10 · Applications

What it looks like in the places it actually lives

Rules are easy to agree with and hard to apply. This section is the applied version: what to change on Instagram this week, what a class flyer looks like, and how the site is ordered.

Instagram · the profile is one page, and it has one job

A woman who finds you does four things in about six seconds: she reads the top line, she looks at your face, she reads the bio, and she decides. Everything below is built for those six seconds. Get this right and every post you ever make works harder.

Name field30 charactersThe only part Instagram searches

Bio150 charactersLine breaks count as characters

First lineRead by everyoneThe rest is read by the interested

LinkOne, not eightIt goes to Which Gate Is Speaking

The bio, line by line

Recommended · 142 of 150 characters, line breaks included

You already carry what you are looking for
Yoga · Sound Healing · The Seven Gates
MSc Psychology · Nepal
↓ Which gate is speaking? Free, 7 min

Line	Its job	Why it is written this way
1 · You already carry what you are looking for	Desire and curiosity	It is the only line everyone reads, so it cannot describe, it has to pull. It promises her something she already owns, which is unusual in a market where everyone promises to add something to her. Rewritten on 19 August: you said the four word version was too simple and gave two versions of your own, and this keeps your verb while saying what it is inside the same sentence.
2 · Yoga · Sound Healing · The Seven Gates	Clarity and ownership	Two seconds to answer what is this. Two things she already understands, then the name of the method, so the new name arrives attached to something familiar. Without this line, line 1 is a nice sentence from a stranger.
3 · MSc Psychology · Nepal	Authority, compressed	Two facts beat ten adjectives. A Master's tells her you are not improvising, Nepal tells her where the practice came from, and after line 2 nobody needs the words trained in to understand that. Shortened because the longer headline needed the room. Never write experienced, passionate, certified or dedicated. Anyone can type those, so they prove nothing.
4 · ↓ Which gate is speaking? Free, 7 min	The action	The arrow points at the link button, which is where the eye goes next anyway. A question is a better call to action than a command. Free removes the price worry and 7 min removes the time worry, which are the only two reasons she would not click.

Two alternatives, and one that must never be the bio

If reach is low and nobody understands what you do

Yoga & sound healing for women coming home
The Seven Gates · 7 centres, 7 goddesses
MSc Psychology · Nepal
↓ Which gate is speaking? Free, 7 min

144 characters. Clarity ahead of curiosity. Use it if people follow you and then ask what you actually do.

When a workshop or a cohort is open

You already carry what you are looking for
Yoga · Sound Healing · The Seven Gates
MSc Psychology · Nepal
↓ Next workshop: 14 Sept, 7 places

139 characters. Only line 4 ever changes. The first three lines stay for years, so people stop reading them and start recognising them.

Strong line, wrong place

You are not broken. You are disconnected.

It is the strongest hook we wrote, and it breaks your own rule: it tells a woman what her inner state is, which you cannot know. It is excellent as the first line of a post, where she can disagree and keep reading. In a bio she cannot answer back.

No emoji in the bio, and one arrow. Emoji in this market read as the same account she has already seen forty times, and they are the first thing that makes a serious woman scroll past. The arrow stays because it is doing a job: it points at the link. That is the difference between decoration and function, and it is the whole rule.

The rest of the profile

Element	What to do
Handle	Rename the existing account to `@elenadaenen`. Do not open a new one, you would lose the followers you have. If it is taken, the order is now: `@elena.daenen`, then `@elenadaenen_`, then `@elenadaenen.yoga`. You asked about the underscore and you prefer it to .yoga, which is fair, and it moved up the list. Two things to know before you choose it. A trailing underscore is invisible when someone says your handle out loud, so a woman who hears it on a podcast will type `@elenadaenen` and land on whoever owns it. And it reads, quietly, as the name was already taken. A dot has the same first problem and not the second, which is why `@elena.daenen` stays ahead of it. If `@elenadaenen` itself is free, none of this matters, so check that first.
Name field	`Elena Daenen · Yoga & Sound`, 27 of 30 characters. This is the only field Instagram actually searches, so it holds the words a stranger would type, not the name of your method. Nobody searches for The Seven Gates yet. They search for yoga and for sound healing.
Pinned posts	Three, and they are the rest of your sales page: who you are (your face, your voice, the line about not being here to heal anyone), what a class is (real photos, price, what happens), the free test (what she gets and how long it takes). Repin them whenever they slip.
Profile picture	For the first month, your face, cropped close, warm light. Once people know you, switch to the purple circle with the small mark in it. Not the other way around, and never the full mark, which does not survive at avatar size.
Bio	The four lines from the Verbal Identity section, exactly as written.
Link	One link, to Which Gate Is Speaking, the free test that lives in the method. Not a link tree with eight options. One question, one answer. The page it lands on repeats the same sentence as line 4 of the bio, word for word, or she will think she clicked the wrong thing.
Highlight covers	Seven, one per gate, plus one called Start here in royal purple. *What the small mark in linen* means, since you asked:** each cover is a plain square filled with that gate's colour, and on top of it sits the small mark drawn in linen `#FBF8F3`, which is the off white of your background. So gate 1 is a red square with an off white gate on it, gate 4 is a green square with an off white gate on it, and so on. Same mark, same size, same position on all eight. In Canva: square, background colour, upload `mark-small.svg`, recolour it to `#FBF8F3`, centre it at about half the width. No text on the cover, because at that size no text is readable anyway.
Grid rhythm	Alternate: a photo of you, a text or quote card, a practice frame. Three in a row of the same type makes the grid look like a template. This rule starts in month two. For the first thirty days, follow the calendar in the Content System and ignore this, because the order of that first month matters more than what the grid looks like.
Story style	Photo or video first, text second. Purple or linen text boxes only, never the coloured gradients Instagram offers by default.

