Several months ago, I had an uplifting and exciting conversation with two of my yoga colleagues. All of us had found our way to master yoga teachers whose teachings are more and more about meditation and emphasizing greater purpose beyond the asana practice. One of my colleagues is a student of Rod Stryker, and at the time, she was deep in her studies, working with a yet-unpublished manuscript of Rod Stryker’s new book, The Four Desires. What she had to say about his teachings really resonated with me, so I picked up a copy of The Four Desires as soon as it came out.

The Four Desires, as Rod Stryker outlines, are dharma (life’s purpose), kama (pleasure), artha (resources), and moksha (spirituality). At different times in our life, one desire my dominate over the others, and ultimately, we are striving for the contentment found by living out our life’s purpose. The book is all about uncovering the heart’s desires and how to achieve sankalpa (short term goals) that will lead you to fulfill your Dharma Code (your life’s purpose).

What I loved about this book is that it offered explicit exercises for self-study as well as complimentary guided meditation practices. I strongly recommend getting the CD that goes with the book, because it’s necessary to do the meditations as directed to get the full benefit of the exercises, and besides, the meditations are really lovely and will be useful even after going through the whole book.

Some of the exercises came easily, and felt good to do. Some were difficult and I encountered resistance. I’m really curious about the experience other yogis had with this book, so I’m going to go ahead and share the results of my work. If you consider that a spoiler, I guess you can come back and read this next part later! Also, I think it’s interesting to talk about what actually goes on in meditation, because otherwise it can be such a solitary practice. Something is happening in there though! I wish people would talk about that part more. Maybe I just don’t know the right people.

Anyway, here are some highlights of my discoveries:

Do you people know about Flying Yogini’s #365Yoga project? It’s been a great year of following other yogis on twitter and through blogs as our practice expands and shifts as we dedicate every day to living our yoga. I love that the theme for this year is #365newbie, because this year I am looking forward to having a new and fresh perspective on life. I made the decision to make this year all about LIGHT.

As some of you may know, my father passed away unexpectedly last March. It has been, undeniably, the most devastating thing I have had to deal with. At the end of the year, I ended up taking a break from my usual routine to make space to be gentle with myself as I dealt with the stress and sadness of the holidays this year. What I realized as I reflected all that has happened over the last year, is that I had been clinging to my grief as an entity of its own. I wasn’t just mourning the loss of my dad (although I certainly was and am still), but I was grieving the loss of the shape of my family, and feeling like every day was taking me further away from the truly amazing and fun adventures I had growing up with my family. In the midst of all this, I was afraid that if I let go of my sadness, my dad would slip out of my life and memory completely. So as the year came to a close, I grieved for my own sadness and made the choice to let it go. It has been exhausting soldiering through every day just trying to get by. It’s not sustainable, and it hasn’t been doing me any good to wallow in the fact that things are never going to be the same again. There are many things I am unable to change about this new situation my family has found ourselves in, but I can change my attitude.