
What’s Your Life’s Compass: 5 Reasons Why a Daily Practice is Helpful
Be a function of your values rather than a function of the impulse or desire of any given moment. -Stephen R. Covey
While many students come to Kaiut Yoga to find relief on a physical level, within a few weeks most students tell us about emotional changes in their lives. They experience more calm, greater clarity, and often find themselves less reactive to situations that may have tipped them off in the past.
Clearly, life can be full of distractions. We can easily get off course without having something to help direct us or keep us on track with our values, principles, and goals. As noted above, Stephen Covey, one of the most influential leaders in the life coaching/productivity world, encourages people to be true to their values rather than their impulses.
A daily practice can serve as a compass to help you orient your values, thoughts, emotions, as well as the logistics of your day.
Below are 5 ways that a consistent practice can help be your guide.
Silence is Golden: Learning to enjoy and appreciate the quietness inside our minds is an invaluable life skill. From this quiet space, we can pause, reflect, and align our direction for life. Often, quiet pauses can feel uncomfortable for many of us. As humans in an overstimulated world, we can often be irritated and uncomfortable when there’s quiet. Yet, quiet times are often the moments that we can significantly connect with our life values and goals. This is one of the reasons why meditation has been revered. The beauty of Kaiut Yoga is that as we use the body, we have the opportunity to enjoy an inner silence. Cultivating an appreciation for this silence is golden.
Repetition is Key: The element of repetition is what makes a consistent practice helpful. Every time we come to the Kaiut Yoga mat, we have the opportunity to give the system an internal memory of peace, calm, capability. When we practice frequently, these memories begin to build on themselves, and eventually what we are learning and practicing on the mat begin to spill over into our life.
Physical Health and Emotional Health are Connected: There’s a kids’ song that reminds us that “your leg bone’s connected to your knee bone, your knee bone’s connected to your thigh bone…” We often talk about the body being connected, yet many times we can overlook the intimate relationship between the body and the mind. From a Kaiut perspective, there really is no differentiation between the body and the mind. Through the Kaiut practice, we use the body intelligently and as a result, there’s a positive effect on the mind.
Orient the Day: When we speak of orientation, we have the possibility of orienting our values as well as orienting the logistics of a day. One of the aspects of being a human is that we are creatures of habit. Having a daily practice can help to orient the logistics of your day so that you can better choose the course of the day regardless of what comes your way.
Getting Good with Going Slow: We live in fast times these days. We often move unconsciously from one event to another and often rushing, ticking off our lists of to-do’s A daily, or even a frequent Kaiut practice, can help students get good with going slow.
In many ways, a personal practice can help serve as a life compass to help each one of us explore our unique path.
If you’re interested in developing a regular Kaiut Yoga practice, take a look at our teaching schedule. We’re teaching classes online and in-person at our Boulder school.