It was right on the hour.

My group was waiting to enter the room but the group that had booked the room the hour before were still in there and they were running over time.

I gently knocked on the door, poked my head in and asked them when they’d be finishing up. I had people waiting. And our booking had started.

My colleague said, ‘Oh, we’re nearly done. We’ll be out soon.’

We waited another five minutes. Now, five minutes into my session, with my participants still waiting outside and hers still inside, I knocked again.

‘I need you to finish now,’ I said, friendly but firm.

Her participants began gathering the things and leaving the room. As she walked past me she said, ‘Gee, Amy, being a Yoga teacher I thought you would be more Zen.’

What she meant was, she thought I should be more relaxed, more chilled, more accommodating of her tardiness. More, dare I say it, flaky.

For better or worse Yoga has become conflated with being gentle all the time.

Apparently, ‘soft is spiritual’.

And unfortunately, this can show up as having poor boundaries, being late, being accommodating of our students’ bad behaviour. Of tolerating employment situations that are less than ideal. Being lazy with our administration. Having thousands of unread emails in our inbox. Being years late with our tax. Not doing our own practice. And on. And on.

***

It doesn’t take much reading through the epics of Yoga to understand that while there are times to be gentle, there are many more times we need to be fierce.

The Mahabharata and the Ramayana are full of tales of fighting, of war, of beheadings and mutilations, of monkeys hurling whole trees at their adversaries, of blood and gore and violence.

It doesn’t take much reading to see that a Yogi can be gentle and a Yogi can also be fierce.

As Yoga business owners, there is a time to have compassion and softness and sweetness, but there is also a time to ride in on your tiger with all of your weapons and just #getshitdone.

There is a time to declare in a roomful of con men and rapists that you will not wash your hair until you wash it in the blood of your enemy.

There is a time to chant the mantra that sets off your magical arrow like an atomic bomb.

These are also the teachings of Yoga.

These days teaching modern postural Yoga is largely the domain of women. This can mean that being fierce is not only frowned upon from a spiritual perspective, it’s also frowned upon from a gendered perspective. Being fierce as a woman can mean you’re being too intense. It can mean you’re being a bitch. It can mean you’re being a man hater. It can mean you’re being a ball breaker. A nag. High maintenance. You know the list.

One thing we can look to in Yoga is how to be fierce in an empowered, aligned and dharmic way. In the Mahabharata Draupadi drew on her own Tapasya, Isvara Pranidhana

and logic to escape imminent sexual assault. Once safe, she stood in her power and declared that she would seek revenge. She clearly and powerfully told her attacker she was going to take him down.

Powerful, grounded dharmic ferocity: this is also Yoga.

How would your business benefit from being a little more fierce?

Where in your business might you benefit from riding in on a tiger like Durga rather than floating in on a swan, Saraswati style?

***

1. Being fierce with your boundaries

What’s going on in your life and your business that you don’t want to be happening, or what’s not happening that you want to be happening? Where were you self-abandoning? Where are you buying your students’ bullshit? Where are you not being fierce in upholding your boundaries?

I remember once teaching a class immediately after a Pilates class. Every week when I arrived I’d spend the first ten minutes putting away the props the Pilates students had used. I’d grumble about it. I’d be snarky to myself about it. But I’d do it. It was kind of like Karma Yoga… right?

It was no one’s fault except mine, because I’ve never been fierce enough to say, ‘Hey Rachel, it will be awesome next week if you could get your students to put the stuff back that they’ve used, so we can start with a blank canvass.’

No drama. No bitchy attitude. Just clear, fierce, communicated boundaries.

Knowing what you want does not make you pushy. Knowing what you want does not make you aggressive. Knowing what you want does not make you too intense. Or a nag. Or a bitch.

It makes you a person who understands what they’re here for. And isn’t that what Yoga is about?

2. Being fierce with your administration

I remember comparing notes with a Yoga teaching friend about how long we each took to write a student newsletter. Mine was 20 minutes. Hers? Three hours.

I was stunned and had to ask what was taking her so long.

Turns out while she felt like she was working on it for three hours, she was actually ‘writing’ for about as long as I was. The rest of the time she was just faffing about.

A little quick check of the Movement Professionals FB Group. Oh, look, Jason has posted a new video. Actually, perhaps he’s posted it on Insta as well. Yep, and here’s something else he wrote that looks cool. And why don’t I just search for Siva’s page and see if she’s travelling again. Oh hang on: cute fox video!

A lack of ferocity when it comes to customer service and admin in your business can show up as spending hours on your computer for very little reward.

Do you still have two weeks of new student forms that need data entry sitting on your desk? Are you stalling on tweaking a Facebook ad, even though you know you’re spending more money than you should be? Are you letting yourself sit for two hours to schedule 5 Instagram posts?

There is a time to be gentle with yourself in business but procrastination is simply festering.

If you really need to #getshitdone, you need to be fierce.

3. Being fierce with goals and targets

Without goals, we feel directionless. It’s like doing your own personal practice. If you don’t have a destination in mind, what are you going to do? You’re going to do all the stuff that feels nice that you do every time. But its also the stuff that probably won’t heal your thing or correct your something, or teach you what you need to learn to teach your students next week or whatever.

And the same is true in life in business.

So, where are you being flaky instead of fierce with your goals and targets?

If this feels too intense or corporate for you, try a small dose. Set yourself a couple of clear, small goals. Give yourself permission to make progress towards them. Tell someone else so you have some external accountability.

***

Where is a little more Durga needed in your life, in the sense of boundaries, actually, realistically achieving work output and setting and progressing goals and targets?

Where do you, metaphorically speaking of course, need to ride through your life on your tiger, with that focused, fierce clarity, no bullshit, no drama, just a clear knowing of what you’re going for?

It’s not ‘Yogic’ to dim your light because some people think that you’re ‘too much’. You are made to be this much. When you show up in that energy, you give permission for everyone else in your life who has been made wrong for being too intense, a bitch, too fierce to be more themselves. If someone has told you recently or even back in childhood that you were too much, bring it. It is one of the gifts that you’ve been given. This incarnation, you got that bit of good karma, and you get to use it to bring about even better things in the world.

Get your ferocity on. I want to hear about it.

Ready to make 2022 more fierce in your Yoga biz? Sign up for my Live 2022 Yoga Biz Planning Workshop by supporting me for $5 on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/AmyMcDonald