How Yoga Philosophy Can Help You Reevaluate Your Goals

Why reinvent the world when thousands years old Yoga philosophy can guide you through reevaluating your goals in the present world.

Yoga Philosophy divides our main actions in 4 categories, still valuable today. They are

Wealth and material wellbeing, including your work, housing, responsibility towards your household and everything money can buy. Combined with the Pleasure, and Leisure category, these 2 categories are the easiest and most materialistic levels to achieve in life. When seeking to elevate yourself towards enlightenment, baring the religious context of India thousands of years ago, you should concentrate on the next 2 categories: one being your Life's Purpose, tightly connected to your mission in life, and ideally linked to the success of others whether closest to you or in the wider society. It demands a sense altruism and community. Finally the category of Spirituality means freedom from any materialistic ties, a deep sense of union with your true self and beyond.

It can be useful to use these categories and hold a diary for a week to see exactly how much of your weekly activities are dedicated to one or the other categories. Although we should seek balance within the 4 categories, it is worth noting that some stages of your life will be dominated by one or the other. For instance a young family will be dedicated to the upbringing of their children and all of what this means. When a pensioner who is retired but active may have more time for either leisure or altruistic activities, whilst being less involved in earning a living.

Journaling:

Holding a diary can meet many objectives. A Yoga exercise is to hold an emotional diary however holding a diary of your activities for one week can help make good use of ancient Yoga philosophy and rebalance your activities towards your purpose all in once.

Using the above principle, and looking at your list of activities at the end of the week, it may be useful for you to design new categories or  ‘metadata' such as downtime, relaxation, exercise, work, learning and development, family and friends in person time, vs  talking to friends online vs browsing social media mindlessly on your phone or for research purpose, or simply watching YouTube or Netflix. This becomes really useful for children, teens and the whole family to do together, especially if you are looking to reduce, analyse or justify your screen time.

Create a Graph:

To help further categorise your list , you could add a rating for each activity as either simulating or calming. Then your activities could be  plotted onto a graph based on engagement and challenge to determine Focus and Attention, or Relaxation and Flow states or Frustration and Boredom states. This could be an interesting Family project to do over the course of the week, then draft at the week end.

Attending a Good Yoga Class:

Whether for Children, Teens or Yourself, a good Yoga class will often add a layer of ancient philosophy which aims to help you relate in the modern world. When teaching children and inherent to our Children Yoga Teacher Training, Yoga wisdom or Reflection is an important pillar of our curriculum.