My grandfather taught me a very important lesson...
- Claire
- Jul 30
- 3 min read
Hi there,
I wanted to tell you about something really special this week. A couple of years ago I had a psychic reading. Whether that's your sort of thing or not doesn't really matter, because what happened in that reading left me really thinking about things in a different way!
My beautiful grandfather came through. He was one of the kindest men I've ever known. He genuinely loved people and he used to have people coming to him for prayers and healings. He would talk to anyone and take them by the hand and tell them that they’re “so beautiful”. During that reading he said:
"When I was on earth I never understood what a difference I had made, and how many lives I'd affected. Now I can finally see the whole picture."
In that moment I realised he wasn't just talking about himself. He was teaching me something. He was helping me to understand the big impact that I can make with every little thing that I do.
None of us ever really get to see the full ripple we create. It's like throwing a pebble into a lake. We see the splash and the first few ripples and eventually those ripples travel so far that they're beyond where we can see.
And what he was saying was that we never really know how far our kindness travels. We never really know who remembers something we said years ago. We never really know how one conversation, one smile, one act of compassion or one Chair Yoga class might change the direction of somebody's life.
One of our teachers, Jen, who completed my Chair Yoga Teacher Training a few years back sent me an email the other day and spoke about one of the ladies in her Chair Yoga class. Here’s what she said:
“Oh, by the way, one of my students who is 80+ loves her chair yoga so much and shares it with her large camping rally groups. She tells them that she isn't a qualified teacher and the chair yoga is something that has helped her and she hopes to share a taste so that they can go home and find a class. Which it turns out the head of the rally did with his wife. They now do it 3 days a week and tell everyone about it. The same student had her bone density test done recently and it had improved. She puts it down to the yoga & the connection we make into our foundations for support in our sequences and poses.”
Isn’t that so amazing?! It made me think of how sometimes people do our course for this reason too…Chair Yoga has helped them so much that they want to share it with their friends/family members.
I think we often underestimate the difference we make in other people's lives because we can only see things from the pebble’s point of view. We don't get to see all the ripples travelling further and further out in the water around us.
We don't see the person our student helps, the family member they inspire, the friend who starts moving because of their encouragement, or the community that becomes a little kinder because one person decided to show up with compassion.
We only see such a tiny part of the big picture.
Maybe that's why I love teaching Chair Yoga teachers so much too. Of course, I love teaching my own classes, but every teacher who leaves one of my trainings goes back into their own little corner of the world and creates more ripples than they would ever know about.
And that’s such a beautiful thought!
Whether you're a Yoga teacher, someone who comes to Chair Yoga classes, someone working in an organisation, or simply someone trying to make the world a little brighter, never underestimate the ripple you create.
You don't have to change the whole world at once. You simply have to look after your little corner of the world and keep being that pebble in the lake rippling out all your goodness into the world around you.
Love Claire x
P.S. If you've ever felt like you'd like to be a little pebble in the lake spreading ripples out into the world by sharing Yoga with others, perhaps you'd like to join us for our September Chair Yoga Teacher Training in Sydney or Online? Or we also have the self study online course available anytime from anywhere! More info is in the link below if you feel called to check it out!
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