Intention

“Set your intention for class.”

If you’ve ever taken a yoga class, you’ve heard these words.

Set your intention.

I’m always grateful to hear these centering words, and so I follow this imperative at the beginning of each yoga class. My intention is always based on what I need. Tonight, my intention was movement. After a lot of sitting and eating the past few days, I needed to move and stretch my muscles, to feel and know again that my body is strong and healthy and capable. Other times, my intention is to alleviate back pain or strengthen muscles. Often I am in great need of stress relief--to release mental burdens and tension. Thus, my intention becomes this: To remember and feel peace and grace and God’s Spirit, alive, as I move with my breath.

The thing I love about yoga is that each class I attend accomplishes all of these things for me and in me to some extent. However, setting my intention for class makes that one thing I decide to focus on particularly prominent. When my mind inevitably wanders, I come back to remembering that specific reason I’ve established for practicing yoga in that moment. That unspoken intention is able to take my wandering mind back to the present; it helps me refocus on that one specific aim. My intention can even have influence over what I leave the studio thinking about and feeling.

And so it is with life, right? What if I applied, “Set your intention,” to every action I engaged in, every decision I made regarding how I use my time and energy and heart? Every word I wrote or spoke? What if this yoga mantra is way more powerful and universal than I previously considered?

“Intentional” is a word I’ve heard and used often, especially in Christian circles. “Intentional living” and “Living intentionally” are Christian buzzwords that are so overused they’ve lost real meaning to me. The idea behind it is great, but what again does living intentionally mean? 

However, “Set your intention,” gives explicit direction for every action I carry out or choose not to carry out. What is my intention, my aim, my purpose, my goal in doing this right now? Am I about to do this out of boredom, guilt, lust? Does it stem from my own pride, is it for attention, out of selfishness? Am I about to do this because it’s cultural, it makes “worldly” sense, it’s what everyone else tells me I need to do? Or, am I doing this out of a desire to give love, to spread light, to gain knowledge? To experience true rest, to create, to develop a skill, to listen to a friend, to share joy? And I think the biggest and toughest question to ask when setting intention is: Am I doing this in light of my future?

Instead of fumbling around in my indecisiveness and finding myself burnt out and bruised and weighted down from the actions I take, I’m starting to realize I need to ask myself over and over, before each action, What is my intention? and hold it next to Truth and Wisdom to see if it lines up. If it does, I’ll set it, and carry out that action with my intention in mind. Even if I drift and lose sight of it, my mind will keep wandering back to it, resetting, and I’ll continue breathing in and out in purposeful movement.