IF YOU LET SOMEONE STEAL YOUR ‘STILLNESS’ YOU ARE THE LOSER

If we were a ‘book’ 🙂 ‘Yoga Matters’ would be the ‘title’ and ‘In Pursuit of Stillness’ would be our ‘subtitle’. Our title conveys who we are but our subtitle conveys what we do.  Our logo and subtitle has its own story {click fb profile pic} and it is very important part of our Yoga School’s IDENTITY.  Initially, we wondered that no one had ever come up with such a simple strapline for their ‘Yoga business’ elsewhere in the world before! Nonetheless it was little ol’ us/YM who coined it and put it out there and over the years we have noticed other arenas ‘online’ (e.g. art, music) start to use it as a ‘title’ for works.  It trips off the tongue easily and we get that many may think it a long existing global expression; a sign to us that it IS good creation.  ALSO! doesn’t everything already exist? THERE IS NOTHING NEW UNDER THE SUN? Some things just haven’t found expression in words perhaps? We don’t doubt that some other individual in the world probably thought of it exactly same time as us and didn’t necessarily express/use it and we really don’t care about it finding other uses globally.  We never set out to take over the Yoga world; we live on an Island after all.  But. We.live.on.an.island… ‘locally’, limited landmass, limited population, little ol’ Jersey; Yes we do care. We have to. We are constantly batting away approaches online to help us with our ‘branding’; we established our ‘label’ a long time ago and don’t feel a need to update but we do realize from these approaches that in this mad mad mad world we live in ‘branding’ IS important especially if you want to stand out in the crowd.  Yes, ~I Yogi~ DID just use that expression ‘stand out in the crowd’.

“SET THY HEART UPON THY WORK BUT NEVER ON ITS REWARD.” BHAGAVAD GITA

Yoga Teachers do not teach for recognition or popularity or appreciation; that goes against the very foundation of what it means to practice Yoga. It certainly was not our focus or intention when we started to be ‘distinguished’. You see it is very simple: Yoga teachers must practice but Yoga teachers must also teach. We LOVE what we do and simply wanted to find a niche to propagate our practice.  When we got our Bikram ‘call to adventure’ little did we know what winding paths we would be taken down! We had set our hearts on becoming part of other peoples’ journey of discovery but we simply won’t be able to teach if people don’t come and people won’t come if people don’t SEE us.  In the last few years we have come to realize (albeit reluctantly) that we would constantly have to ‘promote’ Yoga Matters online using our own images and that we needed to take ‘ownership’ of a few of our unique ways of doing things that help people ‘see’ us, including our name and strapline message. Knowing the ‘language of branding’ is now part and parcel of how we have to operate in the ‘yoga instructor’ world where there are more and more every day and each trying to ‘distinguish’ their unique features in the ‘market’.  No you cannot own language but in a business oriented world there is definitely a case for ‘fastening’ an arrangement of words to your undertaking, especially those forming part of your branding/logo/description of how you have been offering your services for a decade. When you see a multimillionpound enterprise start up locally using part of your tiny studio’s unique branding material/language/message in their strapline to draw customers for their yoga classes should you be flattered or annoyed?  Inserting a possessive pronoun in the middle of this legend and using lower casing does not disguise or change the message; it is still our strapline ‘In Pursuit of Stillness’. Of all the arrangement of words in the world that one can choose why muddy the waters/confuse for potential practitioners (unless of course that is the intention); With all their money why can’t they come up with something original themselves.  Should you let it ‘lie’ or should you step up and do something about it.

“MEET ME ON THE BATTLE FIELD. LET ME SHOW YOU HOW I LOVE.” ~ said someone called K WATERS

Of course we cannot sit at the sidelines watching and say nothing; we need to be the grown ups in OUR room/our lives and do something that ‘frees’ us from the annoyance and allows us to let go of the ‘impossible to measure effect’ of this; we won’t be the ones weeping whilst we watch our creation and story get watered down and lost in the melee and so we ‘step up’ in the only way we know we can and reserved the name ‘In Pursuit of Stillness’ at our local Registry and it is very much part of our ‘Business Name’ family now.  We have used it every day for a decade in how we present ourselves but now it is also recognized in officialdom (whatever that means!).  Will it make a difference? Probably not to the other enterprise ‘cos lets face it, the big guy in enterprise doesn’t tend to care about the little guy, they may even say they didn’t ‘see’ the little guy they were stripping of distinctiveness (altho’ on such a small Island you really should do your sector homework). But. It makes a difference to little ol’ Yoga Matters; we have not abandoned our legend, we have distinguished it MORE.

We work hard on our Asana to open our body and mind and when we pursue and practice Stillness ‘IN’ the Asana and ‘BETWEEN’ each Asana THAT allows us to connect with the vast benefits that they generate. It allows our body to recover and our cells begin the process of healing. We pursue Stillness so we can let go of all the diversions that get in the way of that healing.  We will carry on our Yoga adventure with our Yogi friends ‘In Pursuit of Stillness’…

Om Shanti y’all

Trisha and Darren, Yoga Matters, Sept 2021

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