Yoga at OHM Newsletter Vicyasa™ 3/9 - 3/15/2026: Creating Your Own Luck

CREATING YOUR OWN LUCK
“When it comes to luck, you make your own” - Bruce Springsteen lyric from Lucky Town

(This week's newsletter was composed by our dynamic on-demand teacher and full time writer Elinor Cohen. Check out her Instagram HERE and her amazingly empowering advanced & intermediate sessions on our on-demand archives.)

It’s a lucky time of year, or so they say. After all, with St. Patrick’s Day in our midst, who wouldn’t want to indulge in a little lucky energy. But how does that work? Do lucky situations just happen upon us… or is there something more to it?

Let’s explore.

Have you ever been in a yoga class, looked at another practitioner and thought, Wow, she’s so lucky she can do handstand! Or maybe He’s so lucky to be that flexible. I’ve been that person more times than I’d like to admit.

Comparison is the thief of joy, but we all do it. Oftentimes, when we compare, there’s at least a hint of jealousy baked into it. But there’s something else too. There’s a feeling of insecurity and maybe a sense of injustice.

It’s not fair! We might say. I want to be able to float up effortlessly into handstand, too! I want to be able to get through a class without huffing and puffing. I want my lotus pose to look like a lotus and not a cracked pretzel.

Here’s the thing: luck is just one piece of the very complicated, intricate puzzle that is life…and that is yoga.

We can’t pretend luck has nothing to do with good things happening. In fact, it plays a significant role in how things shake out in the world. To be in the right place at the right time is luck, and there’s validity to that. But that’s not where it ends. You have to set your life up so you can be in the right place at the right time. Doing that requires effort, strategy, commitment, and perseverance.

Let’s use an example unrelated to yoga, but one that many New Yorkers can probably appreciate: apartment hunting. Every New Yorker knows the agony that goes into finding a new apartment. It’s stressful and often very last minute. But when we visit a friend and see the seemingly fantastic apartment they somehow managed to snag, we immediately exclaim, You’re so lucky to live here! And they are. But…

Here’s what we’re not considering. We’re not thinking about the hours they probably spent scouring Streeteasy, or the hundreds of emails they may have sent to set up apartment viewings. We’re not factoring in the money they may have spent on a broker to do that work for them, or the extra two months’ rent they had to pay for both places because they’d lose the apartment if they waited. We’re not thinking about the fact that yes, this apartment went for $500/month less than expected but it’s a 5th floor walkup. We’re only looking at the present moment instead of considering the bigger picture.

Yoga teaches us to live in the present moment but not at the exclusion of the rest of life. Zooming out gives us perspective and helps us humble ourselves when the comparison monster starts to rear its ugly head.

Now let’s go back to yoga. In our previous scenario, you see a student float up into a handstand two rows ahead of you. As you gaze on with admiration, perhaps you’re inspired, but maybe you’re also thinking about how lucky they are that they can do that.

Are you considering…

• The years they’ve spent practicing yoga?
• The hours they’ve dedicated to handstand drills?
• The 200 hour teacher training they did, only to never teach?
• The gym membership they keep to practice strength training to make them strong enough to hone these skills?
• The countless times they’ve fallen, slipped, or embarrassed themselves trying to do the pose?
• The fear they have to overcome every time a teacher offers an inversion option?

Probably not.

We see the end result but seldom do we see the underpinnings of what it takes to get there. Yes, that student is “lucky” that today, gravity was on their side; that their hand, wrist, core, and leg strength were up to the task; that they didn’t drink too much water in the seconds before handstand was cued. But their skill, ability, and attitude are not luck.

We are all very lucky – and we are all not. We are lucky to be able to practice yoga with healthy, strong, capable bodies. And we are not lucky because those bodies didn’t just happen to be the way they are, and we didn’t just happen to find ourselves seated on a yoga mat. We had to make intentional choices for those things to happen. We had to commit to treating ourselves well. We had to seek out a yoga studio or an instructor and then we had to get ourselves to the class.

The handstanders, the lotus posers, and the 5th floor walkup tenants are all as lucky as they set themselves up to be. Yes, some of it is chance but more of it is in our control than we know. Never underestimate the power of creating the luck and the life you want.


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NAMASTE,
Victor Cotto
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