Will Doran – The Yoga Coach

About Will Doran

My Journey To Becoming The Yoga Coach

My services as The Yoga Coach are to teach individuals to create and sustain a higher vibration. I guide you into making room for the transforming magic of life to take place. Understanding how to apply this takes guidance and training. I am a bridge between the ancient wisdom and the knowledge of how to make it relevant today,

I am clear and compassionate with great depth of experience, professional training and personal insight. My commitment is to server your highest and hopefully take you even higher.

There are many ways to practice yoga

I learned that yoga is more than just one school of thought and set of practices. When I first began investigating it I was overwhelmed at how diverse it is. To get a general sense of its breadth we see three major epic periods—Vedic, Classic Period and Tantra. Within these there are thousands of teachers and teachings. Each interpretation and school of thought has it own written texts and practices for living yoga. Each yoga teaching reflects a time and culture, using their imagery to express and teach. I find value in looking at the diversity of teachings as forming a foundation for the living yoga practices I shape on my own.

I have learned through my years of studying world cultures and spiritual beliefs that there are innumerable ways of exploring our true nature. Religions and spiritual practices, each valid in their own way, reflect a larger dynamic. One that the individual can tap into and apply what works for them. 

My study of yoga has taught me that there is no one “right” yoga for all personalities and temperaments. It has existed for many thousands of years, accumulating many intertwined and contradictory teachings and practices. Yet, it remains relevant and highly useful as a tool for learning to create health and harmony.

The foundations make living yoga a launching place for internalizing your own truths. I found that without insight it is difficult to know how to discern which perspective or school of thought I was being exposed to. When I began studying yoga I didn’t even know that great diversity existed between what I came to understand as “renunciate schools” and “householder schools.” With study and practice I eventually learned how to discern the varying approaches towards practicing yoga and what best serves me. 

The journey became a life devotion and pleasure. I read all I could get my hands on and looked into the major types of yogas I could. I went to the source and read Hindu scriptures: The Bhagavad Gita, The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali and The Upanishads.  In these tomes were described the yogas of bhakti (devotional), karma (the yoga of action and practices), jñana (study and applied wisdom). A foundation of most yoga schools is the Classical period scripture The Yoga Sutra of Patanjali. From that text   Patanjali’s ‘Eight Limbs of Yoga’ is a masterpiece of personal guidance for living yoga.

Other yogic sources took me deeper into Hatha Yoga (postural practices and energy work). What eventually became home for me was the non-dual Tantric teachings of Kashmir Shaivism.  It is a teaching that Supreme Consciousness and its feminine creative power are the source and substance of everything. My Anusara yoga teachers went deeper into the sublime teachings of the deeper spirituality of yoga than any other teachers I had studied under.

 It is in my Anusara teacher training that I learned of the transformational writings and teachings of Abhinavagupta, Kshemaraja, Swami Lakshman Joo and the contemporary Siddha Yoga teachers who greatly influenced modern yoga. I was greatly enriched by studying The Shiva Sutras, Pratyabhijnahrdayam (The Splendor of Self-Recognition), The Spandakarika (Song of the Sacred Tremor), and Vijnana Bhairava (The Practice of Centering Awareness). All are wonderful insights relevant for living yoga in our time and culture. 

In my extensive studies of yoga philosophy and postural practice, I absorbed a great depth of insight from my teachers. I am humbly grateful for John Friend, Paul Muller-Ortega, Christopher Hareesh Wallace, Sally Kempton, Bill Mahoney, Douglas Brooks and Carlos Pomeda.  They taught me lessons that both expanded and humbled me.

It’s all Yoga

From many years of studying spirituality, and how it is shaped and molded by each culture, I eventually learned that “it’s all ‘yoga.’” It’s all a journey of opening the Heart. Living yoga, practiced with an open heart, makes Yoga a holistic path to contentment and inner peace. Distilled to its highest, each teaching is an attempt to understand how to make peace with existence and live in harmony.

When we are willing to go deep we can see that everything is an expression of the Divine. We are individuals living as differentiated selves within the greater field of divine existence while it explores its own infinite possibilities. The Non-dual Tantric teachings guide us toward an intimate relationship with Shakti, the loving creative power of the Divine Feminine. To the tantrikas, our life is a divine dance with Shakti, or lilia, a play of the Supreme Consciousness, Shiva. It is the dance of living yoga, the yoga of Self-discovery, that we master the dance of concealment and revelation. We get to be the cast and crew of the very show we are co-writing and staring in.

I take delight in the expression “there are many rivers, and all run to the sea.” In this I see that our strength is in our diversity, our unique paths. There is no one teaching or teacher that is right for all persons. Each of us is unique with temperaments and characters that cannot be crammed like square pegs in round holes.

