By: Kate Powell

Part 1: Living my Dharma

I can remember the first time my toes sunk into the sand on the Punta Mona beaches. A group of the warmest people waiting to welcome us on shore and miles of beautiful wild beaches as far as the eye could see wrapped around me like the most fabulous Snuggie. The water was clear and the air was sweet – but it was the undeniable energy that smacked me right in the face.

Personal Design Flow + Purpose

Being isolated from all that you know and any expectation you have placed upon yourself is a gift. The magic of Punta Mona - you are what you are and that’s great. You’re a plant? We love you. An animal – poisonous or not – you’re appreciated for being a part of the ecosystem. (Just don’t bite my ass when I step off the path to pee, cool?)

And as humans – from all walks of life – all mental states and vices – we arrive in a single space to share a piece of our journey within a collective and supportive energy. It was that space both around me, and within, that normally would have been consumed by Instagram or some other awful distraction - allowed me to experience a sense of stillness I hadn’t in a very long time. Because I didn’t have to think about external factors – food, errands, bills, driving – nothing – I had so much space and energy to turn inward.

And that energy served me well during our training, as we were guided through a soul-searching, heart-opening, creative flow created by the beautiful Kula Collective Family called the Personal Design Flow. Its purpose is to identify trends, fears, desires and possible road blocks to eventually give way to a vision statement creating an environment for fulfilling our purpose. While at the time I felt it was just going to be one more thing I’m going to feel the need to ‘do’, these exercises actually altered the way I viewed my life in so many ways and ultimately changed my perspective.

You see, I never knew what I wanted to be when I grew up and I was always jealous of those who did. It took a lot of spinning and self-shaming before I essentially gave up and succumbed to The Steps that would pay the bills. Little did I know – that I was just a fresh perspective away from shifting the narrative from “I need to know the answer” to “I need to allow myself to feel because I’m my best compass.” It was never about what I was ‘meant to do’ – but how I am ‘meant to live’ to allow my purpose to unravel organically. It’s the difference between being a human do-ing and a human being. And the Personal Design Flow allowed me to shift the narrative from task to existence.

I was first introduced to the Personal Design Flow to uncover my Dharma – or purpose – when I applied to receive some financial aid for my teacher training. The process seemed simple enough – and as I first sat down and skimmed through the document – I saw at the end there was a 30-60-90-day plan of action after all the many exercises. Now – I will confess I wasn’t 100% committed and I was driven by the discount versus the desire to change. So me being me– I thought to myself, ‘Dharma’ – Project – just one more thing I ‘need to do.’ I had very little understanding of what Dharma was. I equated my purpose as a destination – not a way of life.

Boy was I wrong.

However - once the distractions fell away – and I was isolated from everything that had previously screamed for my attention – I was able to approach the process in a significantly more meaningful and personal way. This opened a whole new way of thinking and living.

Now – the Personal Design Flow is made up of a variety of exercises – but for the sake of this post, I want to touch on the two mentalities introduced in this process that have played a huge role in managing the spinning and overwhelming nature of my anxiety disorders: Lunar and solar thinking.

Lunar thinking

Think of it as a more eloquent word vomit.

No, seriously.

This creative exercise lets all of those wild and ‘absurd’ thoughts have their moment – as well as those mundane thoughts that might be trapping us. In fact – the purpose of this exercise is to get a little weird and to push us beyond the logical barriers in our brain.

One of my favorite experiences doing this as a group during the Envision Transformation 200 YTT at Punta Mona was the warmup to loosen the creativity (think about it as a lunar thinking pre-game.) Imagine if you were a passerby walking along the beach and you see a bunch of women in spandex jumping around like monkeys in 30 different ways.

Yep – that happened.

By forcing ourselves to jump a different way 30 times in a row, our brains kicked into an imaginative high gear and let us break out of our programmed trains of thought.

It taps into a totally different stream of creativity. It’s like Keto for your brain. Instead of burning learned ideas for fuel – it begins to invent its own - generating creativity and free thinking.

We then apply that free-thinking to our future life, the vision we have for ourselves and even toward the vision we don’t have yet because we’re too afraid to let ourselves imagine beyond what’s practice. Lunar thinking breaks down the limits of our own narrative and allows us to exist as naturally intended, not as we have been taught.

This exercise frees you from logic and rational. It lets you be free – and the more you do it – the more open and authentic you become. But with all things, including creativity, true lunar thinking takes practice.

I’ve found when I have a lot of things going on – or just feel overwhelmed in general – I’ve learned it’s my brain working through a thousand different scenarios, processing hundreds of ideas – which would often times lead to a mental shut down. Now – I incorporate this exercise whenever I being to feel that spinning – and it gives all of those words and thoughts in my head a chance to have their turn, and I can clearly see what’s going on up there. I can identify patterns and notice the trends that need my deeper attention. It was the identification of these trends that allowed me to create my life vision statement… but more on that in a bit.

