When All Else Fails, Do Yoga

Being a conscious and aware woman with your own heart-centred business, or aspiring towards having one, requires a unique set of skills.

You need to be comfortable with uncertainty. Instead of a safe regular wage of a permanent job, you need to be able to trust that you can bring in what you need and desire to support yourself, your loved ones and to re-invest in your business.

You need to be flexible. Stretching and growing your comfort zones is all part and parcel of working for yourself to achieve your ideal life.

You need to be strong. Resilience and courage are two qualities that go a long way towards giving you sustainability and sustenance to go the extra distance. Sometimes, being your own boss is a marathon.

You need to be kind to yourself. You’re no longer working for someone else.

My belief is that your business is the perfect training ground for you to come up against your spiritual contractions, your blind-spots and the places where you most need to grow.

Each of the qualities listed above can be fostered, nurtured, nourished and grown with a regular yoga practice.

Yoga has been a mainstay in troubled times for me. It has created a fertile training ground for creative ideas to surface about my business direction. Yoga postures (asana) have truly pushed my flexibility and strength which translate off the mat into my business practices. Being comfortable with uncertainty has come from the deep, profound and abiding faith in a benevolent force which has constantly reassured me that life is completely on my side. Sometimes I just need to get still enough to listen.

Courage has come from the heart-opening postures, the fierce opening of the chest which comes from back bends and exposes the most vulnerable and tender underside of the body. It has come from taking my body to places it hasn’t been as well as learning when it’s better to back off. As I get older, the courage to accept that I don’t need to go faster, deeper, harder but rather slower and softer is a huge realisation.

What many people don’t realise is that it’s not necessary to be on the mat, turning into pretzel-like postures to experience the full benefits of yoga. Yoga can be a practice of deep stillness, deep rest, meditation, mindful breathing and simple strategies that create space for benevolence to step forth.

The older I’ve become, the less interested I am in pushing my body or my business.

The more interested I’ve become in how yoga attunes the soul, the intuition and the internal guidance that leads us to our truth, the more it has steered my business decisions towards empowerment.

That’s why during my practice, I always have a notepad handy. Truth often wants to speak during my yoga practice, and it usually has some nuggets of wisdom which blow me away in their simplicity and potency. When all else fails in business, a simple yoga practice makes a big difference to my state of well-being and helps me to access my creative self to make decisions, to know what to do next and to know who to reach out for. Especially during busy times of overwhelm, when space is required. My mat is my sanctuary. Each pose creates more space in the body and helps me identify space when I’m feeling compressed.

I’ll often be in the middle of a warrior one or a down dog and grasp a sudden flash of inspiration or insight that goes immediately into my notebook. Many of the ideas for my latest book about feminine power in business have come from these flashes of writing. My whole writing practice has depended upon the space I create by having a regular yoga practice.

It gives me the flexibility and courage I need to change course when I need to and to steer my direction with confidence and faith.

If you love yoga, try keeping an inspiration diary next to your mat.

If you haven’t tried yoga, today’s a great day to give it a go.

If you’re not interested in yoga but would like to have more flexibility, courage, faith and intuition, be sure to get unplugged every single day for at least 10 minutes.