Yesterday, one of my long-time students asked me why I got into teaching yoga to folks with special needs. I told her I don’t know, I never knew, I just wanted to do it. So I began and it has become one of the richest sources of joy and meaning in my life.

We might call this “just knowing” our inner wisdom and yoga practice simply a way of digging deep to mine that rich seam of personal, powerful intuition that is always there, waiting.

The world is noisier than ever and stepping away from all of the ways it has of talking to us becomes an ever more pressing requirement. Yet the reason we seek silence in yoga is the same now as it was for a 1st Century student, withdrawing to his forest school: we wish to befriend our inner voice, to trust it and to live from it’s wisdom.

The things we know we must do cannot always be explained in a way that makes sense to others. This is why asking advice and looking to external sources for guidance so often fails to help us. It’s also why an intellectual approach (working things out) so often yields only strife and sleepless nights, rather than progress.

It takes courage to live according to your inner wisdom: nobody else has drawn this roadmap for you, it is yours alone, and others might not understand. But a good decision does not need cheerleaders.

As the years pass and you flourish in your own way, you know that listening and adhering to your inner inkling has made your life better. You have been brave and you have trusted yourself. The proof of life is in the living of it.