Brand Book
01 · Your Feedback, Answered

Every question from your document of 18 August

You sent two documents on 18 August, one on the Brand Book and one on the method. This page answers the Brand Book one, question by question, in your order, with the section where the change was made. The method one is answered inside the Method dashboard, in its own section 01. You wrote I agree with at the top of all ten sections, which means the structure is settled and what you were asking for is the detail underneath it. That is the best possible kind of second round.

Questions answered29All of them, in place, not in a reply
You agreed withAll ten sectionsFoundation, logo, colour, type, elements, photography, voice, content, applications, rules
Real contradictionsFourAnd you found every one of them
New sectionsFourWardrobe, garden, findability, testimonials
Where you were right, the document changed. Where the wording was the problem, the wording changed. Where the answer is no, it says no and explains why. There is one of those: the suggestion to make The Seven Gates bigger than your name in the logo. The reasoning is in the Logo section, and it comes with the exact condition under which we would reverse it.
I don't understand the reason for the double arch. I like it, but the explanation is not clear to me.

Fair, because the old explanation said what it was and not why. One line is a shape. Two lines give the arch thickness, so it reads as a doorway you could physically walk through. That is the difference between a drawing of an arch and a gate with a threshold. Your method asks a woman to cross seven of them, so the mark has to look like something that can be crossed.

Logo
What is the meaning of meander? I searched and found that it represents eternity, the eternal flow of things, infinity and unity.

You found the right meaning, and it is now written in the Logo section in your words. The meander is one continuous line that never stops and never crosses itself, which is why it appeared on Greek temples and on funeral pottery alike. It is also the reason your brand needs no column, no laurel wreath and no Greek vase: the Greece is already in the mark, quietly.

Logo
My graphic designer friend says the seven chakras are not obvious, and neither are the Greek goddesses.

Both true, and it is not a fault. Nobody who has never met you will look at the mark and read seven chakras and seven goddesses. No logo in any market does that job. A swoosh does not say running shoes. What a logo has to do is be recognised again, survive at 40 pixels and in one colour, and still look right in five years. Yours does all four.

Logo
Should my logo be the exact translation of what I offer when women see it the first time on Instagram, or do clients understand it more as they experience my sessions?

The second one, and you guessed correctly. What makes a stranger understand you in six seconds on Instagram is the name field, the bio, the first line of your pinned post and the photograph of your face. Those four carry the meaning, and all four are written in this document. The mark carries recognition, and it rewards the women who stay.

Logo
My friends asked why the heart chakra is bigger, and what I am selling: Elena Daenen or The Seven Gates.

That they asked is the proof it works. In a market where no mark provokes any question, yours provoked one, and you already have the answer: it is the heart, and it is where the road turns. On what you are selling, the full argument is in the Logo section.

Logo
Maybe writing The Seven Gates bigger and leaving Elena Daenen smaller below?

This is the one answer that is no, and here is why. Nobody buys a method from a stranger, and until you have testimonials you are the evidence. Three common English words cannot be owned, your surname can, so putting the method in front means building on ground you do not hold. And your difference, holding the space rather than promising the healing, is a statement about a person. It flips the day the method can be taught by someone who is not you, a teacher training, a certified facilitator, a book. Then the system goes in front and the lockup is redrawn. Probably three years away.

Logo
I really like the lockup but want to make sure it is the best version we can do.

The composition is right and nothing in it needs to move. Two things about the file are worth improving, and one email fixes both: what was delivered is a picture inside an SVG wrapper rather than a real drawing, so it cannot be scaled for a banner or recoloured for a white version. The exact wording to send your designer is at the bottom of the Logo section.

Logo
What are the files? For example, how and where do I use lockup-stacked.png?

The file table was rewritten the way you will actually need it: find what you are making on the left, and the file to drag in is on the right. Your specific one: lockup-stacked.png is the default, for a flyer, a deck cover, a PDF, a worksheet, anything a stranger sees first. Two rules cover everything else. If a stranger sees it first, use a lockup with your name. If your name is already on the page, use the mark alone.

Logo
What do you mean by recording, one block?

