Ganesh: The Remover of Obstacles: You Are Whole and Complete Just as You Are

Happy New Year!

Ganesh is the elephant-headed deity in Hindu mythology who is the bestower of goodness, light, and good fortune! He is also the one who removes obstacles. People pray to Ganesh when they need good luck, like when they’re trying to find a parking space up front at the grocery store!

But Ganesh is more than a good-luck charm. He represents our innate ability to navigate through the challenges we continually face on our journey to our heart. Yet we need the practice of yoga to access all that we are and can be. 

Yoga is not about adding something to yourself that you are missing. Nor is it about taking something away because you have too much. Yoga is about coming home to your heart where you discover that you are already whole and complete just being you. You are perfectly imperfect just as you are. 

Tantra tells us that this is so because we live in a perfectly unfinished universe of becoming. There’s no one judging us and rating our level of goodness or enlightenment except us. 

The universe does not judge or shame. We are all evolving together along with consciousness itself. Therefore, our expectations that get in our way, our resistance to what is, and our longing for what we don’t have can become the barriers to being.

Yoga is about removing obstacles – whatever is in the way of our ability to flow with life’s currents. It’s about identifying what steals our joy away, what kidnaps our attention away from the perfection of the moment, just as it is, that tries to make the moment something it isn’t, that tries to make ourselves something we aren’t. 

One of my intentions for this year is to slow down and just be me. To let life come to me. To stop pushing myself to do more or thinking I need to do more to be okay. I’ve had a wonderful holiday time just hanging out with Hallie. We decided to take a day trip to Boston to see her parents and go to the Fine Arts Museum to see the Winslow Homer watercolor exhibit. We had a great time, and it was nice to get out. But we were both really tired after we got home and decided to cancel the holiday pancake breakfast we were invited to the next day. 

This season we’ve had more holiday invitations than we have had energy for. On this day, it was so nice to do less – to just sleep in, do a long sadhana, and have a leisurely breakfast. I felt so energized all day long because I chose to do less and be more! 

Yoga is the process of shifting from doing to being, to know that our being, our presence is enough.

Greatness is knowing that we are greater than ourselves. That is, knowing that there’s more to life than getting things done. It’s not a problem to get things done and I will admit that I really like crossing things off my to-do list. But the essence of life is what happens beneath the list, under all of the doing is our being. How can we attend to that on a daily basis? That’s yoga!

This new year, I invite you to experiment with letting go of doing and focus more on being. “Less is more” is true when you learn how to relax, how to release stress, and to simply enjoy being in the moment. You’ll be able to get more done with less effort.

Let’s celebrate this new year with an increased commitment to see what is, to invite a deeper way of being that removes obstacles and helps us see that we are already whole and complete just as we are.

I look forward to seeing you on the mat!

Namaste,

Todd

Start the year with my Free 3-Day New Year's Yoga Challenge, which takes place live online on Jan 5, 7, and 9 at 8:15 - 8:45 am ET. Join Here!