Author and businessperson, Dirk Sanden lead his life according to society’s rules. He got a good education, a well-paying job, got married, and started a family. But around his 50th birthday, Sanden started realizing there was something missing in his life even when he had a perfect family, job, and everything. This feeling he had encourages him to step back and evaluate his life. It helped him begin his “lighthouse journey”, as he calls it. This journey helped him appreciate every moment in life and look at the bigger picture. Sanden learned to focus on the positive, instead of stressing over the negative.
To find true happiness and success in life, you don’t need to generally follow the rules of our society. You need to live a life of your own making. This is what the lighthouse journey taught him, giving him a brand new outlook in life. In his latest book, Your Lighthouse Journey, Sanden guides readers on every step of their lighthouse journey, building up the lighthouse right from the base to the top.
In the book, Sanden discusses the importance of practicing yoga as well as its benefits. Yoga helps you find a balance between your mind, body, and soul. Finding this balance is an integral part of the journey and it can improve your life in countless ways. Jennifer D’Angelo Friedman from Yoga Journal shares several ways yoga helps improve our mental health:
· It moves you from the sympathetic nervous system to the parasympathetic nervous system, or from flight-or-flight to rest-and-digest. You typically have less anxiety and enter a more relaxed state. As soon as you start breathing deeply, you slow down out of fight-or-flight and calm your nervous system.
· It helps you build your sense of self. Through yoga, you get to know yourself and cultivate a more nonjudgmental relationship with yourself. You are building self-trust. You exercise more and eat healthier, because your unconscious mind tells you, "I'm worthy of this me time, this effort." At the end of the day, everything comes down to your relationship with yourself. When you get more confident and become more rooted in your sense of self and your center, you develop a healthy, balanced ego, where you have nothing to prove and nothing to hide. You become courageous, with high willpower. You're not afraid of difficult conversations—you know you're still going to be OK at the end of the day.
· It improves your romantic relationship. When you're more centered and more peaceful with yourself, you'll be the same way with your partner—you'll view them through the same lens of compassionate, unconditional love. You're less reactive—for example, you may know that snapping at your partner is not a wise choice.
· It helps you deal with family of origin issues. Essentially that's our karma—we can’t give back our family, we're born into it. It's about owning what I call sacred wounds (rather than blaming) and taking them on more mindfully. You’re the only one that can change—the only thing you can do is control your actions and your behavior. Other people will inevitably be forced to show up in a different way you’re showing up in a different way. Think of the Warrior poses—yoga helps you rise up and do your best.
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