Sankalpa Shakti - The Power of Intention
To want is to have a desire to do, be or have something.
To intend or to have an intention is to have a purpose, a reason behind what you want.
Knowing the intention behind what we want holds a certain power, a power that births a momentum, a momentum that guides us directly into the path of our desires and ultimately our dharma (explored in my previous post!).
The ancient yogis called this power, Sankalpa Shakti.
Shakti is the Sanskrit word for ‘power’.
Sankalpa can be translated as ‘firm resolve’, to make an unshakeable decision on a course of action. Looking a little deeper, kalpa means ‘vow’, or ‘the rule to be followed above all other rules.’ San, refers to a connection with the highest truth, your highest truth. Sankalpa, then, is a vow and commitment we make to support our highest truth. In practice it is a statement of declaration to oneself.
My teachers’, teacher Yogarupa Rod Stryker, explains that the chief architect of life is the mind and to create the life we are meant to live, we must draw the mind to our deepest intentions, again and again.
A sankalpa as a practice, is a statement that does this for us.
Stryker continues that by definition, a sankalpa should honor the deeper meaning of our life, speaking to the larger arc of our lives, our dharma, our overriding purpose for being here. The sankalpa becomes a statement you can call upon to remind you of your true nature and to guide your choices.
A Sankalpa asks us to know what we want, why we want it and how we are going to make it happen.
As Luke Ketterhagen of the Himilayan Institute reiterates, knowing your Sankalpa will create a focus, the focus will create momentum and the momentum will boost your ability to follow through with what we want.
It’s one thing knowing you want to change, but having a Sankalpa is about knowing WHY you want to change, WHAT specifically you want to change and being clear on HOW you are going to change.
A sankalpa can reflect the nature you intend to embody like “I am whole and at peace” or it can look like a more definitive intention “I want to be less stressed at work, so I can be more at peace in life, therefore I will close my eyes and take three deep breaths each time I feel stress begin to rise” or “I want to be more energised, so I am less stressed and more present and connected to my family, so I will honour my sleep and set my alarm each night to go to bed at 9.30pm”.
The more we get clear on our intentions in our Sankalpa, the more Shakti we cultivate and the more Sankalpa Shakti we build.
So what do you want?
Why do you want it?
What is your intention?