 What teachings and practices we are drawn to depends on how ready we are to expand into a higher refinement. The path of living yoga can take you to your next level of vibrancy. On our journey we learn that opening to the possibility is an act of Grace and we are in partnership with it. Indeed, we are taught in the yogic scriptures that for each step we take toward the Divine, it takes two steps toward us.

How I came to understand the power behind partnership with Spirit, and how I make it applicable for others, is the purpose of this website. My invitation is to take the steps of your personal journey and expand your powers of transformation. This taking responsibility is Living Yoga.

My personal yogic journey

I want to share with you my journey to “living yoga.” Step by step reveals the unfolding of who I am. My path may not be that different, at least in its root similarities, as yours. It begins with my parents who were practicing Catholics. They raised a family of ten children–I was seven of ten–with the teachings of the Church. Its rituals and commandments created a profound spiritual base for my life, though I eventually found myself at odds with many of its perspectives on Jesus’s teachings, sexuality, and adherence to absolute authority.

As a young teen looking for something with more spiritual pizzazz, I was drawn to explore Pentecostal Christianity. In that community I learned about the highs and lows of charismatic religions. I took great delight in the joyous singing and praising of God, yet it was the exclusivity of judging others as being “saved” or “not saved” that did not sit well with me. It gradually motivated me to continue my exploration of spirituality and moved me in the direction of Buddhism and meditation. It seemed to be less “god” and more inner work.

 Buddhism was a quiet contrast to the boisterous singing praises and weeping with joy that I experienced in Christian prayer sessions.  I guess my spirit needed that inward-focused work. By shifting my studies towards the Eastern religions and spiritual practices it set a pattern for always involving meditation in my path of living yoga.

Meditation helped me learn to focus on truths learned through perceptions and experiences, rather than faith and belief. I was doing the work personally and did not feel compelled to surrender to dogma and faith alone. Judgments were out, experience and universal compassion was in. Through practicing Buddhism I explored how attachments caused suffering and I was empowered to let go of attachments. This eased suffering. I learned that there was power and ease of mind in “just being.” Simple the micro meditation practices could create a refuge of inner silence and peace.

Called to a higher vibration

Buddhism taught me a lot about suffering and diminishing its causes. But my spirit wanted more, more God, less renunciation. I wanted to learn how to apply teachings towards a way that made life more full and creative. I longed for a more intimate connection to how the Divine connects us all and how God fits into it all. My spiritual path lead me to the study of metaphysics, the study of “the big picture.”

My study of metaphysics brought me back to something I experienced in my Catholic upbringing. It was an awareness of a higher vibrational level of beings guiding me in life. It helped me create a partnering with these higher dimensional beings that cared for me and watched out for my well being. As a child I knew about angels and saints so when I began to study energy vibrations and chakras the etheric nature of reality wasn’t that foreign to me. 

The universe is our field of play and co-creation

Learning to see the universe as multiple layers of embodied Consciousness became a way to understand that there was a lot going on beyond what science was aware of. In my earliest Christian teaching I learned that matter can be shaped and transmuted. Jesus calmed the storms, walking on water and turned water to wine. The miraculous was not too far-fetched on the earthly realm. The journey into deeper dimensions led me to experience life as a partnership with Spirit, that I was connected and plugged in.

 My first metaphysical teacher, Dennis Adams, introduced me to a concept that “God is space.” This was to say that God permeated everything and is its source. This was my first taste of nonduality.  Dennis taught me that “it is never outside of yourself.” He balanced that teaching with “don’t take it personally.”

My introduction to metaphysics lead to four years of in-depth new-age study. Collin and Stephanie Cole became my teachers in their mystery school The Rose Pearl (long since closed). They taught me to sense and feel energy. Through extensive meditation, group and individual channeled teachings, and opening to sense and move energy I began to transform my life further. I learned the healing power of tapping into the Universe as Source and that many higher-vibrational beings exist to guide us to the light.

Drawn to the Light

Being drawn to Spirit my whole life has meant that I have always had my radar on for God. I have been blessed to perceive and experience the Divine many of its infinite forms. As a youth, I prayed for wisdom. What I received was the insight that it is all an expression of Spirit and Spirit wants us to discover it for ourselves. What I needed was a teaching that brought me into unity with it.

I was a Westerner venturing into new territories when I opened to explore yoga.  I had to learn the interpretive language of Indian culture to reveal the teachings within the symbolism.  My first looks baffled me because the teachings seemed to be all over the place. One school taught renunciation of the body and another that it was through the body that we embrace the Divine in the physical world.

Eventually, it was through the physical practice that I opened to learn about the non-physical. This was the path of Hatha Yoga, or the “powerful path” that saw that the body was not separate from the godhead. My ongoing studies of different yogic teachings later morphed into a much richer practice.

