In The Next Best Thing (2000) Madonna plays a yoga teacher, completing my vision. In particular the first minutes with the titles against a backdrop of the studio, a scene that is not (fully) on YouTube.

One of the advertisements on Facebook, which was presented to me frequently even after I had bought it, was about a movie (2020) from the book Think And Grow Rich (1937).
In it, Edwin C. Barnes who has “nothing” goes through lengths to come to work for Thomas A. Edison, who was a successful inventor and business owner.

To Edison’s assumption that Barnes stands before him with “nothing”, he replies:
“Desire is not nothing. I have a vision and I believe it will come true one day, and I will stick by that however long and hard the path.”

Barnes has the vision of becoming Edison’s partner.
He accepts a job as a sweeper for the offices of Edison’s company, and after two years steps in when the sales team from Edison is unwilling to sell a dictating machine, the Ediphone.
Barnes presents Edison with his plans for it, and becomes his partner, making the Ediphone a huge success. 

It were his words “A vision, is not nothing” which have made it possible for me to understand why rebooting my yoga practice and yoga career, is not starting with nothing.
Because I have had moments, rational moments where I am looking for outer proof that I’m worthy of my own dreams so to speak, that I have thought:
“But I have nothing, and lost everything.”

Not true.

As illustrated by the Edison and Barnes story;
A vision is not nothing.

I have a vision for yoga where it is my most important, most purposeful work. Where it is the language which everybody understands, way more than writing can ever be.

And yesterday I started studying yoga again, with the courses I wrote about in yesterday’s blogpost “Rock Star Yoga Teacher Training (for a no-brainer price)“, and it struck a chord with me.

This morning I woke up feeling entirely reborn, and eager to start yoga, not just from a business/ connection/YouTube perspective, but really feeling an incredible urge to do it.
A very deep desire to practice and live it.

It was a vision for the doing, of yoga, that I had been waiting for, patiently and sometimes not so patiently.
Because I knew that next to the new and improved vision for the professional side of yoga (all about connection, through YouTube, through seminars, through writing, through touring);
I also wanted to have a vision for my yoga self-practice.
And that’s what I found.

For the first time in years I am so excited to get on my yoga mat, I feel like I’ve found a treasure, my most precious “possession” maybe even;
I refound the yoga vision I lost a long time ago.

Which brings us back to the beginning.
A desire and a vision is not “nothing”.
In all probability, your vision is what will make it a success in worldly terms.
But that is not why I want you to start creating a vision for the areas of your life you want to grow.

The reason a desire and a vision are everything, is that they supply a deep fulfillment in and of themselves.

Edwin Barnes had a desire to work with Thomas Edison, a vision to be his partner, and he placed himself in a relationship with Thomas Edison.
But the reason I was so adamant of my vision for yoga coming to life first, was not because of the movie Think and Grow Rich and Edison and Barnes, but because when I started yoga in 1998, it had started with a vision, also.

Madonna had just brought out her Ray of Light album, and she talked about having started yoga. Yoga had become her main workout, and she had an even more athletic body than she had had the decade before that.
And she was now completely gym free.

In 1998, her yoga gave me the vision of wanting to do yoga.
And it was this vision that ultimately unfolded into a whole yoga career, even more so when in 2000 she played a yoga teacher in the movie The Next Best Thing.
Just like I had adopted her version of what a yoga practitioner was, I took it next level to what a yoga teacher was. Like Abby, the yoga studio owner in The Next Best Thing

I built my vision of yoga, and my career of yoga, on her work.

After three transitional years, where I changed, stopped and started yoga, and then stopped again, and started again, you get the idea;
I understood that yoga was still my passion.
That I would never be able to turn my back on it, because I just loved it too much.
Somewhere underneath, the vision I had started with, was still there.

The execution, the doing it, had not been ideal, in all likeliness that was only because I forgot to run it by my vision first. But that’s all water on the bridge, and not particularly relevant to this story.
Either way;
I did realize at some point, that yoga was still very much alive in me.

And that I had to start showing up for the relationship with it, even when that meant I had to sweep floors for my yoga like the two years like Barnes swept floors for Edison.

And I did.
I started to show up.

This step back, this deliberate step back, from the doing; In favor of the very flaky, very not-concrete “being in the space with yoga”?
In favor of the “being in the relationship with yoga”?
Like what I wrote you yesterday, about me getting back to taking courses on Udemy?

That has brought me more vision, dreams and clarity, than all the times I seduced myself into doing yoga or teaching yoga.
Even though those were fun, and I enjoyed them very much! 
But on a deeper level they were not grounded.
I had to start from scratch every time I wanted to do yoga, by finding or by creating motivation.
And that was definitely not the case in those first years where I just flew to my mat!
Because in those early years all I had to go on was my vision, and I didn’t even have the knowledge  yet of how to seduce myself into doing yoga.

So I’m not saying that you need to have a vision for yoga, before you start.

But if you want it to last for twenty years, and then still being able to find each other after three years of turmoil?

Then yeah.
You do.

.
~Suzanne
Rock Star Writer
Paypalme

Places to start your yoga vision quest:
yoga on YouTube by me: PRO videos 2015 2016
Yoga with Adriene on YouTube (10 million followers!)
my personal favorite: Yoga Inspiration: Creative Sequencing | Meghan Currie Yoga

launched soon:

YouTube channel #dailybonjoviyoga

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