Don’t you love yoga? Starting each morning with asanas, pranayama, samadhi and even a bit of knowledge. Stretch, breathe, and meditate, and you are ready to face the day!
And what does the day entail? Thinking! Endless chatter in the monkey mind, or deep, focused concentration. Thoughts are ubiquitous. And money is one of the things most of us think about a lot.
Your “money story”
Whether you are aware of it or not, most of the thoughts you experience on a typical day relate somehow to money, and each thought carries an emotional charge related to your early experience of money—your “money story.”
Let’s consider some of the things you might do in your day-to-day life that connect you to money and emotions.
- Notice the increase in gas and grocery prices, and feel frustrated at the global economy.
- Get a statement on your student loans, and see that after years of payments, you still owe the principal—you feel outraged!
- Pick up the mail and find a birthday card from an elderly aunt with the same $10 bill she has sent you since you were small—you feel love—but doesn’t Auntie know anything about inflation?
- Check your bank balance, and you feel stressed and worried about how you are going to make it to your next paycheck.
- Pay into your child’s lunch money account
- Contemplate how to negotiate with your boss for a raise
- Put a quarter in a parking meter…
…Money, money, money. It permeates everything, and yet, it is nothing.
Money is probably the most powerful invention of the human mind. For millennia people have used forms of fiat currency to leverage almost any situation in both positive and negative ways. Money is “maya,” an illusion that permeates the senses with purely subjective interpretations that can manifest in either the collective or individual consciousness. I call these interpretations “money stories.”
Once upon a time in early childhood, you were learning to navigate the physical world. Your needs were mostly for physical comforts like food, warmth, sleep, and play. Sometime in your first year, your mind started to interpret language and emotional cues.
Before you really understood what it was, you had your first encounter with money, and you came to realize your family money story (we are poor, we are rich, we are a dynasty, mom and dad must always work, neither mom nor dad ever works…), which is related to your cultural, religious, national, and temporal money story.
Money trauma and its consequences
Our values are formed in relation to our money stories, and they are twisted by our money trauma. Money trauma is caused by life events that create a sense of helplessness in relation to money and finance, and have real, long-term consequences.
Here are some examples of money trauma:
- Going to the reading of your deceased parents’ will and learning you were disinherited
- Uncovering evidence that your accountant has been embezzling funds from the business you spent your life building
- Finalizing a divorce
- Market downturns
- Bank accounts being hacked
- Bankruptcy
- Indebtedness, and even sudden windfalls
These types of experiences can cause emotions to go from gratitude to jealousy to excitement to bitter hatred and everything in between. How we perceive concepts like deservedness, fairness, justice, power, and control, are all enmeshed in our financial lives.
The benefits of financial yoga
There is only one way to turn our emotional experience of money into peace, serenity, joy, and fulfillment—and that is by giving some of it away. Over the past decade, a number of academic studies have shown what every spiritual practice has told us: that by giving, we receive.
People who practice financial yoga by stretching to give as much as they can, while balancing their true financial needs—experience a wide range of benefits including better overall financial well-being, stronger relationships, self-esteem, and enhanced longevity.
Financial yoga means connecting your true Self to your financial experience—using your money as a tool to create the world in which you wish to live. You might drop a dollar bill in the cup of a panhandler, or send an online donation to a charity, and it will feel good for a minute or even a day. Just like asana or breathwork, the daily practice of financial yoga brings more lasting results.
Continually seeking ways to practice generosity in your financial life requires awareness of your money story. Financial yogis practice compassion for past mistakes, the forgiveness of others who may have cheated or stolen, and unflinching focus on negative consumer habits that put us in “lack consciousness” and deprivation.
Understanding your money story allows you to build a continual conscious connection with the sufficiency point (your “enough”) where you feel comfortable and relaxed in your material life.
Generosity and gratitude practices involve stretching, releasing, and accepting. Start today by giving a gift, volunteering, making out your will, helping a stranger in need, and giving your money story a happy ending.
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Editor’s Note:
If you’re looking for a way to get your generosity practice rolling, please consider our “Gift $100” campaign for World Culture Festival. WCF is a global event series organized by the Art of Living that has been called the largest celebration of diversity in history.
The most recent WCF event brought more than 3.75 million people together to celebrate in New Delhi, India, and the next WCF will be on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. September 29th, 30th, and October 1st.
Please click here to learn more, and give a gift that will matter!