As the helping hand of Grace goes it was through healing physical injuries in my shoulder and knee that I moved to the next step on my journey towards exploring and living yoga. They brought me to the local gym for rehab and strength building.  The yoga class I saw through the window looked compelling, and in time, I joined in and fell in love with the practice. 

I was amazed at the joy gained from moving in sync with the breath. From practicing being mindful of the power in holding a pose with equanimity. In joining a classroom of fellow students exploring something so new to the West I fell into a community of Spirit.  Practicing yoga felt like home to me and I was a natural with my youthful participation in sports and in adulthood my many years of study and meditation.

Eventually, however, I learned that the yoga I was being taught at the gym had more to do with achieving complex postures and sequences, more a physical practice than a spiritual teaching.  It took a while to find a lineage that did both. that was

Anusara and flowing with Grace

What I loved from the start about Anusara Yoga, and what compelled me to pursue a long and challenging path to certification, was its call to “align with the Divine.” This was taught as not just a way to be aligned on the mat, but also as living yoga as a life-affirming practice. It was a physical practice with real dividends for living day to day. I loved discovering how a whole yoga philosophy was centered around engaging in the flow of Grace. Just singing the beautiful Anusara Invocation at the beginning of class blew my heart wide open.

Anusara yoga’s deep philosophical roots state that it is by Divine Grace that we can infuse a Higher Consciousness into our every-day lives. We can be devotional in our practice and be part of the dance. Choosing life-affirming practices we can turn even our challenges into stuff for growth and transformation. I had finally found a teaching for living yoga on a practical and spirit-filled level in the here and now.  

All my life I have been on a focused path of expanding my knowledge about how to live in a yogic way. Anusara philosophy, rooted in non-dual Tantra, taught me that with discipline and devotion one could learn Shiva-Shakti tantra and the non-dual yoga of presence. This study would reveal what the ancient masters of Hatha yoga intended by bringing body work into the reverential world of spiritual devotion.  In short, I learned that Supreme Consciousness—God—is the creator and sustainer of all things, its nature is ananda, love. 

How we fit into the big picture

The many levels of reality can be understood by studying the multi-layered aspects referred to as the The 36 Tattvas in Tantric schools. This is the map of how The One becomes the many. Studying them taught me to see the Divine as both an all-embracing creator, Shiva, and its manifest forms created by the Divine Feminine Power of Shakti. Consciousness is perceived as desiring the experience of multi-dimensional form and its Shakti is its power to create it. Both are self-aware forces that permeate everything and connect it as one. Mother nature is born from the desire of the Divine to be outside of the realm of omnipotence. All for its own delight of Self-discovery. This is the essence of non-dual Tantra and could be learned and applied by aligning with the Divine.

The key alignment principles of Anusara® yoga got me to explore concepts such as what ”opening to Grace” meant on a practical level.  Muscle energy became the metaphor for studying discipline and containing the flow of energy so as to take it bigger. Applying the knowledge of inner and outer spiraling energy became a way to look at refinement in my inner world, and how I took that insight into my relationship with the outer world. 

Through Anusara studies I learned about “rooting to rise” and how our embodiment was a powerful path to transformation.  My mundane life was actually alive with teaching and opportunities to connect with the Divine in all aspects of living. When I open to feel the presence of Spirit I am actually connecting to what physicists refer to as quantum entanglement. In short, I learned that there is so much more to practicing yoga than perfecting the poses. They teach us to be present and mindful while experiencing life. Ultimately the path of living yoga reveals that the world is not in need of more perfect down dogs, but rather more open hearts.

Why we are here

ln diligently pursuing yogic studies I refined a depth of wisdom and insight into humanity and why we are here.  They taught me that I am able to remain open and receptive, even through the rough spots, for insight and clarity.  I learned how to best stay grounded and shine out at the same time. This is a skill that carries me through parenting, politics and navigating life as a whole. The Tantric yoga view is seeing the Sacred in All Things. All things are unified in a field of energy that is aware, dancing in a play of concealment and revelation.

This train of thought is not unique to to yoga and Tantra. It is in harmony with the Christian teaching held within I Corinthians 3:16:
 “Do you not know that you are God’s temple, and that God’s spirit dwells within you?  For God’s temple is holy, and that temple you are.”

All life is an expression of the Divine revealing itself

Practicing living yoga is looking for the unseen experience of the Divine in the ordinary, everyday of things. It is befriending the body and and bringing a sense of connectivity into our relationships.  This is also expressed as the Self concealing itself within the self. The Highest is hidden within plain sight. It just has to be sought our and applied to how we live. The profound is found in the profane. 

Yogis commit to seeking growth and understanding by being willing  to create a fiery friction through practice, or tapas. This is the applied knowledge of the power within the breath. By studying the use of breath, or pranayama, as a tool for learning control and empowerment, equanimity arises. It leads to understanding how energy is channeled and augmented through the body.

