How to access the power of now.

The first few times we attempted to read this book, it was hard, and we didn’t get very far. Many spiritual books can be like this, you pick them up, you start them, and it doesn’t make any sense, so you put it down. Then maybe three years later you come back, and you are different so you can read the book.

 The key to getting the most out of a book is that you must be ready to read it. You’ll know when you are ready because you'll be called to it. It will fall off the shelf when you walk past the bookshelf, or you will notice it and say oh that book that I tried three times to read finally looks like a good book. Or somebody might ask, have you read ‘The Power of Now’?

 The basic premise of the book is there is no need to worry about your problems. There is no need to churn about it in your mind, allowing what has happened in the past or what may happen in the future to draw you out of your lived experience of what is happening right now.  

The point is to focus on what you must do right now and take appropriate action in the moment to get yourself centred. How? Simply focus on your breath and what is happening right NOW.

Many spiritual traditions teach the power of now. Basically, what they're teaching is the only moment that you must be in is this moment and eternity resides in this moment. There is no past and there is no future. Even Einstein said time and space are an illusion.

 But because we're so stuck in time consciousness, we construct the past, we construct the future, and it pulls us out of being anchored in the now.

One of the best and most powerful things about a yoga practice, is it is training you to anchor yourself into the present moment by moving your body, focusing on your breath, and training your mind. Yoga is not something you have to think about, plan for, think about what happened last time or think about what's happening next. You're in the moment doing it right now. That's why it’s so good for so many people, in so many ways. Yoga can transform you and your life completely.

 One of the key ideas in The Power of Now, is that the body is the deepest doorway to finding the bliss of the moment. To finding the consciousness of how you are in the moment and letting go of everything else. You don’t have to detach from your physical body like classical yoga teaches, instead you embrace your embodied experience which is the non-dual philosophy we follow at Yoga to Transform.

 Many of us are cherished and valued for our thinking and our minds that we overvalue these qualities at the expense of a fully embodied experience.

Your body is the doorway to your lived experience now. Yoga draws you into your body and your breath. It's your mind that takes you out of the present moment. 

Do not run from your body. Move into your body and connect to the physical experience, notice the sensations in your body, notice the pain, notice how deep your breathing is, notice where you might be numb. Just notice. The more you anchor in the now, the less judgmental, critical, and analytical you are.

 Dwelling on all the things that might have gone wrong or people who did me wrong in the past that's just an illusion.  Worrying about what's going to happen in the future that's brain power that's going on something that hasn't even happened yet. Now is the only moment that you've got.

 Ask yourself, what problem have I got right now? We mean right now. As you sit here reading this blog, what problem have you got? This is the power of now, practicing anchoring yourself into exactly what is happening right now and feeling deeply into that experience.

 If you might be feeling grief, anger, pain there is no avoidance of those emotions in the now.  If you are feeling sad then you need to feel sad and express that feeling. Otherwise, it gets stored in the body and mind as a memory (becomes part of the pain body) and becomes one of the many things that pulls you out of living fully in the now. Because you keep going back to the pain that is stored in your body. If pain comes up, do not try to stuff it down or remove it. Just be present with it in the now, as the witness.

In the book Eckhart Tolle explains why we all have friends who keep having the abusive relationship. The power of now brings you into the consciousness awareness of your own being in the moment. From this conscious place you connect to a higher self. Unfortunately, most of us are walking around unconscious. Unconsciousness simply means from a yoga perspective that you are not aware of your samskara (your history) and the how that plays out in your life on a day-to-day basis. So, the person who chooses the toxic partner time and time again, they are trapped in their unconscious conditioning and keep repeating the same cycle.  It's not until they become conscious and draw into the power of now that they wake up to the fact that they want to and can change the pattern.

Unconscious patterning runs most of our lives and we are choosing our experience in response to these patterns. In the power of now we are bringing those patterns to the conscious part of our being. So, you get to choose from a conscious place and transform the patterns that have kept you stuck in situations that may not be life affirming.

To live consciously in the world, you need to know yourself and have clarity about your vision, values, and your plan, while being able to let go of anything that happened in the past and anything that may happen in the future. This process of letting go is a process of trusting in god's plan. This means that while you may have done the work to be as clear and conscious as you can be, you still need to be able to respond appropriately to what gets delivered to you. In essence you let go of forcing, demand, worry and simply remain open to the moment.

This is the power of NOW.

If you want to watch our YouTube episode on The Power of Now, click here - https://youtu.be/1fMTFYrFTVs

If you want a yoga practice focused on bringing you into The Power of Now click here -