To keep balance restored in our beautiful earth, we need to remember our inner balance.

Happy Spring! I love the study of yoga and how it offers balance of the mind, body and emotions in holding the space of the opposites. All pairs of opposites come into the equimity with the path of the middle way.

To hold the opposites with our world today is embracing the true understanding of the word compassion. I want to be held accountable for what is my truth and to be able to keep open hearted to the extremes of bias opinions that keep pulling on my soul. I want to be able to listen and not judge that which I don’t understand. I want to walk in someone else’s shoes with a clarity that is experienced by being open to differences.

I understand that balance is not being rigid to what is seen through my lens, but to hold a respect for all beings, knowing that we all see differently through our various memories, which color our life experiences both joyous and painful. Can we just find a way to use words to convey deeper connections of the heart?

Our intellect gets in the way as fear leads to anger, and anger leads to rage, and rage leads to separation. In coming together as a community, we need to embrace our different stories, lifestyles, and beliefs, from not only the logic of intellect, but from the depth of our soul.

Embrace the mythos of our journey by sharing the concept that life is precious and a blessing. I am not here to harm you, but to join you in kindness and respect. I want to share my table with an abundant attitude that life is greater when engaging in service. 

On Earth day, I am hosting a benefit for the trees, my spiritual oasis in found in nature. As a child, I grew up in the woods surrounded in what I still believe to be the magical realm of the gods. I would walk for hours lost in my deeper thoughts of make believe and create all kinds of games that only children can do in the woods.  

Lounging in the woods at Grey Bear Lodge

Today, I long for my trips back to Grey Bear to renew my spirit with the magic of those acres of trees. Unfortunately, because of my schedule this year, I will not be hosting a retreat, but instead offering a day of gratitude to practice yoga and meditation in honor of my sacred home.

The property is having some major financial challenges. They must come up with much needed assistance, or they risk losing the acres that keep their property out of the hands of developers.  

Please join me on Earth Day, Sunday, April 22 for a special yoga class and fundraiser, and I promise to take you into balance as we celebrate the gift of nature and our profound relationship to the source. To keep balance restored in our beautiful earth, we need to remember our inner balance. Hopefully, we can hold that space for all souls to thrive in a world nourished by the grace of Mother Earth.  

Enjoy each day with love and light,
Laura Jane

Looking back on my inner voice

The other day as I was behind the desk at YAF, I had the privilege of reconnecting with a student returning after many years. She shared that she felt so welcomed as she was hesitant to begin again, and that our name was what inspired her courage to start again with her practice.

I often feel that sometimes in life we are gifted with divine intelligence, and the real effort of living is listening to that small quiet inner voice. Our intellect will shout louder and drown out those moments with the habit of its usual refrain of “I can’t”. It is only through the heart that we take those grand steps into our true self and move forward.  I heard a deep siren call to service. Some people hear go to Central America, and some people the far lands of Africa. For me I heard ”go to the Heartland”.

In the early morning of January 17, 1994, Los Angeles was in the midst of its worst earthquake in decades. I found myself under my dining room table as the car alarms were sounding, the glass crashing around me and the earth rocking. In those moments of complete surrender, I made a pledge to find a more stable home.

It took a year of seeking and making effort to let go of what was familiar. I had finished my masters and had become a marriage and family therapist; and yet, I was witnessing a change in the mental health field as pharma was quickly becoming the new wonder of modern medical relief.

As a yoga teacher, I was combining the work of yoga with my counseling skills, encouraging the mind to focus on the breath, and actually feel the discomfort as the body begins to release the pain and trauma of holding on too tight. Having gone through my own journey of addictive behavior to mask my fears,  I was excited about the possibility of bringing these amazing tools of yoga to a new area.

Exactly one year after the earthquake, I drove my little Saturn car to Chicago. Having lived in NYC and LA, I decided to live in suburbs of Naperville!

I will tell you most people thought I was crazy, that I must be running from the law. Who would ever leave sunny warm LA for the freezing cold winters of Dupage county? Without family or a job, what was I thinking to begin this new journey?

Looking back, I had passion, energy and faith. Slowly, I started to meet the most lovely and kind people, who even today I call my friends. I taught in various health clubs, rented rooms and traveled anywhere to share the teachings of yoga. I spoke at various corporations; I went to breakfast business meetings. I was fearless and at the same time terrified. I was teaching to a group of students that were becoming my friends. A yoga community was beginning to form, and I felt that if I ever opened a center it would be called, Yoga Among Friends.  

Yoga is a lifestyle. It is a more than exercise, body image, or competition. Yoga is a way to connect heart to heart—to share a common good for the bigger picture of living with compassion and kindness. When one opens the door to our center, my only desire is bring forth the feeling of “belonging" that will welcome you into our space. A space of safety and nourishment and love. We are not corporate, and as I say, we are not "fluff and buff." We do not complete with any other fitness center nor hot yoga studio.

Yoga Among Friends is a healing yoga community; and yet on the mat, you will get a practice that meets you where you are. Every teacher offers amazing wisdom and depth of integrity. We are friends, which in the teachings of the sutras is called a Sanga. 

Life presents opportunity when we ask for help; and back in that moment under my table, I was asking! Back then everyday I didn’t know how to “do Life”.  So I just asked for help in a way of listening, and my inner voice spoke when I let go of that distracted voice of doubt.

This summer I am once again answering that inner voice. I am going back to Greece for a retreat and tour. I lived on a Greek Island in my early 30s, and it was where I found my heart and started my journey into yoga healing. Now I am being called to return. 

I feel this inner connection to the light of Greece—the people, the spirit, the passion, and of course, the most incredible blue color of sky and water. Not to mention the food! It is a place where my soul heard its YES. In a world where fear and doubt take us away from shared communities, I know the power of retreats to reconnect with old friends and make lasting new friends. And I am inviting you to join me, my friends.

Enjoy each day with love and light,
Laura Jane

Sutra 3-5 Tad jaya prajna aloke

When the mind can focus and maintain a direct connection to the heart, there arises the awareness of the True Self, and the splendor of being in deep insight. See our true nature and be the light of unlimited possibility.

As we fast approach the holiday season and the longest nights, we must be reminded that this is also the season of holding the vigil for the light. 

I light my candle to meditate in the early morning dark, and in the evening I put my lights on outside to create a luminous glow around my home. I return to the fireplace as a place of reflection and honor the longer nights as a time to come inside. Coming into my inner home and keeping my inner light nourished in the fast paced world of holiday distractions.

As we come into this season, we tend to get overwhelmed with family activities and busy schedules that challenge the balance of our health—not just physical health but emotional, mental and spiritual wellbeing. In these challenging times of confusion and emotional exhaustion, we must have a way to connect to that which inspires, uplifts and feeds our souls with hope and love.

I find without a practice, my mind is colluding with all the negative thoughts that spin constantly around me. I must delink from the habit of over thinking, and go into my breath.

The feeling of my aliveness is filled by a radiant sensation of warmth, an inner expansion of being more than my limited physical form. I link to the light, the North Star, the sun, the moon, my candle, my spacious sound of OM and feel the connection that we are all in this together.

Together human hearts can expand in the pure consciousness of love. My intellect never gets how, but through my practice, I can feel that true sense of being enough and full. Full of WONDER as we approach the Season of Giving. 

Take time today, to breath into the light, and from your heart exhale the joy of contentment. And remember to say to yourself, "Thank you", as you go out into your day sharing an inner smile of knowing.

Making the effort to be present is the greatest gift you can give and the quality of your attention is living mindfully in your heart! You are the light!

Enjoy each day with love and light,
Laura Jane