The Language of the Soft Heart

The Language of the Soft Heart

Who are you? Never mind all your fears and insecurities, or all the things you have or would like to have. Forget that you want to be a better person. I don’t want to know your gender, nationality, age, family situation, ethnic background, and certainty not what you do for a living or your political views.

My question is this: what is your true nature? Do you ever ask yourself? Do you use the tools of yoga to ever practice exploring this question?

I’m not asking who you believe yourself to be or how you think other’s see you, but rather what you experience in those moments when you are not caught up in your wants and fears. What do you rely on to give meaning to your life?

These are hard yet essential questions for those who wish to consciously experience life’s fullness. I am always telling myself, Laura Jane, you are NOT your thoughts!

The veil of distraction is filled with wanting what I like and rejecting what I don’t like—the push and pull of life in my little mind. I struggle to remind myself that I am not my history. My habits do not define me as my true self. It is my heart that must find its true path.

Going inward is at times painful, and I do everything to distract myself with the outer world of my addiction to those “shiny objects” of attachment.

I must remind myself always that my practice is not to get anything, but to constantly be willing to let go, soften my heart, and breathe into that which has no form but offers a quality of spaciousness, expansion, lightness and ease. Only then, does the tension drop, and something is revealed in a way my intellect cannot conceive nor understand—the intelligence of “knowing” is felt.

Life is experienced as sensation as I sit in a stillness. I am more than my thoughts; there is a softness in my heart. The heaviness of worry and doubt are lifted, and I feel the flow of life—pure aliveness. I am this; this light of love! Yoga offers us the pathway back to our true nature. In sanskrit this is called the purusha. I call it, my soul. 

By coming to my yoga mat, I am telling my little mind that now we are beginning the journey inward, and I must practice reminding myself that the outer world can wait. It is desire to live in this consciousness of balance that inspires love. I am not here to win, to prove myself better than, or even judge myself as less than. I am only here to shine.

We are all given this beautiful life, and let’s remember to be kinder, gentler, and more forgiving to ourselves. Be willing to find who you truly are on this journey of living. Be courageous, be authentic, and be the language of a soft heart! 

This coming winter, I invite you to join me on the journey back to Prana Del Mar in Cabo, Mexico, my spiritual home, as a way of remembering and reconnecting to one’s true self. I will support you where you are, and I will offer you a safe place to be seen for who you truly are.

Namaste,

Laura Jane

2o years of Sharing the Teachings of Yoga

“When you receive whoever comes into the space of NOW as a noble guest, when you allow each person to be who they are, they begin to change. To know another human being in their essence, you don’t need to know anything abut them—their past, their history, their story. We confuse knowing about with the deeper knowing that is non-conceptional. One is concerned with form, the other formless.”

—Elkhart Tolle

This is the path of sharing the teachings of yoga:

• to meet and greet the pure essence of one’s inner being;  
• to hold a safe place where the little mind can let go of the form and experience something perhaps unfamiliar and awkward;
• to allow an awakening of something greater that has no form but moves us forward into the pure gift of life.

This has been and will continue to be the way we can teach self love. This is our community at Yoga Among Friends.

I am today and everyday grateful that I followed an inner voice that tapped me on the shoulder and brought my ego to the knees. The depth of going into the dark night of our soul is not to harm but to offer the gateway to our inner light. I pray for the courage to live beyond my story, my fears and bias opinions—to live without the striving for the outcome.

I had no idea that inner knowing would lead me to establish a yoga center in a town call Downers Grove—to hold a space that would become a community safe haven for so many.

On Saturday, September 22, we will celebrate our 20th anniversary as a yoga center with a party. An event that could not happen without all of the many beautiful individual lights that have participated in the journey of yoga.

Without community, nothing can thrive and grow, and so we hope you will join us in celebration. Come honor your teacher who has helped to see you not in form, but in the place of acceptance that everyone matters as radiant life. Come fete your fellow yogis who have journeyed along with you. It might take one vision to plant a seed, but to help nourish and care for the plant takes a combined effort of loving commitment. We are community and belonging is where we can meet with our differences and be seen for our true self.  

We are all teachers for one another, and we at YAF have learned much from you, our students, and we are truly grateful. May each day offer another opportunity to continue our learning together. 

Learn more about our anniversary party and RSVP here.

Blessings,
All of us at YAF
 

Spacious Relationships: True Belonging with Laura Jane Mellencamp

Listen in as Laura Jane joins as the featured guest of Christine Kathryn on her podcast, "Creating Space with Christine Kathryn."  

Episode 64, Spacious Relationships: True Belonging, has Laura Jane discussing her belief that we are living in a ‘hot-headed, cold-hearted world,” and her work here is to help cool the mind and warm the heart. Laura Jane and Christine Kathryn spend a good deal of time talking about belonging and how Laura says arriving there is an ‘inside job’. She talks about the greater depth of belonging to everything, and that true belonging is through being in relationship to ‘something greater’. They touch on self-love, and Laura Jane shares her unique perspectives on its relationship to forgiveness and recovery, and how we are all offered this path.

They cover so much more about learning to live in healthy relationship with the world around us, that you might want to have something handy to take notes and possibly listen to it more than once. There’s a lot of concepts you may need to sit with in order to let them soak in. One thing’s for sure, Laura Jane is a spitfire who’s proud to ‘take up a lot of space in this world’ and Christine Kathryn is so glad she does!  

Listen to the podcast on Christine Kathryn's website or on iTunes

Christine Kathryn guides women toward self-healing and empowerment by leading them on a journey to find the answers within. She has designed a variety of services to help with the journey toward inner discovery including: one-on-one mentoring, small group mentoring, workshops, and classes. Every Monday, she shares a podcast on topics that provide inspiration and techniques to gain more peace, calmness, and ease in your life.  

Learn more about Christine Kathryn and her work:

• on her website, www.christinekathryn.com
• subscribe to her weekly podcasts
• follow her on her Facebook page where she shares tips, steps and prompts to help you create a simple, yet sacred self-care practice.