Stop Playing Small

Sam Henderson photography

Darling—

Consider this your gentle, yet firm, PSA to make moves towards the life you want for yourself and towards creating the world you want to live in.

The other night during my yoga class, I urged the students to—

💪 Take measurable action toward a goal.

❄️→🌸 Do something in the winter that will pay off in the spring.

🙏 Set something in place today that Future You will say “thank you” for.

I’ve tired of the “wellness social media” narrative of “let your wings unfurl from the cocoon in their own time,” because as a yoga teacher, and as a human being, we live in a time where there is a bit more urgency than that—

A bit more urgency for you to—

Find your voice, so you can speak up against injustice.

Flex your muscles on your mat, so you can do the actual work required of you in your real life.

Build deep reserves of fortitude and integrity in preparation for the challenges that face us today in 2024, and the challenges that face us in the year ahead.

My darling, you (and we) actually do not have ample, unlimited time to allow our wings to spread at their leisure. Sadly that’s not the world we live in today. The world we live in today is making monumental demands on our bodies and on our individual and collective consciousness.

Individually, your timer was set the moment your eyes opened. With each passing day that ticks off, the time you have remaining becomes more and more precious. The question What will you do with this one precious life? Becomes more and more urgent…and more and more precious.

Do not allow the social media ‘wellness’ narrative of “allow things to unfold on their own time” lure you into complacency, ambivalence, and holding patterns of silence, which we know from history, are the key elements that usher a society into an iteration of collective experience that we categorically do. not. want. (and in which we find ourselves today)

Collectively, the world needs you actively, habitually, and overtly, to exercise your freedom of speech, your taking up of space, and the strategic and proactive sharing of your talents to ensure these freedoms for the rest of this generation and the generations to come.

So get on your mat today and hold yourself in that uncomfortable growth edge of your personal cocoon where you feel acutely the heat of your practice putrefying the insides of what you used to be, as your bones harden and the sinews stretch and the muscle fibers lengthen to make room for what your life and your world is asking you to become, hopefully today, and hopefully sooner rather than later.

Sign the lease to open your brilliant business. Book the photoshoot to show beautiful YOU to the world. Text the cutie from the grocery store. The clock is ticking. You really do not have any time to waste.

There are times to hunker down in the cocoon, but Q2 2024 is not one of them. Election year 2024 is also not the year you batten down the hatches to play small. 2024 is the year you lay it all out in your own personal dojo—whether it’s your yoga mat, your running shoes, your podcast mic, your writer’s pen, or your wallet that gives you the power to influence incomes, consider this a serious love note from me to you to dig deep and show up with what you’ve got. The world can’t have you showing up with anything less.

🌏 The world just might thank you for it.

💫 Sending love, light, and hugs from,

Marisa