💫 Week 6: Wheel (Urdhva Dhanurasana): Leading from Openness, Not Armor

Yoga for Leadership™. 🌱

What's possible when you open?

Welcome back to your weekly leadership practice. A moment to pause, breathe, and return to center.

We're in Week 6 of 8 in our Opening with Spring series. 🌸 As spring turns toward summer, we're moving from opening into full expression.

This week: opening without armor.

💫 Wheel Pose (Urdhva Dhanurasana)

Leadership Practice: Leading from Openness, Not Armor

Wheel Pose is a full-body opening. There's really nowhere to hide in this pose.

Your hands and feet stay grounded. Your chest, your heart, your throat open toward the sky.

I look forward to this pose and fear it at the same time.

I look forward to it because I can feel that full stretch, that complete extension as I arc my back and stretch my hips and stomach up to the sky.

I fear it because I'm always worried about losing my strength in my arms, about plopping on my head and back. I don’t even care that it’s not graceful. It simply hurts.

And yet I still do it.

Because the opening is worth the risk.

Spring is the beginning of opening.  Like the bright green shoots breaking through in my garden.  

Summer is what happens when that opening becomes full expression. Bright. Bold. Alive.

Leadership often resists this transition.

We learn to protect ourselves. Build walls. Keep the armor on.

We think openness is weakness. That vulnerability means we'll be taken advantage of.  For many, we’ve been burnt before, and learnt to protect ourselves, building our armor bit by bit, layer by layer.

So we stay closed. Guarded. Protected.

But there's a cost to the armor.

When you're always protecting, you can't truly connect. You can't be fully present. You can't lead from your whole self.

Let alone the energy that is used to carry that pressure along the way.

I see this with leaders who have built incredible reputations. They're respected. They're effective. But somewhere along the way, the armor became their default.

And they forgot what it felt like to lead without it.

Wheel Pose reminds that release and relief is possible.  

Open your chest. Soften your throat. Let your heart be visible.

This doesn't mean you stop being strong. It means you stop using strength to hide.

It also means noticing what type of pressure you're holding onto. The pressure to be perfect. To never show a crack. To keep everything controlled.

And letting that go.

🌱 Leadership Practice

This week, notice your protective system. The walls you've built and the pressure you're carrying.

What would happen if you opened just one place?

💫 Ask yourself

What would change if I led without the armor?

One breath.

One pose.

One practice at a time.