New Year’s Resolve
How’s your New Year’s Resolution going? We’re almost halfway through January, so many are already having trouble making the resolution stick, if we ever made one at all. The trouble with typical resolutions is that we try to use willpower to get what we want, or to avoid what we don’t. The constant battle to reach a goal is exhausting.
What if there was a better way? There is, and yoga shows us how.
In yoga, we work with sankalpa, often translated as a resolve or intention. A sankalpa is not about forcing change through effort alone. It works at a deeper level. Using sankalpa helps us plant the seed of intention deep into the subconscious mind, where real and lasting transformation begins. What starts as a conscious resolve rooted in the heart becomes the foundation for a new way of living and being.
In fact, when we choose a sankalpa from the heart, everything we need to bring it to fruition is already inside of us. Our heart knows what to do to uncover our highest Self.
Typical New Year’s resolutions fail because we focus on the wrong thing. We think we can willpower our way to lose weight, stop living on social media, or fix whatever we think is “wrong.” These super-specific goals always stem from a deeper desire, the way we want to feel or be in our lives.
When we boil down goals like “lose weight,” “eat healthy,” or “quit smoking,” what we often discover is a deeper longing to love ourselves as we are and to care for our bodies with more respect. When we work with sankalpa, we flip the script. “I want to lose 10 pounds” becomes “I treat my body with love and respect,” or “I am becoming healthier with my food choices.” Shifting the focus softens the grip of willpower and creates space to remember who we already are, and who we are meant to become.
This work feels especially important right now. Many of us are feeling like we’re taking a big, scary steps backwards as uncertainty continues to swirl around us. Even if you feel personally okay, because we are all connected, collective fear finds its way into our awareness. It shows up differently for each of us, but it often manifests as stress, tension, or exhaustion.
Yoga offers many tools for working with stress: breathwork, meditation, asana, and deep relaxation. One of the most powerful of these practices is Yoga Nidra.
Yoga Nidra is a guided meditation done lying down, allowing the body to fully rest while the mind remains gently aware. Its benefits are well documented. Yoga Nidra has been shown to reduce stress, anxiety, and chronic pain, improve sleep, reduce insomnia, and even lower blood pressure. Anecdotally, I’ve noticed that people who practice Yoga Nidra regularly tend to feel more relaxed, calm, and content.
Years ago, I created a five-week course called The Subtle Power of Sankalpa. The course is available to anyone in the SoulShine Membership. SoulShine is “Pay What You Can” with the entry investment of $35/month, and you can cancel anytime. With SoulShine you can view the course and learn how to uncover the sankalpa that best serves you at this point in your life. Each week, you will repeat your sankalpa during a deep, guided Yoga Nidra practice, allowing it to settle into the subconscious where change happens naturally.
Each class begins with gentle yoga asana to warm and open the body, followed by up to 45 minutes of Yoga Nidra. Even if you’re not looking to make major changes right now, this course may still be for you. Yoga Nidra alone is a powerful and nourishing practice.
And if not this course, I hope you will look into Yoga Nidra. I also hope you choose a sankalpa to help you make positive changes in the year to come. Best wishes for your 2026!