Most New Year’s Resolutions fall by the wayside before the end of January. Anyone else notice the new year joiners in the gym who mysteriously disappear within a month? We start fuelled by the energy of the new year, and within weeks, fall back to old, familiar ways of being.
Yogic traditions give us some insight into slight shifts around setting resolutions, which may yield better outcomes – here are 5 suggestions which might help:
1. Timing
Traditionally, winter is hibernation time, when reduced daylight of the darkest night and shortest day of the Winter solstice, around 22nd December, affects our circadian rhythms. We have more of the sleep hormone melatonin and feel drowsier as a result. This makes introducing new habits and changes into our lifestyles more challenging. Delaying the timing of your resolutions by a few weeks to around the vernal equinox of 20th March, with the first sprigs and buds of spring may be more helpful.
2. Conscious Intentions: Sankalpa
Sankalpa is the Sanskrit word for intention. San means “to become one with the highest”, and kalpa means “time”, “sub-conscious mind” and “vow” – we use conscious intention to set a resolution for our heart’s desires, by tapping into our unconscious. We do this by practising deep relaxation with yoga nidra, and systemically approach intention setting.
To set a sankalpa, target something you would like to manifest in the next 6 months or so and envisage yourself living in the moment of fully embodying that sankalpa. Allow yourself to fully feel what it likes for your sankalpa to be a part of your life.From that place, phrase your intention as “I can…I will…I must…”. For example, you might want to memorise a poem, and say out loud, “I can memorise poem, I willmemorise poem, I must memorise poem by June.” Allow the essence of that sankalpa to embrace you.
From that future point, work backwards, to plot out the active steps you want to take to ensure that your sankalpa manifests.
3. Relax & Surrender: Yoga Nidra
Yoga Nidra is the science of yogic sleep, often said to be an alternative path to enlightenment. It is the path of systematic relaxation and deep surrender – letting go of our attachments, and fully being. You may have had an experience of what yoga nidra can feel like in that brief moment of savasana at the end of each yoga class, when you feel as if you are in touch with more of yourself as you fully relax and let go.
Setting your sankalpa from the attitude of surrender imbues an effortlessness and simplicity to your conscious intention.
4. Practice & Discipline: Tapas
Tapas translates as discipline, austerity or heat, and reminds us of the importance of regular, deliberate practice. As skill in driving, sports and music develops through deliberate learning and practice, so is it important for us to pay attention to the habits and practices that support our sankalpas. A sankalpa without a practice, energy, intention and focus behind it, becomes an unrealised dream – the unrealised resolutions of January and February.
5. Grace & Compassion
We can be our own worst enemies, allowing the harsh inner critic to dominate and suppress any new buds of change. Change can be challenging, a profound release of an old way of being that no longer serves.
May you be supported by grace and compassion in your journey of becoming.
