Early in my advanced yoga teacher training, an icebreaker exercise invited us to explore our sankalpas. As I sat with the invitation, I found myself drawing inwards, listening for what might emerge. Sankalpa is a Sanskrit word often translated as intention, resolve or solemn vow. It has its roots in Indian spiritual traditions and is familiar to many yoga practitioners through yoga nidra, where a personal resolve is brought to mind during the practice. The understanding we were invited to explore was a heartfelt commitment, connected to our deepest truth and the way we wish to live. I began to imagine it as both the destination and the journey, if our lives were marked on a map: guiding principles through which we honour our existence, how we wish to be, and perhaps even our core why.
There is a familiar process I use when creating. I go inwards, I ask, then I breathe. I stop and wait, and slowly an answer comes into my mind’s eye. It is often very specific and clear, but I can also ask questions and wait for more to emerge. This usually works best in meditation, which for me can happen in stillness or while walking in nature.
I arrived at my sankalpa through this process of attunement. I became quiet, turned inward and listened to what was emerging through feelings, images, sensations and words. It felt like a dialogue with myself, my inner world, or the cosmos. I would sit with what arose, notice how it felt in my body, and allow it to affirm or redirect my understanding.
I experience this when I create my spirit drums or work with Reiki. Through my own lens of spirit and consciousness, I feel connected to a deep place within me, allowing whatever is there to take form. From that place, the words came: inhale truly, hold madly, exhale deeply. Then came the image.
What emerges can have a commanding presence, although perhaps that is my ego’s interpretation of the clarity I feel. I can return to whatever remains unclear, ask questions and refine it, layer upon layer. There is often alignment and symmetry whose significance I only recognise later. The more time I spend with what has emerged, the more I understand its symbolism and the connections within it.
Finding your own sankalpa asks you to listen inward. Stillness, reflection, meditation or time spent creating can offer space to notice what matters deeply to you. You might begin by asking what you long for, what gives your life meaning, or which qualities you wish to bring into your relationships and everyday choices. Sometimes words arrive readily; sometimes their meaning takes shape gradually. Giving them time feels part of the process.
To have a sankalpa is to give that intention a place in our lives. We can return to it in practice, remember it when making a difficult decision, and consider how it might influence an ordinary moment. For me, its value is in learning how to embody it, allowing the words to become recognisable in the way I receive, respond and live.
When mine came, I recognised a connection with the state I sometimes experience through Reiki. There are moments when I become aware of what I can best describe as consciousness, and the words “I am” feel sufficient. Putting that experience into language is difficult, but the sense of it is familiar. There is something deeply affirming in that recognition, as though I have encountered it before, or it already exists and I am finding a way to give it form.
So how does take shape in my drawing?
Inhale
Truly
The inhale represents receiving nourishment. There is the physical breath, bringing oxygen into my body, alongside my experience of prana, or life force, and the connection I feel through Reiki and consciousness. “Truly” invites me to consider what is mine to receive, what feels authentic, and what supports the way I wish to live.
It is an invitation to take in the goodness in people and the experience of being in this world, in this body, living this life. To nourish my existence through the learning available throughout a lifetime, giving my attention and energy to what feels true and allowing it to reach me. It asks me to receive the lessons life offers, to learn to meet and understand the full range of my emotions, and to live with open curiosity and wonder.
Hold
Madly
The heart and lungs at the centre of my drawing, with the infinity symbol above them, represent what the pause in the breath has come to mean to me. In that suspension, I sometimes feel a connection with something vast: the beyond, the cosmos, the place of all.
Within the pause, I find space for emptiness, curiosity and possibility. This is where the infinity in my drawing belongs, in the freedom to dream, explore and sit with what I have received, allowing understanding to emerge. “Madly” holds the leap of faith involved in trusting what comes and deepening that connection with myself.
I also love the relationship between the imagery of space and earth. The cosmos suggests boundlessness, while the branching airways within the lungs resemble roots beneath the ground, surrounding what I imagine as the heart of Gaia. Together, they hold my sense of connection to the earth and to the vastness beyond it.
Exhale
Deeply
To exhale deeply is to release and surrender to all that will be. It invites me to explore what it means to trust my path, loosen my grip on expectations and make room for what comes next.
For me, this includes exploring my attachments to the roles, structures and ideas through which I understand myself and my life. I am beginning to ask where those attachments sustain me, where I hold them tightly, and what freedom might become possible as I soften my grip.
Surrender is something I am still learning to understand and experience. There are things I can release readily, and others that touch places of fear, grief or uncertainty. My sankalpa gives me a way to sit with those questions and return to them with curiosity. I suspect this part will continue to teach me long after the course has ended.
Beneath the words sit the symbols of earth, water, fire, air and ether. I am still exploring why I felt drawn to include them. For now, they feel like an acknowledgement of the elements of creation and my place within it, alongside the ancestral lineages through which I came to be. There is something meaningful to me in allowing that part of the drawing to remain open, giving its significance time to unfold. I wonder whether this also connects with my anticipation of exploring shamanic practice, something I feel in my bones will be part of my future.
As the course unfolds, I am recognising how closely my sankalpa relates to what we are exploring through breath, meditation and philosophy. The words came early, and my understanding of them continues to deepen through practice and experience. What began as an icebreaker has become something I want to embody, with meanings I am still discovering.
It all feels divinely guided — well, of course it is, isn’t it?!
