I marvel at my two-year-old granddaughter who spontaneously
flows from one yoga position to another with great effortlessness, without even
knowing what yoga is. It makes me wonder whether yoga wasn’t simply born out of
observing how little children naturally move, before the pressures of grown-up
living cause us to adopt poor posture, to physically seize up and mentally lose
our spontaneity. If yoga were part of the national curriculum would there be
fewer adults with back problems or needing hip and knee replacements?
One aspect of yoga I find interesting is the concept of
‘intentions.’ Sometimes, our yoga teacher will invite us to ‘set an intention,’
which seems to mean identifying a quality that you want to carry with you through
your yoga practice and into the rest of your life beyond the yoga class.
Sometimes, it’s framed in terms of “inviting in an intention.” Some describe this
as a kind of “miniature New Year’s Resolution,” others as bringing awareness to
a quality or virtue you’d like to cultivate for yourself.
I began to ponder on the differences between setting intentions
and setting goals. In my career in mental health I spent many hours
helping people to set goals – identifying something the person wanted to do in
order to bring about behavioural, cognitive and emotional changes. Of course,
goals had to be ‘SMART’ – that is, Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic
and Time-limited. I found the whole detailed process of working with people to
set goals very rewarding because, if you did it well, people often noticed
significant changes in their everyday lives. Not only did I teach service users
and their family members how to set goals, but I also taught mental health
professionals how to teach people how to set goals! And, of course, I used it
in my own life to solve problems and achieve things.
It seems to me that goal-setting is quite an active,
methodical process for helping us to do something whereas setting an
intention is a more spiritual approach, focussing not so much on what we want
to achieve as how we want to be, or how we want our lives to be. This
can almost seem a mystical or magical process – more like making a wish or, as
my daughter sometimes says, “putting something out there in the universe.”
This summer I fulfilled what was practically a lifetime
ambition, to have a campervan. Reflecting on the process of how this came
about, I think it had less to do with goal-setting and more to do with inviting
in an intention. Yes, I did my research and followed some smaller steps (looking
at different vehicles, finding out the pros and cons,) but it didn’t feel
particularly systematic. It was more a case of thinking, “Finally, I think I
could get a campervan. Yes, I could see myself having a campervan.” I stopped
telling myself it was unrealistic, silly, a fantasy, and started telling
myself, “Wouldn’t it be good if I had a campervan?”
My intention became to have a campervan and I now have one. And it’s great having one. I’ve also started another blog (that makes a total of three now, which explains why I don’t write a new post very frequently on any of them!) My new blog is called ‘Travels With My Dulcimer’ and celebrates my love of playing the dulcimer twinned with my love for travelling around in my campervan. It’s very new (I’ve only had the campervan a few months) but, over time, I’m hoping it will become a kind of travelog. And, in a slightly different way to this blog, it’s also about creativity and wellbeing. I hope you enjoy reading all three of my blogs which I think will complement each other with their overlapping interests in creativity, music, writing, travel and wellbeing. You can visit and follow my other blogs by clicking on these links:
