How Deepak Chopra’s Law of Pure Potentiality Can Transform Your Body, Mind, and Spirit

In Yoga Journal’s online course, Finding Connection Through Yoga: A Workshop on Our Universal Oneness, legendary integrative-medicine and meditation expert Dr. Deepak Chopra and his yoga teacher, Sarah Platt-Finger, lead a seven-week yoga and meditation experience that will help you develop a deeper understanding of yourself. Sharing tools, science, and wisdom from Chopra’s best-selling new book You Are the Universe and his acclaimed The Seven Spiritual Laws of Yoga, Chopra and Platt-Finger will help you experience greater health, joy, and peace in your life. Sign up!

In our online course, Finding Connection Through Yoga: A Workshop on Our Universal Oneness, Dr. Deepak Chopra and his yoga teacher, Sarah Platt-Finger, share tools, science, and wisdom from Chopra’s acclaimed book, The Seven Spiritual Laws of Yoga. Edie Flaiz, a Vedic Educator at the Chopra Center, who has been teaching The Seven Spiritual Laws of yoga for the last 10 years, says her favorite law to teach is The Law of Pure Potentiality, because practicing it can transform the body, mind, and spirit.

“The Law of Pure Potentiality states that at the core of being, we are pure awareness,” she explains. “The realm of pure awareness is the domain of all possibilities. It underlies creativity in all its forms.”

Practicing the Law of Pure Potentiality by quieting the mind with conscious breathing and meditation cultivates our ability to directly experience the field of pure awareness, which is our infinite, unbounded, essential nature, Flaiz says. “We shift our internal reference point from ego to spirit and realize everything is inseparably connected with everything else.”

Here, Flaiz shares a few ways to enliven the law in yoga practice and throughout the day:

How to Practice the Law of Pure Potentiality

Mantra

The mantra for this law is Om Bhavam Namah, or “I am absolute existence.” Simply think the mantra silently, or say it aloud from time to time throughout the day and during your practice.

Conscious Breathing and Meditation 

Alternate Nostril Breathing wonderfully quiets the mind, creating a state of calm inner awareness, which is perfect prior to meditation and throughout the day.

How-to: Sit comfortably in Easy Pose and softly close your eyes. Inhale deeply and exhale a few times to settle into the moment. Allow the breath to be gentle and effortless. Position the right thumb over the right nostril. Position the third and fourth fingers over the left nostril. To begin, inhale deeply, then close off the right nostril with the right thumb and exhale through the left nostril. Gently inhale through the left nostril. When the breath peaks, hold for a moment, close off the left nostril with the third and fourth fingers, and exhale through the right nostril. Then inhale through the right nostril, gently hold for a moment at the peak, close off the right nostril with the thumb, and exhale through the left nostril. This is one round. Continue for a total of 4–8 rounds. When finished, simply observe the breath.

Meditation

This is a mantra-based meditation. The mantra is So Hum. Sit comfortably in Easy Pose and softly close your eyes. Inhale slowly and deeply and think silently, “So.” Exhale slowly and gently and think silently, “Hum.” Continue. When you notice your attention has drifted away from the breath and mantra to thoughts, sensations in the body or sounds in the environment, gently bring your attention back to the breath and the mantra. Continue for 15–20 minutes. When time is up, sit for a couple of minutes before resuming activity. Remember, thoughts are a natural part of meditation and a wonderful release of accumulated stress. Allow your thoughts to come and go, let go of any expectations, and before long, you will find your mind quieting.

Eager to learn more about The Seven Spiritual Laws of Yoga? Sign up for Finding Connection Through Yoga: A Workshop on Our Universal Oneness.