Sankalpa – The Power of Intention

“When you say something with your whole being…. it can transform the world” -Thich Nhat Hanh

The Yoga tradition offers us a very powerful practice for connecting with our most heartfelt desires. It’s called sankalpa, a Sanskrit word that means “resolution or resolve”. The practice of sankalpa is the practice of intention setting. It is what the mythologist Joseph Campbell termed a “call to awakening” because sankalpa wakes us up from our conditioned existence and our habitual patterns. Sankalpa aligns us with our basic goodness, our true nature. It helps us access our deep inner resources, which many of us often struggle to connect with or even forget that they are there. These short, sincere intentions, or “resolutions of awareness”, are a vital part of any authentic spiritual practice. They remind us that we are already whole.

The effectiveness of intentions is explained by the familiar Yoga instruction, “energy follows intention”. In other words, wherever you place your attention, your life energy will go. Your actions will then bring results, as all actions have consequences. In the Yoga tradition it is said that we are the heirs of our own actions, which is another way of saying “you reap what you sow”. So it follows that, to quote meditation teacher Joseph Goldstein, “the possibility for our happiness and indeed our entire spiritual journey, rests on the clarification that what most completely determines the result of any action is the motivation behind it.” The Tibetans have a saying that expresses this idea succinctly: Everything rests on the tip of motivation.

And since everything rests on the tip of motivation, or intention, it makes sense that we should connect with our deepest aspirations, our most heartfelt desires, through the practice of sankalpa.
Here are a few suggestions for creating a sankalpa:

  • Sankalpa, or intentions, should be stated in the present tense.
  • Your resolve can take two forms. The first is as a statement that reflects your true nature. “I am healed, whole and complete”. The second type is as a specific intention or goal, which will align your moment-to-moment choices with your larger life aspirations.
  • Set them when you are in clear state of mind.
  • A sankalpa will not ask you to change who you are.
  • Keep coming back to your sankalpa – it is ultimately a practice of remembering, of mindfulness.
  • Once you have created your intention, open yourself to the universe. One must have resolve, but also a good measure of surrender too. As with any practice, for it to be of benefit we have to do it. So go ahead and create your sankalpa for the day/week/year. And then, to use Gandhi’s words of advice, “renounce and rejoice”.