Intention Setting in Yoga: The Light and the Dark Side with Byron and Michael

0:00 I'm not so sure that yoga was ever intended to be an intention setting practice and that it was more about accepting where you are and realizing your perfect nature. Welcome to the going pro. Yoga podcast, nugget series.

0:17 My name is Michael Henry and I'm Byron de Marseille and he's short 15 minute episodes. We're going to be answering some of the most common questions in the yoga industry so you can walk away with the answers in a short period of time.

0:29 That's right, Michael. With each topic that we choose will be discussing it from two different perspectives, the teacher, and the student. I'll be approaching these questions as a physiotherapist or physical therapist with over 10 years experience, treating some the most common and complex injuries. And my guidance will be from the perspective of having taught 7000 classes, roughly 10,000 hours over 10 years. Welcome to our podcast.

0:54 What's happening, everyone? This is Byron de Marseille and Michael Henry coming at you with going pro. Yoga podcast, nugget series, today's topic on the menu, Michael. I forget I'll pull you. Come on man. It's intention setting.

1:13 Oh that's actually the lightness and the Darkness of intention setting. So I'll be honest everyone. I was real excited about this one and we chose it based off of that. So, Michael just jumping in raw. I'm basically a listener that can actually input by interrupting you and making comments as we move through.

1:32 So I am the audience, I like song and I'm gonna pull through the energy of the people listening and try to say that That they're thinking you're a channel basically. Okay, / going to try to do that. Alright, a meeting for the first time ever. Okay, so that's not how it's gonna go down. Everybody knows that but I am going to start talking about intention setting.

1:52 Okay. Now first of all, I love intention setting. I think it's quite a beautiful practice and a way to manifest or track things into your life that you might want and perhaps Release something, your intention might be to let go of something.

2:11 So just bringing attention to the fact, you want to let go of, it may help. And it's probably proven to be helpful for a lot of our listeners. So that being said, that's the lightness, the Wonder the beautiful golden light, the good side of intention setting.

2:28 What I want to bring some more intense attention to about intentions is how I'm not. So sure that yoga was ever intended. To be an intention setting practice and that it was more about accepting where you are and realizing your perfect nature.

2:51 Hmm. So this is an opinion. Obviously. I'm not going to claim to know exactly what was going on way back when. But just entertain that thought for a second, if you're used to setting, intentions is especially so So if you're setting an intention constantly, constantly moving forward, moving toward progress progress. It's a very Western way.

3:15 It's also, very masculine thing to do. Like I don't want to just exist. I want to go to this place. So what could be risky about that? Michael? Anything come up? The biggest thing is that maybe possibly feeling the need to send it in tension or feeling the need to move towards something. Whenever something might not necessarily be coming through to you as something that you really want to do and feeling like you just kind of need to make something up. So the risk that I see with that

3:47 is like you might just say, I'm going to my intention for today is XYZ. And who knows? Maybe it's not a simple and maybe it's a big one and maybe you don't know if it's simple or not. Or not authentic or complex, or authentic, the thing that's and I'm leading to it is the the risk with this is that like what happens if you know the intention doesn't get fulfilled or you know, you don't move towards it or you don't exercise whatever it is that you want to exercise.

4:14 And then now you have some guilt or some self-doubt or some like basically yourself Integrity, become takes a hit because you're trying to you're saying, you're going to do something or you're intending on doing something and not following through with it Prost, probably. Because of the parameters at the beginning, we're not necessarily conducive to moving towards that goal or that thing. And now all of a sudden without fulfilling it, you're basically your subconscious is saying

4:37 like, oh, well, you're saying you're going to do these things? You're not going to do them. It actually builds a subconscious bad habit. This is just a very psychological thing. When yourself Integrity just doesn't, it doesn't believe you anymore.

4:49 You say something you set an intention and your body and your whole being is like a sure you will, right? Yeah, it creates a downward spiral of being able to break out of that cycle. So that's that's Yeah, very deep. It is the first thing that came to mind. I think that's pretty in pretty smart. Just you're basically setting and expectations right off the bat.

5:05 Well, you know, Michael's not saying that, this is necessarily always bad. It's just possible. That, that could happen. It's also possible that you could set an intention to be more patient that day and perhaps you encounter something that day that you realize you're impatient. So you also, you start to connect to that patients and that's a beautiful thing.

5:26 So let's consider and entertain just putting yourselves there. You know, you're in the yoga class room, your it's time to practice and you just sit you start to follow the mechanics of respiration. You start to connect with your breath and nature and without trying to do something you occupy the mind with Activity and that activity leads to inactivity to Stillness. In other words, you're giving the mind a focal point. The breath is the most tangible

6:06 aspect of being a human or being alive in general. So if you can hear your breath, if you can feel your breath, then you can always connect to it. You don't have to set an intention there. It just starts to naturally the noise around any subject matter starts to dissolve a bit. Okay, so then you just follow you, follow the process. If you will, the eight steps, the eight limbs getting the mind.

