Expansion of the soul begins inside. With us. With our own energy.

Society today has become so confused. People are fed endless mixed messages about what to believe, who to believe, which famous person to follow today, who they should look out for tomorrow, while still bowing down to religions built upon historical leaders who may have in fact all been one and the same—who knows, really.

It’s no wonder humankind is lost and seeking.

Imagine a bright, sunny, warm day when all you want to do is be outside. You find a nice, quiet spot to lay in a grassy field under warm sunshine. You can feel a light breeze wash over your entire body. Wind whispers through the air, carrying flowers with it. Some tickle your nose as they dance by.

The warmth of the sun penetrates your body, healing it as it sinks in deep, layer by layer.

You breathe in the fresh air. All thoughts have slipped away as you begin to feel, to connect. You simply are. You are completely in tune with yourself, with nature, with the world around you.

This is meditation. This is energy. This is yoga.

There is no religion. There are no boxes. There are no laws, rules, there is no fear. In fact, the word “No” doesn’t exist. No words exist in this moment at all.

For yoga is truly and simply the union of mind, body, and soul.

Yoga asana, the movement practice of the eight-limb yogic path, along with meditation and related practices such as pranayama (breathing), were brought to Western society over a century ago.

Its popularity growing throughout the West over the past 35 years, the medical community has decided to play its role of research, findings more-or-less conclusive with what practitioners of yoga find: the results of yoga significant. From heart failure to back pain to cancer to stress to drug dependency to general improved quality of life, study upon study demonstrates the positive impacts yoga has upon people of all age, sex, ethnicity, and background.

Sure, you can dig a whole lot deeper into the philosophy, history and disciplined path around yoga.

But given all of the health benefits, if connecting quote-on-quote Religion to any practice of yoga, energy, body work, massage, healing, keeps you from some of our most accessible forms of free modern medicine today, why would you remain stuck in an old paradigm?

What I find potent is that energy-related practices in the form of yoga, massage, satsang, singing (kirtan), dancing, have been passed on for thousands and thousands of years in the far East. Not a couple of centuries. Not a couple of decades. Thousands of years of energy movement is powerful. You feel it when you touch down in the East.

There is nothing like it in the West.

Many Westerners will never have the opportunities I have had; to travel the world, to explore other cultures, to immerse themselves in the beauty of other practices which to a great extent they now call their own (yoga). I created my business partially for this reason—to spread powerful, conscious, healing, protective energies from the East in tangible forms to the West.

Not energy based on a religion. Not anything founded in doctrine or labels or boxes or to keep people out. Rather the idea is that energy is within all of us, it is what connects us, makes us one and dissipates tension between, walls, boundaries, anything keeping “so and so in this box” from “so and so in that box.”

Living in South East Asia, this topic rarely crosses my path, to be honest. Everyone I meet wants yoga, loves yoga and wants to try it if they haven’t already.

When they hear about my conscious brand, they want to know more. So I am shocked when I touch base with folks in the West who (ironically) remain in the old paradigm of what I view as ignorance, fear, and simple lack of desire to step outside of their small world to see what greatness lies beyond.

“I can’t interview you about your conscious brand because it interferes with my Christian beliefs” ~ Anonymous Radio Host (African American descent)

“I can only meditate on Jesus’ words. I cannot do yoga, which has poses related to other religions” ~ Anonymous

“We don’t promote anything religious in our store” ~ Blessed, a boutique

And so on.

In my attempts to bring conscious ideas, vision, energy from the East to the West, it seems something gets Lost in Translation.

What about the tangible reality you and I have access to, here and now, inside and around us?

It is the energy we tune into within ourselves—our inner shine, our inner radiance, which yoga cleanses and detoxifies. Some call it soul, some call it God, some call it love, some don’t call it anything but simply feel it.

Call it whatever you want, don’t call it at all; often the moment we attempt to put words or thoughts around “it,” we lose our connection with “it.” I have studied many of these practices for over a decade, and the more I practice and study, the more I learn about different religions and cultures and the more I work on “non-attachment,” thus letting go of any beliefs in one course or another that isn’t in line with my internal energy, my higher self.

I wonder: if more people in the West took time to lie in a grassy field and connect with nature, instead of zoning out in front of their television, or drowning in their iPhone, would people wake up and realize that there is a huge conscious shift happening on the planet?

The entire world is waking up; realizing human potential lies within, not with-out.

Looking outside of oneself, to media, to religion, even to peers, drains you of your inner truth and essence. It denies you of your beauty and truth. Only by going inside via practices such as yoga and meditation can you find what you have within, find your true voice, and unveil illusions and untruths in life.

I wish everyone a lot of inner seeking, a lot of inner love, and inner reflection.

May you all share this message with your loved ones: it’s time to wake up and feel the energy we have inside. We are beautiful, conscious, creative souls capable of tremendous things in this world far beyond our imagination.

It’s time for evolution and expansion of consciousness, even for the most old school and narrow minded.

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Editor: Catherine Monkman

Photo: Rohit Gowaikar/Flickr