We've just had a yoga vision board (VB) workshop. It's a fabulous day where we use yoga, pranayama, meditation and mantra to fire up the right sides of our brains and bodies before we create these visual roadmaps of our unfolding manifestations for 2022. Super fun, very creative and very productive. Now, VBs have been around for decades and have been made popular by celebrities like Oprah and life coaches. And the key point to any motivational tool is to focus on the process, not just the outcome. It’s much like yoga: you can read about yoga, talk about it, watch YouTubes, admire bendy bodies on Instagram, but you’ll never become a yogi until you step onto that mat and start practising yoga. Yoga is a journey, not a destination.

So it is with our VB workshop. After our yoga class, we start thinking about what we want to change in our lives. And for balance, we use the Purusharthas: the yogic Values of the Universe. We divide the VB into 4 quadrants: Dharma (Career Goals), Artha (Financial Goals), Kama (Lifestyle goals including family and friends, health, hobbies, your home and your travel goals), and Moksha (Liberation – your self-growth and your spiritual growth goals). In reality, one quadrant might dominate. You might want to focus on your health for the year, so the Kama might dominate. But as long as you have a small goal in the other quadrants, you’ll be pursuing a balanced life. 

And in the process of devising these goals, you have to accept the decision to change. If you don’t accept that change is a necessity, and impermanence (a changing world) is a given, you’ll just be reiterating, in visual form, the same old life. You also have to accept that the visual image on your board represents a process that could take months or years to achieve with all the discomfort around that change which is the very essence of growth. 

I also like to encourage my students to choose “One Big Thing". If you load your VB with so many goals and dreams you'll likely become overwhelmed, burnt out, and then revert to your old ways. To identify that one thing and define it as the nexus of your VB. And this keystone habit, once achieved, will encourage the development of other related habits and the achievement of other related goals. 

Finally, once you start pulling this amazing blueprint together, prepare for the storms.

It was Deepak Chopra who stated: "All great changes are preceded by chaos." As you start moving towards this visual, ideal life, many people connected to you won't like it. Because change is scary. As you change, their worlds start to rock. Be kind, and maybe help them create a VB. Who knows, you might rock the world together. 

Margot Wagner
 Yoga Under the Bodhi Tree
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