6:30 So steady that when it's ready, it starts to untether, relax and decompress to the point where you naturally feel gratitude. You naturally feel these emotions in these feelings of abundance and patience because it's a natural byproduct of clearing. Your mind.

6:51 That being said, maybe you shift your entire. Our mentality before you even step in the room to where you just, you know, you like, you know what, there's a bunch of crap happening in my life, but it's part of the thing.

7:06 And I know it's part of the plan. We're perfect. This is perfect. This shitty experience. There's something about it. I know it's perfect. I haven't figured it out yet. I just know it's in there somewhere. I'm going to I'm gonna find it or I'm gonna let it move past me because I'm going to realize soon that it's not as important as I think it is. If you do this, then your grout you're grateful for everything. So everything you tap into good bad – positive high-low. Smooth rough dark light, you

7:35 know, abundant lack summer winter, inhale. Exhale masculine-feminine is going to be absolutely. Worth. Everything. Yeah, okay. So the thing that kind of lands for me with that and that was really, it was powerful because I was imagining all these complexities of where you could go with it, like how far you can take it and how deep it can go and how much of an impact it can actually have on you, but then I thought about like but it could also be really simple.

8:12 Could be really simple. Your intention you might even have already set your intention before showing up. Maybe your intention was to show up and then now you're done your You're good. You don't need to do anything else, right? So in this is what I was saying before, with having this pressure to feel like you need to come up with something and nothing really authentically coming through. It's not necessarily always going to bode. Well, so just you know, if

8:35 nothing comes to you on first thought then don't force it. And if you do want to really if you're like, you know, but I want to find something to have an intention for. I think it's important. Just think of something, super simple. Maybe the fact that you can't think of an intention off the spot is like hey, you know what?

8:50 I'm going to My intention today is to find more clarity or to be patient with my intention. You know what I mean? Like, it doesn't need to be anything complicated. It can be. My, my intention for the today, is to let go and just surrender. It could be to be patient with other people. It could be to hug someone today or to tell someone that I love them today or to forgive someone, whatever can be super. Super tiny can be big can be medium sized. There's no right or wrong way of

9:18 going it. Going at it and I think, Doing things. Small is always easier at the beginning and then things can grow from there. And I think with the Western mind and also a younger mind that it makes sense to to plant a seed, right?

9:33 That that's going to be helpful to them right there spending time. What are we going to work on? Nothing? It isn't the philosophy. Of yoga is not there. You don't get it. It takes longer to grasp. It's a great way to get in the door. So, as a yoga teacher setting, intentions just understanding this conversation, Michael, and I are Having is key just to developing your own belief system around it. But something that came up as you were talking was. Yeah, you're basically saying

10:00 there's a subconscious intention happening, no matter what, right? There's an intention. You just might not be aware of your intention. So bringing your attention to the intention will shine a light on to it so that your now conscious of it so that you start to maybe perhaps make more money methodical.

10:19 I'm not saying it's better but still To achieve that, that intention. However, like a way I look at it. Maybe this helps some of the listeners is when the mind wanders during class or maybe even in your regular day, your mind will by default go to either, random, thoughts, whatever, 20 thoughts, you kind of have that are, you know, have certain emotional stress attached to them and order a sequential order and randomly selecting one, or it's going to maybe go to this intention

10:50 instead. Since you put that in that mental Rolodex, so it gives you a better chance of lifting up your spirits. Now, let's dig a little bit deeper for those that are still with me and interested in capable and willing to go deeper.

11:08 So if you are, let's just say, cleaning out a wound, cleaning out, a wound, healing yourself, physically and then relate that to the inside, wounds that you have consider the past childhood experiences and Trauma. And how would you actually clean those out? Well, if you're constantly putting a new bandage on it over and over again.

11:29 Again, which is the way I look at positive affirmation, you at least one good time, and sometimes you don't get it. Good enough. And you got to go back several times to get the wound, clean enough to heal and that's the perspective of let whatever comes up come up, instead of necessarily needing to default, find this happy emotion to experience. So in some ways, it's immediate gratification that way. But if Leads you to getting there eventually. I'm all I think it's an amazing

12:03 tool setting, your intentions. So that's my my full range of life experience kind of spilled into so far. We're probably at 12 minutes. So 11. Actually got the eye on the clock, man. You yeah, so you have any thoughts on it?

