Hilaria Baldwin - The Living Clearly Method: 5 Principles for a Fit Body, Healthy Mind & Joyful Life

This book is dedicated to youwho, like me, always dreamed of a better life, desires the perspective to know you deserve happiness, craves the discipline to master breathing deeply, seeks to ground your life into a fulfilling reality, has the playfulness to find balance in a tumultuous world, and has the courage to let go of negativity, even if it feels unfamiliar. Take my hand, lets do this together.

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

As a young girl, years before i found yoga, my gymnastics coach told me the secret to overcoming my frustration and confusion at mastering complicated moves: Theres a recipe for all of them.

He meant that the tricky tumbling move or intricate vault exercise was actually a series of small steps. Run at the board; spring off the board; hands on vault; tuck chin; lift pelvis. Put the steps in the right sequence and the movement will unfold the way you need it to, with a clean and solid landing as the result.

It clicked. Instead of throwing myself wildly into a tricky exercise and getting banged up and angry as I failed, I followed the recipe, focusing on the first step, then the second step, then the third. This had the strangest effect: Time seemed to stretch open, I was fully inside the moment, and I felt a calm sense of control. It was like moving in slow motion and turning a blurry and confusing rush into a clear sequence of frames. To the outside world, the exercise might have looked impossibly fast and complex, but inside I was methodically and calmly executing each part of the movement and enjoying it, too.

I have thought of this lesson many times in the years since, both in my personal journey of overcoming struggles that left me feeling lost and in guiding other people on their journeys as a yoga teacher. It was an early lesson in living with awarenessbeing present to life as you are living it. I needed to stop going at life and rather be in life, feeling the full experience of what I was doing in each moment, instead of rushing desperately toward a goal. The gymnastics recipes helped me perceive the path in front of me so I could make one choice after another to get where I wanted to go. Gymnastics wasnt easy, and it was inherently effortfulbut it was less complicated than I was making it.

As Ive gotten older, and as my reality has become more layered and complex, I have found this to be a metaphor for making my way through life with less struggle and more meaning and joy. There are ways to slow down the rush of modern life and not feel whisked along at its mercy. There are simple recipes for perceiving the path we want to be on and making the choices to achieve our goals and dreamsbe it wanting a healthier body, better relationships, more fulfilling work, or something else entirely. And there are techniques to snap out of the fog of confusion and into clarity, the place where we are present in each moment, not missing a beat, and enjoying more of it.

When I developed the Living Clearly Method as an evolution of my yoga teaching about 10 years ago, my goal was to have a system for making change that anybody could useyoga practitioner or not. It consisted of five simple principles taught through body awarenessperspective, breathing, grounding, balance, and letting gothat could be used in any situation to combat negative patterns of behavior, clear out ways that arent working, and make way for something new. It was, I quickly realized, a recipe for living better, my own recipe, inspired by a combination of the yoga practice I had come to love so deeply and the students who came to class.

I began testing this recipe in real life, taking it off the yoga mat and using it to come back to myself any time I was dragged off courseand soon, I began sharing these strategies with my students. Together, we discovered a formula we could use to click back into clarity when we were lostwhether in mundane complaints or serious periods of suffering. The Five Principles were a recipe for slowing down the rush and opening up the moment into a series of manageable stepsnot to execute an aerial on the balance beam, but to navigate the ups and downs of everyday life.

In the years since, Ive seen this relatively simple practice of yoga postures and awareness exercises help many people cut through the fog of stress and struggle and connect more authentically to themselves so they can hear what it is they truly need in order to be more happy and healthy. It helps them to stop looking outward for answers and trust what they discover from turning inward, and it helps them to find more satisfaction and meaning in their lives. Often, it brings clarity and focus to areas of health and wellnessspecifically eating and working outthat have long brought confusion and disappointment.

In Living Clearly, yoga is just one facet of a brighter, more wakeful life. It is a practice that trains the body and mind, and it is also the doorway that we step through to discover a whole world of information that can help make relationships smoother, make healthy eating easier, and make working out actually work. This is the foundation that supports me every single day.

The Living Clearly Method is not a cheat to a perfect existence or a magic elixir that removes every problem from your plate. But it can, if you choose to practice it, deliver something invaluable and hard to achieve: more awareness and therefore a fuller life. Awareness is like a light inside you; it illuminates whats in the shadows so you can make better choices, and it highlights your potential so you feel calm and confident about your capacities. It lights up more of the present, helping you get more out of small moments and find satisfaction in simple things. With awareness switched on, you can shift the obstacles, or find peace with things you cannot change. You can choose to focus on what you already have inside and out that makes your life good, and you can light up the path that will lead you to better things ahead.

I was a dancer for many years. All performers know that the ability to drop fully into the present moment is an essential aspect to performing your very best. It is the spark that ignites all the technique and talent, catalyzing the effort youve put in, making you really shine.

My hope with the Living Clearly Method is that by giving you a simple recipe for staying present amid demands and challenges and ups and downs, it helps fan the spark of your own goals, hopes, and dreams, allowing you to experience the brightness that lies within. Perhaps that spark feels dim or hard to find right nowand I know all too well how that feels. But I also know that when you can connect inward, even the smallest ember of desire for something better can be nurtured into fire. When you commit to Living Clearly, possibility comes into focus again and change becomes within reach. As you practice each step of the recipe for connecting to yourself and staying present, something priceless is revealed. You truly get to know yourself, you discover that you are the star of your own very important story; you burn brightly, empowered from within, creating more than you ever knew you could.