room to see if anyone saw their awesome handstand has a beginner YOGA practice, and an advanced HANDSTAND practice. They are very different.
3. Are there any big life events going on that seem to be constantly occupying your mind?
I mentioned this above, but it’s important to remember that if you’re feeling particularly upset about something going on in your life - come to your mat. Make it your intention to feel the emotions connected with those thoughts, try to keep breathing so you create an hour or so out of your day when your mind is not consumed with overthinking whatever is going on in your life, and you can create some inner peace and feel a bit better. My yoga practice has got me through some very tough times. It’s those times when I remember how powerful and healing the practice is. If you are fine and happy the practice still has SO MANY benefits, but it’s when you’re upset and out of emotional/physical balance, that you experience the PROFOUND effects. I’ve come to my practice to heal from deaths, breaking up with boyfriends, feeling so anxious, stressed and scattered that I’m question everything I’ve done in my life etc.. The emotions you experience here are normal, but they are highly energetically draining and cause us to feel imbalanced.
Yoga by nature creates balance, and allows us to process our heightened emotions without suppressing them.
If you process them then you can learn to live with them more peacefully, suppressing and ignoring them holds them in our body and mind (whether you believe that or not). Yoga helps you to learn how to manage your emotions instead of letting them take over. If you are aware of the emotions you are experiencing, you can allow yourself to FEEL them, process and release - thereby becoming lighter. If we don’t recognise our emotions and allow them to take over, we are reacting, and probably going to end up feeling heavier and weighted by the issues we experience for much longer than we need to be, and feel much more pain and subsequently project that pain onto others because we haven’t dealt with it ourselves.
4. Are you the type of person who tends to not put in all your effort and create a lot of self doubt in your abilities to achieve things in your practice?
If you feel like you have a tendency to back off of trying new things in class that you perceive to be too hard or out of your realm of ability - recognise this. Make it your intention to give your best effort (without causing self harm - there is a fine line). We aren’t practicing to punish ourselves, we are practicing to heal ourselves and feel better. If you allow self doubt and negative mindset to prevent you from trying new things, ponder why that is…it may be a pattern in your life. So many people doubt their abilities to achieve anything out of their comfort zone, it is scary - and the fear of failure is very common and very real. It’s within our yoga practice that we can begin to challenge this way of thinking in a safe environment - that’s part of the design of the practice. You are safe on your mat to explore and try new things that look challenging, the only thing getting in your way may be your mind. I assure you that I couldn’t do ANYTHING when I started yoga, I couldn’t touch my toes, couldn’t hold down dog, I couldn’t even do childs pose!!!! I’m not joking!! I did always have a mindset where if I saw someone doing something in yoga, that I could do that with enough practice. This is a reason why I teach repetitive sequences - so YOU can see YOUR improvements in your postures no matter how small they may seem, they are a big deal!! When we can directly see small steps in improvement of strength and flexibility or whatever it is we’re working on, that gives us motivation to keep practicing!! It is so amazing to see students have those moments in class - literally saying “wow I thought that was impossible for me but I did it!!!!!!”. You must practice to improve, there is no way around it unfortunately/fortunately - but that being said - if the practice was easy, it would be boring.
We have to work very hard to achieve things that give us a big sense of reward.
The rewards in yoga are endless - they start with physical, and then you start to see over time that the physical part isn’t even the point :) But that takes time, so be proud of yourself for being able to do new postures - it is an incredible experience, and shows you that you are capable of achieving big things!!
5. Are you the type of person who pushes yourself way too hard in one practice and ends up being really sore the next day and unable to practice?
On the other end of not trying hard, is trying TOO HARD! I advise to always self observe and find that fine balance between effort and ease, discipline and compassion. If you are forcing your body and know that you are naturally competitive and compare yourself to others the whole class (and subsequently feel bad about yourself, or create a big ego because you “won”) you also need to start becoming aware of this - when it happens in your practice, and what you can do to connect with more ease and to listen to what you actually need instead of forcing yourself to do something just because you want to be the best. Humans can have a highly competitive nature and this can come out in yoga classes, where you end up feeling like you need to perform or impress the teacher or other students. I give a lot of variations of postures to try in my classes, and I expect you to discern for yourself what it is you need in the moment that you are practicing, because I can’t tell you that, thats something only you will know. If you are starting to recognise your tendencies to self harm and force, make your intention to tune inwards, focus on your breath, be kind to yourself and do what you need to do so YOU leave feeling better holistically, not with an inflated ego (that’s a totally different feeling of accomplishment). You can still do all the fancy stuff you like to do, but question what its purpose is, does it actually feel like its serving a purpose in your body and mind? Be honest - because that’s a big part of the practice too!
Ultimately when you’re more experienced at practicing (and I DO NOT mean experienced in being able to do any posture), you gain such a clarity of mind that there is an absence of thought and only your inhales and exhales. When you can get to this place, you realise how unbelievably natural it is to be there (after years of training), and how everything just kind of makes sense. Movement and breath, absence of much thought. What ties everything above together is our ability to tune inwards and focus on the breath.
When that starts to become natural you can head straight to the breath in your practice and find everything you need right there. Breath and movement are our medicine. I truly believe that you can heal almost anything though a yoga practice (and the expression of that practice may change drastically), there are tools out there for everyone to use to find healing within. We can all breathe and observe, and those are the basic necessities whey you boil down the practice to a couple things. Although it is not an easy practice, in its essence, yoga is the most simple thing.
If you would like to read more about my reasons for practicing yoga, have a look at my blog post, you may connect with some of this:
Why I started practicing yoga: I was coping with grief, debilitating anxiety & feeling lost and worthless in my mid 20s
OR if you are interested in the science behind breath and yoga, read this one, there’s some great info in here!: