Below is an email I send to my students who are attending my START THE YEAR OF WELL early morning 5 day Yoga Intensive. I decided to post it here on my blog so others can use the process as well.
A review of your year 2012
Firstly take a few pieces of paper and create some stream of consciousness writing around 2012, if you stop and come across a mind blank, then just write...." I have a mind black etc..." until you move through the mind blank or road block, this may happen a few times, keep going until you have moved through at last 10 of these mind blacks.... this style of writing is often known as "mind dumping" or "a give away"
you will notice this becoming a summary of what happened and what was important to you in 2012. After you have started this as a free writing exercise, then try to focus on specific life areas: especially on the Big 7 areas, and write a little more detail around how you feel about each in 2012.
- Relationship
- Business
- Body
- Mind
- Spirit
- Social (Friends & Family)
- Finances and Possessions
This process of self reflection helps to notice the changes in your life and it also creates clarity of what needs to change in the coming year of 2013.
If you want to have some more inspiration and guidance for the Review part, start with asking and answering some questions like:
What have you learned this year?
What were your biggest successes?
Have you hit your goals for the year?
What was the biggest surprise?
What do you want to follow along with in the coming year?
What do you want to end?
Follow up with questions that lead you to summarize and lead you to understanding on a broader level:
Are your loved ones happy?
About what are you happy?
For what are you grateful today?
Are you happy today?
After your review it’s time to keep this momentum of the insights from 2012, and channel these emotions into your plan for the year ahead 2013, take the Big 7 areas (as above) and write some intent and goals around each one, this can be as detailed and specific as you want, mind mapped, drawn with pictures, use colour, what ever works to get you into that creative flow, be curious, you can use these questions to self below to assist you.
What are the areas you want to expand on in your life?
What specifically do you want to achieve in 2013?
What dream to you want to fulfil in 2013?
With whom do you want to (re-)connect? (that might be self connection as well!)
How can you make you life more simple?
Where do you want to travel?
How can you achieve these?
You can also use the SMART criteria to help http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMART_criteria
Once you have completed this, take the top, one intent or goal from the Big 7 areas that really resonates with you, the one that feels like there is a strong positive charge around. You can check and investigate this by sitting quietly with each of these areas, bring the feeling space of that specific area into your breath and awareness, see if you can see or feel where it sits in your body? what area? and ask the question to your inner natural self *"does this feel true to me that my focus and intent will be here ......... for the intensive?"
your body will know... :) trust it.
This then will become your major intent and focus that will be bought into your consciousness through our *"START THE YEAR OFF WELL" 5 day early morning intensive. What we are doing is discovering through self enquiry, then unravelling the knot in the "string" that opens the allowing to the rest of the unravelling to take place through other aspects of self, we will move this through the body from the inside out, and activate and re-calibrate from a cellular level!
* you can use this in any aspect that you do as a focus for a few days to a week, in your regular yoga practice, still time or meditation
You can document this process any way you like during the week, photos, drawing, journalling, writing, vision boarding, conversation with a like mind, mind mapping (how to mind map explanation http://litemind.com/what-is-mind-mapping/ )
And remember that if you act on your passion it IS very capable of sustaining and supporting you, it will indeed plug you in! ♥
If your focus is around diet/health/wellbeing then this 7 day juice fast ran by the juicing guru Jason Vale is running Jan 7 - 13th It's free, and includes, shopping list, daily videos and advice sent directly to your inbox, all you have to do is sign up via the link below, the only cost is either downloading the 7lbs in 7 days ebook, or the iPhone/iBook app which is around $7, for the daily juice recipes. I'll be doing it, so moral support will be there for you, on my raw food page !
Please take a few minutes to watch this video, the message is for everyone. The pure dedication, intent and believe in this mans own healing and the beauty of one person believe in another is ore inspiring and heart opening.
As a yogi I feel deep respect and gratitude for how yoga above all else was part of this mans incredible transformation.
Happy New year, blessings and love!
“Movement is the song of the body. Yes the body has its own song from which the movement of dancing arises spontaneously.” Vanda Scaravelli
Renée McCready
Holistic Health Practitioner | Yoga Teacher
Educator | Shiatsu Therapist | Raw foodie
