Mindfulness

Intentionality

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In yoga we think a lot about intentionality, specifically as it relates to moving through the sequence of poses during a class. You may have performed some of  postures thousands of times, which makes it easy to go through the motions, almost letting these postures happen to you as opposed to being the prime mover.

In this sense a yoga class offers  prime opportunity to work on intentionality, mindfully focusing all of your attention on each pose. What ends up happening is that you enjoy the class a lot more than when your mind is elsewhere, and more importantly you perform better. We can take this concept of intentionality and apply it to pretty much any endeavor in order to get better results.

This sort of mindful focus transforms the mundane into the extraordinary, turning activities that are psychically and physically draining into activities that feel nourishing. When you’re intentional you don’t waste any energy, not to mention your sense of efficacy increases. Most of us don’t get to do exactly what we want to be doing all the time, but when we add mindfulness into the mix we stop feeling like we’re wasting our time. Next time you are confronted with a task that has become routine, try instilling it with the intentionality we’re talking about, focusing all your attention on what you’re doing without any negative judgment. Compare how you feel both during the experience and afterwards to how you usually feel and you’ll probably notice a huge difference.

 

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