What is Sankalpa?

Transcript

namaste mrs ali and in this video i'm going to answer a question that i got really frequently on this channel which is what is san culpa what is this word sankalpo what does it mean so i'm going to also dive into a little bit around the concept of a primary senculpa just for to show the evolution of my own journey with shen sankopa so that it might be helpful to some of you and also to some of the trainees inside of my yoga nidra teacher training sometimes people can tend to put a little bit of pressure on this idea of the primary cencopas so we'll get a little bit into that because it's it's something that you know can sort of slowly be excavated over time it doesn't have to be something that you figure out in like one setting um so the word sun culpa the word sun i love the translation that one of my teachers richard miller often gives which is born from your heart some people also refer to it as truth it's an inner knowing born from the heart and the culpa essentially means the word is like time but it actually refers to a long period of time in the yoga teachings something like an eon several billion years so it's a it's a it's a period of time culpa or unfolding over time something that's happening over time so that is what the those are some of the roots of the word or some of the roots of the word that i like to talk about there are different other ways to translate it that i sometimes talk about as well but let's just stay with let's keep it pretty simple and this word often is it's sometimes compared to like goal setting which is not really the same thing it's sometimes compared to intention which is a little bit more it's it's a little bit more like an intention than a goal and we'll talk a little bit more about what do i mean by that so with a goal which are very helpful goals are of course very helpful in our lives but they're a little bit different in the way that they have you know usually a time constraint to them and a very specific outcome that we want to have and they're often measurable you know you hear people talking about like smart goals and things like that whereas a cencopa is more of a direction that you'd like to go and primary senculpa is sort of the the the song of your life you could think of it as the soundtrack of your life or the direction that you're going so if you think about a concept of like a lighthouse or a north star that you're sort of moving in this direction so let's call it the true north your true north everybody has their own true north in this analogy and with a cencopa you might go west for a little while you might go south for a little while you might go in circles for a little while and that north star your true north is always sort of guiding you back to that direction that you're going with your life so you can think of a primary song called as like a life long journey um so this is why sometimes people can be like oh my gosh that's like a lot of pressure my lifelong journey or my dharma what if i don't really feel connected to like a purpose right now or i don't really know what my intention is and i can say that when i came to yoganandra many years ago that was the case for me also so i just wanted to sort of describe to you guys how my sencopa uh and i'm talking about primary cenculpa here not secondary cencopas which we also get into in the training so i just want to make that clear we're talking about primary syncopal right now i'm just going to describe how my primary sing kalpa sort of evolved over time when i first came to yoga and discovered yoga nidra i was in a very a place where my nervous system was really out of whack and many of you know this about me i had anxiety and depression and insomnia and full-blown panic attacks and frequent panic attacks as a young adult and even as like um well the whole thing sort of started right around age 11 and continued to escalate over the years and i also had asthma so i would sometimes be having a panic attack and then it would like turn into a full-blown asthma attack i'd be in the hospital it was like a very scary situation that i found myself in where i felt very out of control out of control of my nervous system and i was anxious about panic attacks having another panic attack and when was it going to come what might happen was i going to be okay i was very scared and nervous all the time so when i first started learning about san culpa it was honestly like i i wanted to be able to cultivate some peace within myself and that was a bit of a stretch for me in the beginning it was like i kind of had to word it like you know it's possible that i might be able to that i might be able to um create a little bit of peace within myself or i might be able to feel calm or at peace or you know it didn't really feel very attainable at the time but there was this desire there was like a a longing and oftentimes cencopa is referred to as a heartfelt desire or a heart's longing or heart our hearts wish things like that and there was a longing there was a wish there was a desire to be able to feel peace within myself and it didn't really feel like it was something that i could achieve at the time so it felt like a bit of a like a stretch for me or like if we go back to that word goal was like kind of like a stretch goal i'm not sure if i can create that but i'm willing to believe that it might be possible that's kind of where i started out and then as i practiced more pranayama and yoga and things that were really starting to settle my nervous system down and calm my nerves and i was starting to catch glimpses of moments where i had this like reprieve and then after yoga i would like fall asleep and sleep like a baby stuff like that whereas usually i'd be up until like four or five six in the morning just trying to go to sleep and so there were glimpses of calm and peace and tranquility that i had started to discover so it started to become a little bit more attainable or believable if you will so my sankalpa sort of shifted again from i might be able to create some peace which is where i kind of started to it's possible for me i am creating peace within myself i'm creating peace within myself and then it's really important with a cencopa that it's in the positive so i finally got that to that place where i wasn't you know avoiding anxiety like i don't want to create anxiety i am creating peace i am creating peace and calm within myself and there's a few other things with this in couple to make it really helpful and and um succinct it's got to be short and sweet and the present tense positive about yourself so those are some of the things to keep in mind so i am creating peace within myself became the cenculpa and then as i started to study more and more i studied for many years before i started considering getting trained to become a teacher the teachers that i first started studying with one of them you know she said you know traditionally uh a student will study for 10 years before becoming taking a teacher training to become a teach teacher and so i kind of took that to heart and study study studied i practiced all the time like every day and learned and learned and learned and then finally i took my 200th hour at the krapalu center with my teacher randall who was a really just renowned and incredible yoga ninja teacher so that's where i really started to dive super deep into yoga nidra even more but anyways this evolution of