The yoga tradition addresses how to live and how to shape your life with a commanding sense of purpose, capacity and meaning.

In fact, many people, including some who practice yoga, assume that yoga is nothing more than a form of exercise, or they believe that only the physical aspects of yoga have relevance to their lives. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Aligning yourself with the intelligence of the universe means coming to understand your life's purpose and applying it fearlessly to life's circumstances.

Yoga's ultimate intent is to achieve something far deeper and more meaningful than just a better body or less stress and tension. Its ultimate aim is to help you hear your soul's call so that you can be consistently guided to make the best decisions - the ones that serve your highest state of wellbeing. In the process of doing so, you will necessarily be made more whole and act in such a way as to support the larger world of which you are a part.

Clear perception is the cornerstone and an absolute necessity for living your best life - and that's exactly what the focus of a yoga practice should be all about.

Indeed, much to my parents' surprise, the first word I spoke in this lifetime was "light." Prior to uttering its name, however, I was already searching for light - for my source. Yet despite my preternatural kinship with that spark that lights this and all worlds, for the first two or three decades of my life, I resisted it.

Stop trying to distinguish the joy of meditation from the messiness of life. Begin to see the divine in everything. She is in the joy just as much as the misery.