Last weekend I was talking to a close, longtime friend who has also completed the 200-hour yoga teacher training course that I run. She teaches yoga as a side gig and was sharing with me that after her class last week she invited her students to view the TV profile that had been broadcast about therapeutic yoga, featuring yours truly. And then she said, “It just keeps rippling…”. Some of what I taught my friend is now rippling out from the San Diego area through her actions. So my thought for the week is how we create a ripple effect from our actions and, hopefully, it comes from a perspective of positivity, compassion, and love.
In yoga teacher training we talk about acting from our highest intentions which are driven from that inner place of wanting to have impact. When we act from the motivation of serving others with kindness, we certainly don’t do so in order to see what comes back to us as a result. We teach without ever really knowing what impact it will have on someone and we keep teaching with authenticity to meet an internal need to be of service.
I hadn’t really understood how one person can have impact until we were getting ready to move from Australia to the United States. The previous four years I had been managing the group fitness program at the University of Melbourne. It was a large program with many enthusiastic participants with classes being held in basketball stadium size gyms, multiple classes each day and 20+ instructors to make it all happen. I taught every day in the program and I had my finger on the pulse of all the numbers over the four years I was there. I remember sitting with a friend for coffee one day and telling her that I had tallied the numbers for my time at Melbourne Uni. Over the four years, I taught 848 classes that averaged 45 people per class which translated to seeing close to 40,000 people! I was so stunned by these numbers, I double checked them. I said to my friend that I had never anticipated when I began teaching that I would have such an experience. It was truly the first time I caught a glimpse of the impact that one person can have.
This week is about honoring how each and every one of us has impact. Any time we act from our highest intention, engage in what we love and support others in thriving, we make an impression. To think that each one of us can lift another is a tremendous recognition of our own power. The ability to simply bring a positive moment and/or experience into someone’s day is deeply humbling. I am beyond grateful that I can sense this experience on a regular basis and it makes my heart smile to once again be reminded of this.
Let’s celebrate the positive connections that we generate. Let’s recognize how energy, action, and intention can move powerfully away from us and make a commitment to doing so from the highest perspective possible. And although some of my numbers might be staggering, it’s not about that. It’s about the quality of the ripple that we create. It might just have the power to blow you away…
