From Study to Embodiment: The Story Behind The Wisdom of Yoga Oracle
- Nola Bloom
- 8 hours ago
- 4 min read
How a few personal study cards slowly became a 52-card journey through yoga philosophy.
When people see The Wisdom of Yoga Oracle and say to me, "What a great idea," I always smile a little, because it really started as something much smaller and much simpler than an idea.
For years, yoga philosophy fascinated me, but it also felt slightly out of reach. I'd encountered the Sanskrit teachings throughout my years of studying and teaching, but philosophy was usually handed to me in a very academic way — words, translations, definitions, things to remember.
I learn through experience. I need to sit with something, contemplate it, watch it show up in my own life, and understand it from the inside out.
Yoga Beyond the Asana
Yoga has always been so much more than the physical practice to me. Asana is one beautiful part of a much larger system, and yet for years I probably would have described myself primarily as an asana teacher. I could hold the philosophy intellectually, but there's a real difference between knowing the definition of a Sanskrit word and recognizing that teaching move through your own life.
Through the deeper research I began doing for The Blooming Spirit Podcast, something shifted. I started noticing patterns. A teaching I'd once understood as a definition would suddenly show up in a relationship, a decision, a difficult moment, a reaction I kept repeating. The philosophy started becoming lived rather than learned.
The First Cards
The original idea was simply to make myself a few study cards. There were Sanskrit words and yogic concepts I wanted to understand more deeply, so I made some cards, laminated them, and kept them beside my mat. I'd pull one before my practice and spend a few minutes with it.
Not just what does this word mean, but where does this exist in my life. How am I already practicing this? Where am I resisting it? What would it feel like to actually embody this teaching today?
That was really all I set out to create.
But one card led to another. One teaching connected to another teaching. I found myself moving through the Yoga Sutras, the Yamas and Niyamas, the Kleshas, the Koshas, the Gunas, Vedanta, and other threads of yogic philosophy. Somewhere along the way, my handful of personal study cards became fifty-two. The Wisdom of Yoga Oracle had begun to take shape.
When the Cards Entered the Classroom
Something else started happening that caught me completely off guard. I began bringing the prototype deck into my yoga classes and leaving the cards out for students to draw. And I watched people interact with them.
They stopped and read. They sat with the question. Sometimes a student asked me what a teaching meant, and that question became a conversation, or the beginning of a Dharma talk before class. I loved that. These teachings were stepping out of a philosophy book and into someone's actual day.
It reminded me of something I believe deeply as a teacher: we're still students too. The cards kept me researching, questioning, going deeper into my own understanding. A student's question would send me back into a teaching from a completely different angle. The deck became a way of learning together.
From Study Cards to Oracle Cards
At some point I realized I was making something more than flashcards. Each card had grown its own teaching, imagery, reflection, and contemplative question — something you could draw without any background in Sanskrit or yoga philosophy and still find a doorway into your own life.
That mattered to me. I wanted the philosophy to become accessible through the card itself, open to anyone who drew it.
You might draw Aparigraha and start noticing where you're holding too tightly. You might draw Sattva and notice what you're feeding your mind. You might draw Maitri and remember that friendliness is something we practice, not just something we feel.
The Sanskrit teaching stays at the heart of every card, and it becomes the start of an inquiry rather than something to memorize.
And Then Came the Guidebook
Once I had fifty-two cards, I realized how much more I wanted to say about each teaching. Apparently I wasn't finished.
A few additional explanations grew into a 140-page companion guidebook — space to explore each teaching beyond what fits on a card, its philosophical context, ways of contemplating it, practices for bringing it into embodied experience.
Because the real question at the centre of this project was always the same one: how do I live this?
Following the Brushstroke
The strangest part of this whole process is how little of it I actually planned. It's felt much more like starting with a blank canvas and following the brushstroke already in front of me.
First there was one card. Then another. Then fifty-two. Then a guidebook. Then a prototype. Then students started using them in class. Then people started asking me when they could buy one.
And somehow I found myself standing in the middle of something far bigger than the small collection of study cards I set out to make.
Where The Wisdom of Yoga Oracle Is Now
The project is taking its next step. The Wisdom of Yoga Oracle has officially been approved by Kickstarter, and the pre-launch page is open.
The first complete prototype — all fifty-two cards, the companion guidebook, the rigid presentation box — is in production, and I'm preparing for the first full print run. Kickstarter lets the people who genuinely want a deck preorder one, and together, help bring this first edition into print. There will also be a limited number of Early Bird decks available when the campaign launches.
If you'd like to follow the journey and be among the first to know when The Wisdom of Yoga Oracle becomes available, follow the project on Kickstarter.
This project has unfolded in a way I could never have planned for. Even now, when someone tells me it's a great idea, it still makes me smile a little, because it never felt like an idea. It felt like following a question — one card, one teaching, one moment of understanding at a time.
And for now, I'm still following where it leads.
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