It’s springtime here in Canberra and all the trees and flowers are in bloom. As I stroll around my neighborhood breathing in the fresh smells of spring, I can’t help but think about how nature teaches us so much about our own growth; nature thrives on regular cycles of creation, sustenance, and destruction/transformation – just like we see in our own practice, business, and relationships. Creation is exciting and inspiring, and we all want our businesses to be sustained beautifully and easily, but the destruction/transformation part of the cycle can be scary (I’ll talk about this in my next blog). Rather than fight these natural cycles, we can benefit greatly from embracing them. Using the natural energy of this ‘trinity’ of creation, maintenance, and transformation in our yoga businesses can provide energy, inspiration, and can help us plan ahead for the natural cycles that our businesses will experience.
On the subject of springtime and creation, I have been thinking about what we can learn from nature about sowing seeds of new growth most effectively. When we want a new project to succeed, or a marketing campaign to reach more people, or we have an idea that we would like to see flourish, we can learn a lot from the natural world around us, for instance, imagine how an apple tree successfully produces more apple trees.
When an apple tree wants to make more apple trees, it doesn’t just send out one seed. It creates a bounty of apples, all filled with many seeds, and makes those apples super attractive – red and juicy and promising sweetness – so that animals (like me!) will come along and eat the apples, and then down the track send them back out into the world, pre-fertilized, so that each seed can develop into its own tree. An apple tree knows that it can’t just produce one seed and expect a tree to grow. An apple seed requires such a complex set of circumstances in order to find a firm hold in the earth and grow – safety from pests, the right soil and light conditions, the right amount of water and space. So, the tree throws out lots of seeds with the hopes that one or two will take root.
We could take this same analogy and effort to our yoga business. Rather than pinning our hopes on just one idea, one social media post, one client, or one marketing campaign, send out lots of seeds into the world – and make them attractive so that people will pick them up and take a bite. With your advertising, marketing, client relations, web/social media presence, class or private session options, retreat ideas etc., imagine you are sending seeds out into the world, and take some time regularly to tend to your ideas to ensure that they are grounded, nourished, filled with the light of your inspiration, and then given the time and space that they need to take root, be nourished, and thrive.
Maybe I’ve just been out in the sun too long, but I hope that this analogy makes sense to you, and you can join me in bringing lessons from nature into your yoga business to create a garden of awesome yoga opportunities for your communities!
Thoughts? I’d love to hear them! Share your ideas at Yoga Trinity