Avoidance Attracts

“We meet our destiny on our journey to avoid it.”
-Kung Fu Panda

Recently I made a familiar mistake. In the moment when I made the mistake, I was trying very hard not to make a mistake. I did this by deferring to someone else and not trusting my own judgement. In the end, I made the very mistake I was trying to avoid!

Said differently, this is the law of attraction. By focusing on what I did NOT want to create, I attracted energy to it and created it.

In the same way, when we are on the mat worried about falling out of a handstand or other challenging poses, we attract energy to the very thing we wish to avoid.

The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali give us guidance on this mental habit. They tell us instead to focus on the opposite thing. In yoga class, this would be focusing on how fun and free it would feel to balance in handstand (rather than worry about falling).

Easier said than done you say? Think of it this way. What will make you so joyful that you forget about what you were trying to avoid?

While I’m away this week on vacation, cultivate this mental practice on and off the mat. Then tell me how it went on my blog!

Love and light,