Solar thinking

Both solar and lunar thinking can be used for any time of decision making – but particularly for the Envision Transformation Personal Flow Design process – the prompts were around the true self, motivations and fears. So, we were using these thinking types to answer questions such as:

What do I want from life?

What do I need?

What am I afraid of?

While lunar thinking can be a wild ride - solar thinking is a totally different (but equally as) fun trick. It’s the focused part, and it’s also often the part I would leave out when I would make lists for myself or try to process a decision.

So we use lunar thinking to list of all of the things we can to answer those questions (which – can be pages of words at a time.) We then shift to solar thinking to look at patterns and trends –what thoughts or patterns can we see?

Once we identify key trends, it’s time to picking one or two ideas from the list to home in on and plan for. Why did these things come up and so frequently? What is our brain, body and soul trying to tell us? This is the part where we must listen – take the cues – and put the pieces together to better understand what it is our Self is trying to tell us. What does it really need? What is it craving? Honing in on patterns and trends help us decipher what needs the most attention and will direct our intention through the WHY around those need. For me, that’s always been the missing piece.

These exercises take a lot of intention and focus, often becoming meditative. During the training, it required digging deep and leaning in to the dark churn of the mind to finally let the waters settle for that much needed clarity.

Once the waters settle, we can see what’s in the lake, and can best prepare for the needs of the true Self.

That clarity is our Dharma.

I feel this is what I missed all those years – focusing so much on what I should be doing, hearing what other people were doing. The noise of comparison made it impossible for me to be still enough to recognize my true Self from my expectations of Self. But with a little focus and a lot of word vomit – I was finally able to peel away the noise to get a glimpse of who I was, who I wanted to be, and why.

My Purpose + Life Vision

I’ll spare you the rest of the details and the extensive steps, but lunar and solar thinking eventually lead to the creation of a core vision statement that embodies my Dharma – or purpose. Based on an open, clear imagination, this statement encapsulates what motivates me, what encourages me as well as what fuels and drains me.

I was able to curiously acknowledge my thoughts, fears, strengths, weaknesses, passions, desires and priorities to create a statement by which I could support my true Self. This vision is a tool to help balance my present self as well as a north star to guide future actions along my journey. While this is vision is different for everyone, my vision statement has evolved to the following:

“I am courageously and gratuitously

cultivating an abundant life of

curiosity, creativity and community.”

It’s not a guidebook or an answer key – but a vision for the way I choose to live that will express my true Self. I knew after reading through this statement (and I’ll be honest – it took many drafts) it resonated through my body in the most spiritual way. I knew that this vision embodied who I was and who I was working to become. This marked the beginning of a totally different and purposeful next chapter in my life.

Reintegration

I might have had a big ass suitcase for this 30-day adventure– but I left my baggage in the jungle and replaced it with a sense of purpose and maybe some sand fleas.

All Kool-Aid aside – I was fully aware that soon I would be back in jungle of a different kind – retuning to a life of stress, isolation and florescent lighting – old habits and crutches. The temptations for falling back into old patterns would be there, ready to receive me with open arms. It would be up to me to keep the soul-searching and open-minded momentum going and to implement this new standard and direction of living I had so eagerly spent so much time, effort and love into creating.

Change is hard especially when you don’t have a tribe of women physically surrounding you. But the notion of heading back to the ‘real world’ didn’t mean that what I had just experienced - as magical as it was - was any less real. And while the jungle high wore off a lot quicker than I had anticipated – once the dust and the jet lag settled – I realized I was one my own. Only I could shift my priorities and perspectives to go after this life I could finally see for myself.

So, I faced my first choice: Do I go back to the way things were before I left – dull, tired and spinning? Or lean into this new vision, trusting the vision of how I want to live every single day?

Just like it took courage to step on that plane – it took even more to step off consciously deciding I was going to do everything I could to live courageously and gratuitously - cultivating an abundant life of curiosity, creativity and community.

Over the next few posts, join me as I share with you my journey of how a life with vision has evolved into a life of purpose.

Stay tuned for the rest of Kate’s series!

And check out our upcoming trainings in Costa Rica!

About Kate:

Kate Powell is an experience strategist and people researcher by day and a multi-media storyteller by night and weekend. She thrives in creative environments while studying human behavior and motivational theory to shine light on authentic connection across communities.

Her preferred mediums are blogs, photography and film, and is currently working on a handful of projects exploring the causes of mental, emotional and social strains across the modern age. Her goal is to empower solutions in ways that don't bore people to tears. In her free time, she teaches yoga at her community wellness studio and is finalizing the manuscript for her first book, Snack on That.

You can check out her work/stalk her here.

Part 2 - Flowing into Purpose: A Mini Blog Series