July 2025

The Ageless Energy Within: Tapping Into Your Eternal Vitality

Dear Shala community,

We all know someone who defies the conventional markers of age. Their hair may be silver, or sparse …or gone ;)  their skin may tell stories of decades lived, yet they radiate such vibrancy, wisdom, and youthful energy that you find yourself drawn to their presence like a moth to flame. What is their secret? What do they know that allows them to emanate such vitality?

The answer lies not in the vessel, but in the energy itself.

The Physics of Forever

 

Both ancient yoga philosophy and modern quantum physics tell us the same truth: energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transformed. Einstein reminded us that everything is energy, including our bodies - energy slowed down to the point of visibility. If this is true, then the life force within us - our prana, our vital energy - is inherently ageless.

What ages is not the energy itself, but our vessel  and our ability to tap into that infinite energy field. The question becomes: how do we maintain and refine our connection to this eternal source?

Beyond the Physical Gateway

 

Our physical yoga practice - the asanas we know and love - are beautiful entry points, but they are not the destination. They are the gateway to something far more profound and lasting. When we begin to understand that the postures are invitations to explore our energy body, our practice transforms from something we do on the mat to something that meshes seamlessly into every moment of our lives.

This is where the subtle practices call to us: refined breathwork that awakens our life force, yin yoga that stimulates our meridians and supports our organs, movements that reach deep into our bones, joint capsules, tendons, ligaments, and fascia, meditations to learn to quieten our minds, introspection with compassion, etc…These practices don't just affect our physical bodies - they touch our moods, our emotions, our very sense of vitality.

The Wisdom of Witnessing

Patanjali spelled it out clearly in the Yoga Sutras. What is yoga? Sutra 1.2 gives us the answer: to still the fluctuations of the mind. But as my teacher Amrit Desai beautifully pointed out, perhaps it's more accessible to say: to witness the fluctuations of the mind.

This small shift in language changes everything. Suddenly, we're not expected to have a perfectly still, quiet mind. Instead, we can allow our wonderfully active minds to do what they do - jump from thought to thought like curious monkeys - without being pulled along for the ride. We simply watch, remembering that we have a mind, but we are not the mind.

Reclaiming Your Energy

Here's something fascinating: while our brains (the physical organ) consume about 20% of our body's metabolic energy simply to function, the energy drain from our minds - our mental patterns, emotional reactivity, worry, and resistance - operates on an entirely different level. This is the subtle energy, the prana, that gets depleted when we're caught in the fluctuations of the mind.

Think about it: you can feel mentally exhausted after a day of stress or worry without any physical exertion. That's not your brain using more glucose - that's your vital energy being scattered by mental turbulence. When we learn to witness rather than be pulled along by our mind's patterns, we conserve this precious life force. Imagine the vitality that becomes available when you're no longer wrestling with every thought and emotion that arises.

So let's be wise and have fun with our minds. Let's watch in awe and amazement at all the crazy places they take us - while we're in a posture, while we're interacting with loved ones, or even more revealingly, with someone who triggers us!

Regular meditation practice helps us recognize the difference between necessary thinking and mental noise, allowing us to conserve that precious subtle energy for what truly matters.

The Liberation of Embracing What Is

Here's where something beautiful happens: when we welcome the inevitable aging of our physical vehicle while simultaneously embracing the timeless nature of our energy and soul body, we unlock a profound joy for life that many never experience.

There's immense freedom in saying "Yes, this body will change, these joints may stiffen, this skin will wrinkle" while simultaneously knowing "But this essence, this awareness, this life force within me is eternal and ageless." This isn't resignation - it's liberation.

When we stop fighting the natural progression of our physical form and instead focus on cultivating our connection to the energy that animates it, we discover reservoirs of joy we never knew existed. We begin to appreciate the wisdom our bodies carry, the stories they tell, the grace with which they've served us. We see aging not as decline, but as the deepening of our capacity to access the infinite energy that has always been our true nature.

This shift in perspective doesn't just change how we feel about aging - it changes how we age. When we're no longer at war with time and change, that energy previously spent in resistance becomes available for vitality, creativity, and deeper connection to life itself.

The Invitation, Your Practice, Your Laboratory

So perhaps you might consider adding some of the following to your practice and observe how it effects you:

Establish a Meditation Practice - Even 10 minutes daily of witnessing your breath and thoughts can create profound shifts in how energy moves through your system.

Breathe More Consciously - Let your breath become a bridge between your physical body and your energy body. Notice how conscious breathing immediately shifts your state.

Pause Between Thoughts and Reactions - In that pause lives infinite possibility. Can you find that space and rest there, even for a moment?

Witness Your Mind During Practice - As you move through your asanas, watch where your mind goes. Are you fighting with it or dancing with it?

Explore Subtle Practices - Try longer holds in yin poses, focus on your meridian lines, breathe into your organs. Notice how these practices affect not just your body, but your energy and mood.

Remember, everything is energy. Your body is energy, your thoughts are energy, your emotions are energy. When you begin to work consciously with this energy - when you learn to witness, to breathe, to pause, to tune in - you access a vitality that transcends the aging of your physical form.

This is the gift our yoga practice offers: not just stronger bodies or more flexible minds, but a direct connection to the ageless energy that is our true nature. This energy doesn't diminish with the years - it only becomes more refined, more accessible, more beautiful.

The postures brought you to the mat. The energy will carry you through life.

With love,

Evelyne