Baron Baptiste
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wo key elements in our lives are vitality and habitual patterns that block our vitality. As limiting perceptions and old patterns are given up and released out, we receive new vitality in our lives. In a state of vitality, things begin to open up and make more sense. We gain creative perspective, and previously unseen pathways come into our view for the taking. As a newer yoga teacher in my early twenties, I was filled with worry. I had anxiety about my future, what I was going to do with my life, and how it would all work out. I was also in a rocky relationship with my girlfriend, and we had gotten pregnant unexpectedly. I felt excited, terrified and, yes, worried. Nine months later my first son was born, and I was married.
Purpose and Vitality “In any circumstance, we have a choice to act and live from the true north in our hearts and in alignment with who we know ourselves to truly be, rather than automatically reacting and feeling powerless.”
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I worried about being a yoga teacher who had anxiety and about being a good dad. I worried I might fail. I thought any yoga teacher worth his salt doesn’t worry, but I did. Something was wrong, and something was wrong with me. The more I tried to hide this, the more a world of worry stayed with me. Worry is the reverse of faith; worry was serving as my god and was killing off vitality. I thought my anxiety was part of who I was. I practiced hours of asana and meditation every day, and I would get some temporary relief from my worry-heavy mind. A daily practice of yoga, meditation, prayer, and eating life-affirming foods was essential to create the framework for the vitality and purpose I wanted. Those practices alone, no matter how valuable, were not enough to set me free. Something was still missing. Nothing shifted until I came face to face with what blocked me, what I had not been seeing about myself. It wasn’t until I hit a hard wall and landed in an emotional fetal position that I awoke from
my yogic stupor and experienced things about myself I had been resisting for a long time. I will never forget the lessons from this low point. In my greatest weakness, I found new spiritual strength and experienced a fundamental shift in my being. My first major insight was that I had been acting like I knew what I was doing in my life and in my teaching. Nothing was further from the truth. I got real with myself and asked God for forgiveness for living from righteousness and false pride. I requested forgiveness from several people in my life. I felt a new kind of humility and possibility enter my body. I sat in meditation daily with the intention to see life with fresh eyes. I practiced rigorous asana to dissolve energetic blocks in my body. I looked to a higher power, and I asked Grace to guide me and help me see and hear whatever was needed. The light came back in my eyes, and I felt a new energetic pulse in my heart. I became a yes for life. I gave up righteousness, and I was an open vessel ready for a new way. I got inspired about my life and allowed my purpose to find me, and it did. When our vitality emerges, we begin to participate in life head-on, heart-open. We realize life does have purpose. When you remove the rocks from your energetic garden, you experience a shift in vitality. Inner barriers dissolve in the purifying fire of awareness, and heaviness lifts from body, mind, and being. You are left with new space where the prana of vitality and possibility emerges. There is no value in searching outside yourself for purpose or trying to control what it should be. Purpose is always right here. Mahatma Gandhi said, “As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world as in being able to remake ourselves.” I can now see I’ve always had