It means you do not film on the day you post. One afternoon a week, one outfit, the phone set up once, and you film everything for that week in a row. Then you edit and post it across the following seven days. Two hours once beats twenty minutes seven times, because most of the cost is not filming. It is changing clothes, finding light and getting your voice ready.

Content System
What do you mean by First Gate? A single gate, or the first gate with Demeter? I would prefer to make it clearer.

Gate 1 is the first gate of the method: Root, Demeter. First Gate is the name of the single class you sell, and it is called that because that is the gate the class teaches. The overlap is deliberate. If it still feels unclear when you say it to a stranger, change it now while it costs nothing: The Root Session or One Gate, One Evening. Say all three out loud and keep the easiest.

Content System
Is the sand block always for me to say out loud, or to put in the Instagram caption? Can you be clearer?

Every post now has labelled parts. What to show is the film or design instruction, for you. The sand block is the caption, the text you copy into the post on Instagram. It is never read out loud word for word. In a Reel where you are talking, use it as the idea and say it in your own words, because a script read to camera is visible in four seconds.

Content System
The room where I teach: do you mean the studio in my hometown, even though I will not give sessions there?

No, and your instinct was right. Film your own room, the one with the purple wall, or the garden. Showing a room you do not teach in is a small lie, and small lies are the one thing your brand cannot afford. It is not even the better picture: your purple wall is your colour and no rented studio can give you that. The post was renamed to the room where I practise, which is true and which works better.

Content System
Text on linen with the gate 1 colour as the accent: what small details in red? Should I use the red arch and the Demeter picture already?

Exact recipe now in the calendar: background linen #FBF8F3, all text ink #2A2233, and gate 1 red #B0392F in three places only. The frame number, a 44 pixel rule under the title on frame 1, and the arch on frame 5. Yes to the red arch. No to the Demeter portrait in that post, because she is the subject of week 3 and two goddess signals in one week makes the account look like it is about mythology rather than about the body.

Content System
I have two types of bowls, one on the ground and one close to the body. What to use and what to show? With a woman lying down?

Show both, in that order, in one Reel, and yes to the woman lying down for the second one. One is the sound she hears, the other is the sound she feels, and nobody else in your feed is showing the difference. You need one person and their permission, so ask a friend and film her from the side. If nobody is available, film the floor bowl alone and keep the body bowl for a second post rather than filming it on yourself, which does not read on camera.

Content System
Meet Demeter: what frames should I use apart from her portrait?

Six, and the shape works for all seven goddesses: portrait, story, light, shadow, body, question. Frame 5, a real photograph of your own hands on the floor, matters more than it looks. Without one real photograph the carousel becomes a mythology lesson, and mythology lessons get saved by people who will never book a class.

Content System
They are failing at doing it without disappearing. Not clear enough.

You were right, and the reason is that it holds two negatives in one sentence, which is the hardest thing to read in any language. Rewritten in the positive: they are good at loving, and at speaking, and at resting, and they disappear while they do it.

Content System
What actually happens in a class: will my first class be online? I will not have many women in Belgium interested, especially in English.

You are probably right, and the plan already agrees: Belgium in person, the world online, with online as the engine and not the compromise. So write that post for an online class and say the word online in frame 1. It removes the geography question before anyone asks, and it makes the post work for a woman in Lisbon or São Paulo, who is the one most likely to book you this year.

Content System
Which gate is speaking, find out in seven minutes: what will I say in the seven minute video?

Our wording caused this and it is fixed. The seven minutes is how long the test takes her, not how long the video is. The Reel is 45 seconds. The post title was a promise about the video and it is now the free test goes live.

Content System
YouTube, sound for the throat gate: I am not sure I can hold twelve minutes with only the bowls. And why this order, not the second gate? Applications says one introduction then one video per gate.

Both objections were right and both changed the plan. The calendar broke the rule written in Applications by going from gate 1 to gate 5, so video two is now gate 2 and the gates continue in order. 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 of sound, then silence and returning. The structure holds the space. The introduction video is filmed last and pinned to the top of the playlist.

Content System · Applications
Seven highlight covers, each in its gate colour with the small mark in linen. What do you mean by the small mark in linen?