12:21 Michael at that point? Yes, and the word that came up was Creating expectations on ourselves related to intention setting. So this is kind of bringing it back to what I mentioned earlier, but just feeling the pressure of needing to live up to that expectation or that intention per se. And obviously, depending on what your intention is, is going to be, might not have a big expectation, or it might have a really big one that might not necessarily be within reach within a 90-minute class or

12:52 within the day. And the way, the reason I bring this up is because every month Christina. And I we set an intention for the month and we allow ourselves 30 days to focus on that attention and work towards it. Whether it's big or small. And if it's small, and we're able to attain that intention within the month, then we're happy. But if the, you know, we go through the 30 days or not to say, we're happy, we're satisfied. And we're ready to create a new

13:19 intention, the following month, but let's just fast forward 30 days now, we're into the new month and, you know, we didn't quite fully cultivate that Intention, maybe you didn't have enough time, maybe work on the way. Maybe life got in the way. We're going to set the same intention that we did. Last month is this month until we work towards it. Until we feel like we're satisfied with, you know, putting the effort in the energy behind it. I'm telling you this because

13:43 sometimes intention setting takes a lot of work to actually fulfill or work towards whatever it is. You're trying to intend to do. And sometimes when we hit set intentions at the beginning of a yoga class, and we don't realize how Big of a job it is, it can kind of create that expectation that we're not able to really fulfill, so maybe for you.

14:05 And this is kind of what I do is because I have these monthly intentions set for myself already. I just bring that to the yoga class and be like, okay, my intention today is to work on my intention that I set for the month. But right now, it's incremental steps as opposed to, like, I need to do this whole thing by the end of the day today, or by the end of the week or whatever.

14:24 Right? It's already on my wall. It's already on like a written down. Down somewhere. So even though I'm intending to work towards my intention today and I somehow don't get to it today. It's like, okay, the expectation is Disappointment, which is the negative side of the dark side of this is that I make myself feel disappointed because I didn't fulfill or work towards that expected, intention that I was trying to maybe your intentions to be to cut yourself

14:46 some slack, Michael. And that's a great intention actually, because that's something you can do any moment every day. So that's a simple intention to me and it's just relevant to, I mean, being hard on. Ourselves is just, there's that conditioning, there's that.

14:59 Trauma coming up for certain people there. And there's other people this, this last note, you know, and you may not think of this and I'm only thinking of it because I'm a rebel myself in a way where don't tell me what to do.

15:11 Even if you want me to set. An intention part of me is like, I'll do that when I want. Thank you very much, without be the dark side. Yeah. No, it's just in my mind. I'm like, how this is my yoga practice, you know, there's this, the part of that inside of all of Of us. And some people, it's really loud and a lot of those people do.

15:30 Yoga at least have transformative experiences during yoga. That being said, might be a great suggestion, at least for me, and probably, for some of you to have certain times. You said intentions in certain times, you don't so you practice enough.

15:48 If you practice at least three times a week, you can split it up, you know, one point five times a week, you you choose the intention. Masculine, let's go here. And we're let go of this and then the other times you focus on clearing yourself. Purifying yourself.

16:05 Opening yourself up letting the natural unfolding process happen. It's perfect. Honestly, when it comes down to it the summary is it's okay to set an intention. It's okay to not sin didn't have intention. That's basically, with last 15 minutes is about, but I think as yoga teachers, I think it's great to encourage our students to set intentions.

16:26 But it wouldn't be even more powerful. If we were to be a little bit more inclusive in the sense that like, hey, if you want to set an intention for the day, or for the practice, now is the time to do it. Close your eyes, put your hands at your heart center and keep it simple. You can give them some suggestions. I like how Paul does that he says, keep it simple. Here's some suggestions, you know, maybe it's patients today. Maybe it's, you know, Focus

16:47 today. Something like that. That can be helpful for students because sometimes you might not know, but then they'll say a word and you're like, oh, yeah, that's what I need today. Yeah, so that's helping to guide and support your since but also the same time recognizing and you can even say this if you really want to be very transparent like you don't need to have an intention today, but if you do, Now's the Time to do it and here are some suggestions

17:07 simple as that right on. I think that's beautifully said Perfect. All right. Well, we're a little over time, but that's okay. Because we say so many fun things. It was our intention to actually end on time but maybe subconsciously not Mmm. Yeah, we needed to say more and we could drag this on even longer, but we're not going to.

17:24 So thank you so much for listening. We really appreciate it. As always, questions, concerns queries podcast, ideas, topic ideas, complaints, all that good stuff or bad. Is more than welcome, you can hit us up and voice notes on podcast.com Pro yoga.com or you can hit us up, Instagram, DMS, or you can send us an email at podcast at Logan.com. That's it.

17:49 Byron. Wikiwiki 12 what you're going to do. We'll see you next time.