How a stranger finds you, on purpose

You asked whether you can reference yourself so people find you straight away, on Instagram, on YouTube and on your website. Yes, and it is mostly about putting the words people actually type into the handful of fields that are actually searched. Almost nothing else on a profile is searched at all.

Where	The field that is searched	What to put in it
Instagram	The handle and the name field. Nothing else. Not the bio, not your captions.	Handle `@elenadaenen`. Name field `Elena Daenen · Yoga & Sound`. This is why the name field carries yoga and sound rather than The Seven Gates: nobody is searching for your method yet, and everybody is searching for yoga.
YouTube	Channel name, video title, and the first two lines of the description.	Channel `Elena Daenen`. Titles built as gate, what she will do, how long. In the first two lines of every description, write the plain words: yoga, sound healing, chakra, guided practice, Himalayan singing bowls, also known as Tibetan singing bowls. That last phrase matters, because Tibetan singing bowls is what people type into a search box even though Himalayan is the accurate word.
Your website	The page title in the browser tab, and the first heading on the page.	Title: `Elena Daenen · Yoga and Sound Healing · The Seven Gates`. Add your city and country in the footer and on the About page, in plain text, because that is how anyone searching for yoga in Belgium finds a person rather than a studio.
Google, for in person work	A free Google Business Profile.	Only once you actually teach at a fixed place and time. It is the single strongest thing for local searches, and it is worthless before there is something real to show at an address.

One rule underneath all of it: use the same name everywhere, spelled the same way. elenadaenen on Instagram, on YouTube, in the domain, in the email. Search engines and people both work by repetition, and every variation splits you in two. This is also the practical reason the surname was worth deciding early, and why owning elenadaenen.com and .be already puts you ahead of most people at your stage.

YouTube · the playlist is the product, not the single video

Eight videos, one playlist. You said on the call that ten to twenty minutes felt short next to a real ninety minute session, and you were right that it is short. It is not the session. It is the doorway, and eight of them together are the whole method: one introduction, then one video per gate, in order. Someone who found you on Instagram watches one or two of these before deciding whether to book anything, and the playlist is what makes them look like a body of work instead of loose clips. Ten to twenty minutes is the length people actually finish, which is the only length that matters.

Two things you asked about the videos, and both changed the plan. First, the calendar sent you from gate 1 straight to gate 5, which broke the rule written right here. Video two is now gate 2, and the gates continue in order after that. Second, you said you were not sure you could hold twelve minutes with only the bowls. You do not have to, and no video is ever only bowls: one minute saying what she will do, three or four minutes of body and breath, seven or eight minutes of sound, then a minute of silence and returning. The structure holds the space, and the bowls are one part of it. Film the introduction video last, once two or three gates exist and you know what you are introducing, then pin it to the top of the playlist so the viewer still meets it first.

Title formula

Gate name · what she will do · how long. For example: Root Gate · a grounding practice for when you cannot settle · 15 minutes. Never a title that only makes sense if you already know the method.

Thumbnail

One photo, your face or your hands, the arch shape as a crop, three words maximum in Cormorant Garamond. No arrows, no circles, no shocked expression.

First 15 seconds

Say what she will do and how long it takes. Then start. No channel introduction, no subscribe request at the front, no music over your voice.

WhatsApp, your closest channel

Voice notes over text whenever the answer is personal. Your voice is the thing people remember, and it is your unfair advantage in a market that communicates in captions.
Under sixty seconds. If it needs more, it needs a call.
Answer within a day, not within a minute. Availability at all hours is not warmth, it is a habit that will exhaust you by month three.
Never a broadcast that reads like a newsletter. One thought, one invitation, sent as if to one person, because on WhatsApp it arrives as if to one person.

A class or workshop flyer, in one layout

Gate One · Root

Come and experience your first gate

Ninety minutes of yoga and Himalayan singing bowls, with one energy centre. No experience needed.

Thursday 18:30 · Studio name

20 euros · 12 places

Message me to join

elenadaenen.com

The order never changes: mark, gate label, promise, plain description, gold rule, facts, one action, name. Everything else is decoration and can be removed without loss. Note that the flyer uses a reduced version of the mark with fewer sunburst rays, because at 34 pixels wide the full one starts to fill in.

The site, in the order she reads it

Section	What is there	Her question at that moment
1 · Hero	The headline, one line about the method, one button	What is this, and is it for me?
2 · The test	Which Gate Is Speaking, and the invitation to take it	What would I get right now?
3 · The seven gates	The spine, seven arches, one line each	What is the method actually?
4 · You	The one paragraph bio, one photo looking at camera	Who is she, and can I trust her?
5 · What you can join	Class, workshop, programme. Price visible.	What can I do next, and what does it cost?
6 · The ethics	I am not here to heal you. I hold the space.	Is this going to be strange, or pushy?
7 · Contact	WhatsApp first, email second	How do I reach her without committing?

One action per page. Everything above points at the same next step: take the test. Not follow, subscribe, book and download all at once. A page that asks for four things gets none of them.