We learn more about subtle energy when we study the chakra system. It is a road map for the transformation of our base self into a more resplendent being.  We use our body and the the flow of energy within it as a way to feel the connection with the presence of Shiva-Shakti, the temple of God and the Spirit within. 

Living yoga evolves into the work of using all available tools for going within so as to create an intimacy with Spirit. It is the journey in which we realize our own divinity and power to create.  As such, we take advantage of the here and now to know our interconnectivity and union with Consciousness.  This level of being ever-present to experience and the dance of life is the key to finding our unique purpose and spiritual practice, or sadana.  This is taking on the alchemy of transformation in the here and now. We benefit day by day from our radical openness in partnering with the spirit of Grace.

Awareness shapes our experience

Our spiritual wellbeing is closely related to our overall health and our interrelationship with the rest of the world. Through awareness we can draw on all resources to glean what works for our own personal growth and development. We are in the world as explorers of possibilities. Expanded awareness teaches us that it is who we are being on the day-to-day level that shapes the reality we experience.  Our growth informs the world in which we live in, and in turn we inform the reality we experience.

Cultivating awareness is a powerful tool for creating the higher qualities of living yoga.  Through it we explore the question of “how do we create a life practice that takes us into deep and personal relationship with Spirit?” How do we honor the Divine in all things and take care of our day-to-day needs?  This inquiry leads us to recognize the results of our pursuit of awareness by the fruits of our labor: equanimity, being grounded, steadiness and playful.

Through cultivating flexibility and steadfastness our discernment creates freedom. Ultimately we create an awareness of “being vs. doing,” living in intimacy with life as it unfolds around us.  It spontaneously connects us to the web of Supreme Consciousness being expressed through our choices, perspectives and actions. This is where the journey of living yoga really begins. It is in the learning how to apply the knowledge we gain towards having a real and life-affirming impact on the quality of our life.

My service as The Yoga Coach

I am passionate about helping people create personal empowerment and lives lived with open hearts. My expertise is in utilizing the profound teachings of yoga towards fostering insight, growth, transformation and creative expression.  I help create the opportunity for Self discovery and inner peace. This is the path to a yogic way of living.

My role is to teach time-honored techniques for looking at life as an opportunity for understanding why you are here.  I offer practical tools for experiencing your life from a perspective that we are meant to grow and expand our ability to shape who we are. My job is to bring out the concealed skills and power that you can apply today. No waiting. Right from the start.

 In one-on-one sessions that create an intimate and powerful partnership you will receive undivided attention and focus. Our relationship revolves around your issues, concerns, desire and goals. I am your personal support person challenging you to grow and celebrating your process. We create a partnership that is all about expanding your skills in making balance and holistic health. I teach techniques for shaping a life-affirming perspective that will lead your through the choices that present themselves to you on a daily basis. In short, I help you gain empowered freedom and confidence to take action supporting your highest vision of your greatest good. 

You will find that we create a special level of communication with respectful listening and nonjudgmental dialogue. Our relationship honors your uniqueness and the issues you bring to each session.  This is a rare opportunity for those who feel unheard or unseen. I become your personal champion for success.

Finding Grace

We are in the world to broaden the understanding of who we are at the highest level.  We are given the opportunity to embody the knowing that we are Spirit having a human experience. Our efforts become the very essence of being and reason for living. 

I serve to move you deeper into making the most optimal choices empowered through clear-eyed observation and practice.  As your personal life coach I help you take a close look at your choices and perceptions and how they shape who you are being. I help you to understand that transformation and empowerment come from your commitment to refinement of your thoughts, actions and perceptions.  In this light, I teach how to see your own beauty and worth as a gift of Grace. 

My role as a life coach is to help you connect to the power of Grace and then embody it in all aspects of your being.  In do so, we explore the following yogic principles:

• living with accountability
• engaging the flow of your own power and creativity
• listening to your intuition and inner guidance
• establishing practices and sustainable choices for success

Below are more specific details about working with The Yoga Coach

Holistic living through yoga

The principles of yoga bring us into an awareness that all things are connected. That through our cultivated discernment we can recognize our limits of the body and life conditions.  As such, we become comfortable with ourselves in a fully-present state of mind-body-spirit integration. This builds a sense of freedom from inner restlessness and the discipline to work through limits and challenges inherent in being a human being. 

Opening to the power of yoga is a life changer.  I see lives transformed all the time. Often in unexpected ways that amaze and accelerate creating a purpose-filled life. Whether through life coaching or work on the mat the power of intention is refined to give you the power to live from your highest.

My gift to you is my service

Take your life to its next most vibrant level.  I invite you to contact me and discuss what level of support you would like.  I am here to help you find your inner bliss and life purpose.