A plain square filled with that gate's colour, and on top of it the small mark drawn in linen #FBF8F3, the off white of your background. Gate 1 is a red square with an off white gate on it. In Canva: square, background colour, upload mark-small.svg, recolour it to #FBF8F3, centre it at about half the width. No text, because at that size no text is readable.

Applications
Grid rhythm: should I first stick to the thirty days, since they do not always follow that rule?

You found a real contradiction and the thirty days win. For the first month, follow the calendar and ignore the grid rule. That first month has to introduce a person, prove the practice, open the goddess layer and launch the test, in that order, and the order matters more than what the grid looks like. The alternation rule starts in month two.

Applications · Content System
My bowls are handmade in Nepal. Should I call them Nepali or Himalayan singing bowls instead of Tibetan?

Himalayan singing bowls, handmade in Nepal. You are right on the facts: Tibetan is the loose popular name, and the bowls are made across the Himalayan region, today mostly in Nepal. Himalayan is accurate, more distinctive, and it lets you tell the true story of where yours came from. Two exceptions, both about honesty and findability: keep Tibetan if that is the wording on your own certificate, and write also known as Tibetan singing bowls once on the site and in each YouTube description, because that is what people type into a search box.

Verbal Identity
Is it ok to use elenadaenen_ on Instagram? I prefer it to elenadaenen.yoga.

It moved up the list, ahead of .yoga. 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. If @elenadaenen itself is free, none of this matters, so check that first.

Applications
What kind of garden practice should I film?

Only what cannot be filmed indoors in January. There is now a priority list of five, and the top three are bare feet on grass and earth, one standing sequence filmed side on with sky behind, and a bowl outdoors with the birds audible. Six to eight clips of thirty to sixty seconds, one afternoon, in the last two hours of light. That is a whole winter of outdoor Reels. The one thing you cannot do in February is go back to September.

Photography
Should my testimonials be only from women, or men too?

Collect every honest one, men included. Publish women. A woman decides whether to book by seeing someone she could be, and a page of testimonials from men would quietly tell her this is not built for her. A man's testimonial belongs in a festival or studio proposal, on YouTube, and in your own confidence, which is not a small thing when you have none yet. If you ever open a mixed class, publish men on that page, because the page has to look like the room.

Verbal Identity
The method tells me to start posting three things already, and the Brand Book says we decide when the thirty days start. I have decided to wait.

Your decision is right and it is now the only instruction in both documents. The three starter posts were not thrown away: they are week 1 of the thirty day plan, which is where they belong, because week 1 only works if weeks 2, 3 and 4 follow it. Until 4 September there is nothing you have to post. Rename the account, put the bio in, and post whenever you feel like it with no plan.

Content System
What type of clothes to wear? Can you send me a picture of the ideal outfit? Shorts or pants, tops or T-shirts?

A picture would tie you to one garment you may not own, so there is a rule instead, which works on the clothes already in your wardrobe. Full length leggings, not shorts, for practice, because shorts move on every transition and the eye follows the fabric instead of the line of the leg. A fitted top for practice, a T-shirt is fine for talking and for the bowls, because a loose T-shirt falls over your head in every forward fold. One tone head to foot whenever the posture matters, two or three outfits repeated, and there is now a colour strip of your six.

Photography
Is it possible to reference myself so people find me straight away, on Instagram, YouTube and my 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 is. Instagram searches only the handle and the name field, which is why yours reads Elena Daenen · Yoga & Sound and not the name of your method. YouTube searches the channel name, the video title and the first two lines of the description. Your website is found by the page title and the first heading. Full table in Applications, plus the rule underneath all of it: same name, spelled the same way, everywhere.

Applications
Phonetically, Daenen is IPA /ˈdaː.nən/, pronounced DAH-nen.

Thank you, this was the last open question in version 1 and it is now written in Verbal Identity. Put Daenen, pronounced DAH-nen in the notes you send any festival, studio or podcast before they introduce you, and say it yourself in the first ten seconds of your first video. The person most likely to say it wrong out loud is the one introducing you on a stage.

Verbal Identity