Sankalpa – 3 Ways to Create More Ease…

So many people beat themselves up for not meeting their new year’s resolutions. Yet our focus on what we don’t want will always yield more of the same.

Sankalpa is a Sanskrit word meaning resolution or determination. It is a pledge and a firm decision to accomplish one particular thing in spite of facing troubles in its achievement. In Sanskrit ‘San’ means ‘good’ and ‘Kalpa’ means ‘creation.’ When you consciously set your sankalpa, it means you are committing to clearly define and focus on a chosen goal. This effectively awakens a giant within – a will-power of epic goddess warrior proportions. The strength of willpower comes when both your conscious and unconscious minds are in alignment.

Purpose of Sankalpa

A sankalpa is formed by a short phrase or sentence, clear and concise, repetitively referred to. It’s like an affirmation. It forms the basis for crossing a river of possibilities towards a chosen destination. It’s critical to know where you’re heading when you’re living a life purpose, which insists upon you making a significant contribution and leaving a sizeable legacy. A sankalpa can be likened to a stepping stone on the river of life. It allows you to cross the river with greater awareness and consciousness.

Until now, a negative or constricting quality has been holding you back, like a bad habit. If that negative quality is successfully navigated and dealt with, then change is inevitable. There is always a positive, dormant quality behind the bad habit that has been attempting expression in the world. Consciousness will always seek positive, abundant, easeful, open and joyous expression. However, a pattern of conditioning (or karma) has thwarted or repressed this expression. When patterning and conditioning is no longer taken for granted and seen for what it truly is, a noticeable change can occur allowing more of the benevolent life-force to stream through you, usually spontaneously in inspired action.

Awakened Goddess Warrior

Intuitively, this is when you feel like the awakened goddess warrior. It’s in those invincible times when your nature, your character, your path and your dharma (or soul purpose) are all fully aligned in motion. You are productive and clear. The  changes you consciously seek start to show up. Sometimes these changes are nothing short of miraculous, as though divine intervention has taken place.  This is the ultimate reward for your faith and trust in benevolence. Faith is where there is a harmonious alignment of personality, emotions, mentality and body wisdom all working in a united way. How can this not succeed? Interestingly, sankalpa is used in yoga practice and yoga means ‘union’. 

Your sankalpa is not influenced by words alone. It may be symbolised as images, felt as sensations and sensed as feelings either forcible or quietly known. The intellect does not question, the belief is unquestionable and unshakeable.

Conscious Sankalpa Setting

Coaching is a constant process of conscious sankalpa setting. At Sacred Women’s Business, we use neurolinguistic programming (NLP) techniques to support you to sense your body’s awareness of your patterning and conditioning and where it has been affecting you or holding you back. Setting sankalpa is part of coaching’s magic. It supports you to understand your destination and just what it will take for you to see and step on those stepping stones across the river to your destiny.

Awakening your internal power as a goddess warrior in your business, your relationships and your life requires tending to your sankalpa daily with a deep certainty and faith that it is so. To set a sankalpa for your business, ask yourself where you would like to be at a future time to bring greater results.  Create a short sentence in the present tense which illustrates your desire as though it is already so. For example, “I am successfully and joyously at work in my six-figure business doing what I love” or “I am working with dream clients three days a week in ways that are deeply fulfilling.” Your sankalpa becomes your mantra. Remind yourself gently on a regular basis of what you have intended. Write it down where you can see it to remind you. Let go and surrender to its power so that you are not attached to its outcome and so that you can enjoy the journey of realising it with full faith in its inevitable achievement.

Make the Decision

Remember, sankalpa is a firm decision to accomplish one particular thing in spite of facing troubles in its achievement. We all have challenges. Sometimes those challenges feel insurmountable but they are often key to our successful realisation of our intentions. We may slip from our intention many times and face the challenge of our own

In my case, the battles I have had with depression and anxiety all my adult life has lead me to a deep appreciation for creating conscious sankalpa. Depression has a physiological explanation but comes from a deep ancestral wounding, which is labelled ‘genetic predisposition’ in Western Medicine. Without sankalpa as a guide, my life and business trajectory would inevitably spiral downwards. Setting conscious intentions enables me to course correct and to practice fierce feminine determination to achieve my goals no matter what my challenging feeling state brings. Ultimately, the flipside of depression is a deep yearning for fulfilment, meaning, meaningful connection and spiritual insight. These yearnings have served me well in life and business.

Action Steps

Set a sankalpa to redefine your beliefs about time

This means examining what you really believe about time.

Some of the common statements I hear a lot from women:

There never seems to be enough time in the day

I keep feeling like I’m working against the clock

The time only flies when I’m on holidays

Be honest about what some of these entrenched beliefs are. Notice what you say, think and feel about time and plant some new, more positive mantras about it.

Time is really on my side this week.

Time feels really spacious today.

I’ve got a really friendly relationship with time. Time is on my side.

Lean into your feminine

Leaning into your feminine means reclining, being comfortable with receiving, engaging the inner-Queen who knows she deserves comfort and ease, giving in equal measure to receiving and learning how to relax. Really relax. Please do practice reclining and relaxing. This requires mastery as it is not something that comes naturally to many of us who have been wired from a young age to over deliver and over achieve.

Check out Delamay Devi’s Restorative Yoga Teacher training coming up soon. Become a professional at the art of leaning into your feminine.

Set up a daily gratitude practice

There is one way you can create a gratitude practice that will help accelerate your sankalpa. And that is to make sure you are offering gratitude to even the bad things. Make sure you include the challenges in your gratitude practice. I’m grateful for my health, my home, my clients and my kids and I’m also grateful for my busy life, my inability to make decisions, my self-sabotaging beliefs.

Think about what a relief it is to accept everything in your life as part of the greater good and think about how much more energy you would have if you were able to release your resistance to things you don’t want in your life. What we resist persists.

So, to truly let go and surrender and accept and receive more of the good juju, love and be grateful for the whole picture.

Questions for Lisa?

You can reach out to her directly from her contact page on her website.