Navigate Change With Grace

These seven core yogic teachings can support you through radical life shifts and times of uncertainty.

- Sally Kempton

ALTHOUGH I HAVE NO STATISTICAL

EVIDENCE, I’m convinced that when you start practicing yoga and meditation, you invite major changes into your life. Those changes start from within: Maybe your practice alters the way you define personal integrity; maybe it unleashes a deep longing in your heart or shows you truths you’ve been hiding from yourself. Soon, these inner shifts seep into your external life. They make you question the way you do things and nudge you to live life differently. You may notice that your practice has triggered a mysterious process that I call “karmic acceleration.” In other words, having a yoga practice tends to speed up the way your relationships and life scenarios play out. So instead of putting up with an unhappy relationship or an unsatisfying job for, say, 10 years, you may find yourself bulldozing through it in two. And not because you’re flaky.

Most of us who practice yoga will, at some point, find ourselves facing internally motivated choices that can radically alter our lives. That’s when we need to learn how to bring our practice off the mat so it can help us birth the emerging self that change promises to bring forth— and support us as we work through the fear and confusion that change can bring.