becoming a yoga teacher i started to see that i was actually starting to create help create peace in others by you know teaching the meditation and pranayama and yoga and i was starting to see that they were their nervous systems were shifting as they came into the room and they were creating peace within themselves as well so my saying helpless sort of shifted to i'm creating peace within myself which is creating a peaceful ripples peaceful ripples into the world peaceful ripples into the lives of my students into the lives of their loved ones that that touches and so my sencopa became not just about creating peace with myself it was creating peace within myself that was sort of spilling over and helping my yoga students so that has evolved over time when i started the youtube channel i sort of started to the wording changed again a little bit it started to shift and it was sort of i'm creating a peaceful wave in the world i am creating peace within myself i'm creating a peaceful wave within the world and now my primary cenculpa is i'm creating a peaceful impact i'm creating a peaceful impact on the world and sometimes i'll even like bring in something like i'm creating a massive peaceful impact on the world so it's really grown over time from this place where it was like i might maybe i might be able to create peace within myself too i am creating a massive peaceful impact on the world and on the planet so that is my every time i'm practicing yoga nidra that is my primary cencalpa when i'm calling on my primary cenculpa that's what i call in and i also work with secondary senkalpas which we talk about in the training which we dive pretty deep into in our monomayakosha module and we also talk about the concept of vikalpa what is vicalpa nirvikalpa samadi or the resting and the sweetness of no san culpa or some translated as like no mind this this sort of sweetness of of no mind and we talk about all of that as well but for this for the channel and for just the the very common question of what is san culpa what is san culpa i hope that this video will be helpful for some of you guys because if you're practicing yoga nidra daily or weekly and you don't have sort of a primary cencopa that you're calling on each and every time it's really powerful to create that primary senculpa that your repetition is really powerful so if you're bringing that in every single time calling it in calling it in calling it in in my experience the the thing that you're calling in becomes inevitable um it just really becomes this yeah this north star this guiding light in your life that continues to compel you into to write action so um i hope that that is helpful there's so much more that i could say about san culpa but know that if you're new to yoga nidra if you're new to this concept of cencopa i just also want to offer that it's really powerful for people who have never even worked with you know setting an intention before just to simply call in something nourishing for the for the self so even just to gift yourself the care and the love that create of creating an intention for yourself some people don't work with intention for themselves at all and don't even feel deserving of these types of things so um calling in something and that's why often when i give suggestions in my recordings for a senculpa i say something like oh you might say i'm resting deeply today or i i i accept myself just as i am or something that can feel really life affirming and supportive towards oneself because really the process of yoga nidra what it uncovers over time is our own innate wholeness that we are whole and complete and you know completely deserving of being here and that every single one of us is worthy and whole as we are and we can connect to that innate wholeness through the process of yoga nidra which is really often about peeling back some of the layers of conditioning that have been put upon us by our own self impositions but also of society and of our maybe our parents our different um experiences that we've had over our lives so anyway connecting to just simply a like a simple intention of mighty be happy might be healthy might i love myself just as i am some really simple and life affirming intentions and called buzz can be a really beautiful place to begin and then seeing where that leads you over time because like i said mine in the beginning was it's possible for me to one day feel peaceful or something like that it's i i desired to feel peace within myself and i just eventually got to the place where i believed that that was possible and over time it's become my life's mission to help other people to create peace within themselves so you can see how it can evolve over many years which is what it's done in in my life and in many people that i know it's an evolving and shifting uncovering of the heart's desire and the purpose and where life is sort of directing you it's a lot of also trusting the flow of life and and and seeing where it takes you as well so i hope that that's helpful and please let me know if you have any questions below let me know if you're in the training and you found this helpful let me know i know that lots of you are right in module when we dive into primary cenculpa and and some people it's a new concept for us so it's exciting and also sometimes people can be like whoa because it's almost like what is your purpose what is your dharma in the way that some of the questions are worded in the worksheets we have a lot of meditations and lessons and worksheets around creating the primary cenculpa so hopefully hearing this story about how mind shifted and evolved over the years might be helpful for some of you if you're feeling a little bit stuck on that and then if you're new to learning about san culpa on the channel you might leave me a comment below let me know if you have any questions let me know if you want to share what you're working with right now where you're maybe starting out or maybe you started working with a primary scencopa a little while ago you can share with me anything that you'd like to i am i don't think i've ever shared my sencopa publicly like that before but i'm happy to share that with you all and yeah if you have any questions about the yoga nidra teacher training i'll post some links below we have a beautiful community online community of teachers students and teachers learning and sharing together and learning all things yoga nidra how to guide and how to go through all of these processes for ourselves creating yeah just a really beautiful a beautiful not an adventure but a journey a journey of diving deep in your own self in your own practice of all of these all of these concepts and then how to then take those out and share them with the world and create some more of those peaceful ways peaceful ripples that's one of my missions now right is that peaceful impact on the world and one of the biggest ways that i'm able to do that right now is through my online trainings and teaching these things to others so that they can go out and then share that with their communities and the the peace that we are able to spread through the communities that way it's just such a beautiful thing and much bigger impact so i'm very grateful for that and it's all linked together so it's very cool okay so thank you so much for joining me in this video and i'm excited to hear about your sencopa and i'll see you in the next yoga neutral practice namaste