Posted January 2025

Happy New Year. To that, a few of you might be thinking, “Yeah, sure! What is there to be happy about?”

It’s not a question of being happy about something this year. It’s about being happy, period, no matter what’s about. Remember Sojourner Truth’s quote in last month’s newsletter: “I will not allow my life’s light to be determined by the darkness around me.”

You have a great opportunity now. The word “opportunity” comes from a Latin phrase that means “a favorable wind that takes a ship home to its port.”

That’s what the new year brings: a favorable wind — 365 days offering a favorable wind that brings you home to port. Your home port is the harbor where you are sheltered and protected from storms at sea and any other turbulence around you.

This year, we will all face plenty of storms and turbulence. You need to find that harbor where you can take shelter. But shelter is not the end-all. You also want to be happy. The harbor that brings both shelter and happiness is inside your own heart. The harbor is your own Self.

To get moving, you open your heart. It’s like opening a boat’s sail to catch the wind. An open heart overflows with devotion. In Swami Nirmalananda’s discourse titled Put Your Heart Into It, she says:

“The yoga texts name devotion as a key factor in your spiritual progress. Even the Yoga Sutras, a text about the mind, cites the importance of devotion.

Actively engage in practice, for a long time, without interruption, and with devotion.

— Yoga Sutras 1.14

“This is closely related to my oft-repeated phrase, “Do more yoga,” which also comes from the Yoga Sutras. But this sutra says something more — that while you do more yoga, persevering, for a long time, without gaps in your practice, you do it with heart.

You put your heart in it. Because the truth is, if your heart isn’t in it, you won’t be there either…”

If your heart isn’t into it, the crosscurrents of your mind will take you off course. Keep your heart set on the goal. Yogi Berra once said, “If you don’t know where you are going, you might end up someplace else.” Keep in mind where you want to go. Your mind is the rudder. Steer it toward the goal. If you let your mind run loose, it will take you where you do not want to be going.

So, for a happy new year, we hope you will make a resolution to keep up your practice. If you have fallen off the path, get back onto it again. And put your whole heart into it. The more devoted you are to your practice, the more quickly you will reach yoga’s goal.

Svaroopa® yoga is powerful. Do it, and you feel better. Stress, anxiety and fear fade away. Your buttons can no longer be pushed because they have disappeared. You feel genuinely, serenely and unflappably happy. You feel at home — at home with your own Self. That’s the goal of yoga.