Unlocking Your Inner Potential: How to Achieve What's Available Within You

Finding strength in flexibility

When I went to India to study yoga, I had only a limited amount of yoga up until that point. I had practiced Bikram Yoga for years and in studios all over the world, but the Bikram principal was simple: 26 postures, you do every posture twice plus two breathing exercises, and the same exact dialogue no matter the language. Then I had practiced a more free flowing type of yoga when I lived in Chile, taught in Spanish. So I didn’t catch all of the sayings but I do remember going upside down into headstand with the guidance of my teacher.

The purpose of that trip down my yoga memory lane is that in my teacher training in India one of my fellow students mentioned one day that in classes in the states often teachers say “if it is available to you” when teaching poses. That made me laugh. At the time. I thought it was frilly and so western. I also for a moment forgot that I too was western and unexposed to a lot in this world. And not because it wasn’t available to me, but that I hadn’t yet explored what was available.

Now in yoga, you often see people standing in their hands, twisting themselves into pretzel shapes, maybe doing both at the same time even, but you also have people laying in savasana or dead body pose or child’s pose or extended downward facing dogs. And why can these same people be practicing on mats right next to each other? Because the space was available for them. And then they have themselves the availability to be vulnerable or triumphant or even silly.

I found myself practicing today, alone in my bedroom with a YouTube video of a yoga class and heard the teacher say “whatever is available to you” and I didn’t laugh this time. This time I challenged myself to go deeper, to see how availably strong I could be, to withstand the hold longer or the reach further. And I realized, what’s available is whatever I give myself space to try.

I thought maybe you might be wondering how to unlock your inner available potential today, this week or for this new year. So I give you permission to lay your mat next to mine in the energy space and show up for the invitation to find it.