Why Marketing is Like the Yogic Nadi System
Energy channels are like information freeways.
According to yogic texts, humans have a system of over 72,000 nadis, or energy channels, that flow throughout the body. These channels are not visible to the human eye, and encompass a bustling network of moving information through our system.
- When the nadis, which translate into “channels” or “flow,” are open, energy flows freely — and our systems are healthy.
- When the nadis are blocked, energy becomes stagnant and we experience physical and mental discomfort.
This dynamic energetic process, which is currently taking place in our bodies, is exactly like the process of marketing your business. Like the energy in your body, your marketing is most effective when it has several clear, open channels for energy, or information, to flow through consistently.
Marketing is simply sending a message through a channel.
Marketing, like the nadis, is a system of channels, or freeways, that carry information from a source to a destination.
- Effective marketing is like cars moving freely on a freeway with no traffic.
- Ineffective marketing is like a traffic jam where cars are stuck in place.
In other words, rather than thinking of marketing as a practice that is “good or bad,” instead think of marketing as a system of channels carrying information at varying speeds.
Using this framework, the first question to ask yourself as a business owner looking to expand your business is, “which channels are currently open, and flowing easily?”
Your channels are the ways people find you.
The number of channels you have opened will determine the ways that your customer can receive your message and decide whether to buy something from you.
Marketing channels are information gateways like Instagram, email marketing, and events. They are opportunities for you (the source) to send a message (the solution your business offers) to a destination (your customer).
Business owners may feel discouraged about their sales, but if they only have two or three marketing channels open and those channels have “bad energy flow,” then they must evaluate what’s obstructing the flow of those channels, and decide if it’s worth opening new ones.
Assuming your message is clear and that you’ve targeted the right customer, marketing channels can deliver your business’ solution quickly and directly to solve your customers’ problem.
Choosing the right channels.
Let’s say you are a nutritionist, and you host an in-person workshop about gluten-free meal planning.
In the workshop, you reference recipes from your gluten-free cookbook that help people with the problem of preparing gluten-free meals ahead of time.
Let’s say that after the workshop, you sell a cookbook to all 15 attendees.
In this instance, the marketing channel of a workshop demonstrates fast energy flow for your business because it easily allows the solution that you offer to flow to the problem that the customers have, through the nadi, or channel, of the workshop.
Let’s say that you are meditation teacher, and you create a single post on Facebook about a digital meditation course that you are selling.
Forty-eight hours after you posted about your meditation course, you’ve gotten ten likes, two comments, and zero sales.
In this instance, the marketing channel of a Facebook post demonstrates slow energy flow for your business, likely because the millions of other posts and ads about meditation on Facebook are like a traffic jam slowing down the ability for your solution (a meditation course) to reach its destination (a stressed person looking for ways to relieve anxiety.)
While this example is not to suggest that you should prioritize workshops over Facebook posts, it is an invitation for you to evaluate the speed through which energy flows from you to your prospective customers.
Practice yoga for your marketing channels.
Energy flow in our bodies is improved by the practice of yoga. When you practice yoga, you breathe deeper and infuse the nadi system with more prana, also known as life force energy.
I think of life force energy as life momentum. It’s a universal momentum that makes the seasons change, the flowers grow, and the planets orbit. It’s the same momentum that propels you out of bed each day and catapults you into your desk chair, eager to build your business.
Just as you can build prana in your own body through the practice of yoga, you can also infuse more prana into your marketing channels focused mindfulness. This doesn’t mean doing poses on your mat while making a Facebook post; it means being present and conscious as if you were doing yoga while you do your marketing.
With a yogic level of awareness and presence in your content creation, you will likely consistently craft posts that speak directly to your ideal customer, convey your message clearly, and fit in to your overall strategy.
This level of presence is what infuses your marketing channels with the energy that helps you to find your clients easily.
As a best practice, only open marketing channels that you feel consciously excited to work on. Whether it be email marketing, workshops, or YouTube videos, choose channels where you will be inspired to inject the necessary prana to lovingly reach your target audience.
Create time to nourish your marketing.
Being conscious in marketing means treating marketing with the same care as you would your yoga practice.
Just as you carve out time for your yoga practice, you can carve out time to work on marketing.
In yoga, you can only do one pose at time, and in marketing, you can only do one task at a time.
On your mat, you practice observing distractions and not engaging with them, just as you can at your desk.
Most of all, being compassionate, non-judgmental, and joyful during the process of marketing like you are in yoga is the key to creating energetically charged content.
Marketing is a practice.
There are plenty of other variables to consider when it comes to a successful conscious marketing strategy.
Looking at marketing through the lens of the nadi system is simply a reminder to be aware of the channels that you’re working with, and to remember that the remedy for any slow-moving marketing channel is more energy.
Ultimately, remember that marketing is a way of strategically using a channel to share a solution with people who have a problem, and that doing this process effectively is simply a faster way of helping people.
