When I was 18 I discovered a book called Creative Visualization by Shakti Gawain. In it, she talked about how to visualize the life you want through writing affirmations for the different aspects of your life. She said you didn't actually need to believe these things could come true, you just needed to repeat these affirmations over and over again in order for them to come true (think Stuart Smalley from SNL). She talked about how matter is made from energy and if you put enough energy into anything it will accumulate enough to become matter. I did these exercises and would read my little affirmations and look at the drawings made for each one when I woke up in the morning and each night before I went to bed. And the most remarkable thing is how true and real everything became. Even the drawing of the house I imagined myself living in was exact.
While many thought for a long time this was complete quackery (thus the hilarity of Stuart Smalley talking to himself in his mirror), Dr. Bruce Lipton has come to prove through the science of Epigenetics how impactful our thoughts truly are not just on the mind but the physical body. How our thoughts can actually make us sick or actually heal us.
"Perception is awareness shaped by belief. Beliefs "control" perception. Rewrite beliefs and you rewrite perception. Rewrite perception and you rewrite genes and behaviour...I am free to change how I respond to the world, so as I change the way I see the world I change my genetic expression. We are not victims or our genes. We are masters of our genetics."
Bruce Lipton Ph.D., cellular biologist.
Where are you placing your energy? Is it with negative thinking or positive thoughts? You may not be able to control what's happening around you but you can actually control what's happening on the inside and we now know that can make all the difference. And this is part of the practice. This is why we focus on our breath in yoga and meditation - to stop any cyclical thinking that is of no benefit to us and to slow the mind down enough to see things in potentially a new way. And we can take it a step further by setting an intention at the beginning or the end of our practice, purposefully placing our attention on how we want to feel be and live.
This week we will work with mindset, intention setting and manifestation We will move through both the meditation and yoga practice in a conscious way to literally create - whether we believe it or not - the life we want to live.
Hope to see you on the mat...
Amy Owen
Yoga Instructor + Birth Coach
