Tears to Laughter: May We Embrace All of Life

Practicing being human starts each day as I accept my limits and then try to expand my horizons with compassion and forgiveness for my struggles.  My soul is fully alive as I embrace all the emotions of living large.

I was brought to my knees as I grieved with the world for the loss of 157 lives exploding into a fire in Iran and the tragic death of Kobe Bryant, his sweet young daughter, and nine other special beings. And my deep sadness wallowed over the passing of Ram Dass, my personal inspiration for 40 years.  

Life and death are constant, and yet we avoid the persistent fear that exists whenever we are reminded that our physical life is so uncertain. I am confronted with the fragile space between each breath as the conscious acceptance that death breaks our hearts open again and again. Being fully alive, I accept all of it and to offer up the deep moan, the bitter cry, and anger for the depth revealed in this empty space.

While collectively we embrace all the families, friends, communities, nations, and the entire world with loving empathy for the profound losses, each of us becomes greatly aware of our own mortality. Heartbreak is the gateway for initiation to the soul and to inspire a desire for greater effort into the journey of the heart. To become mindful in the present moment as this pain arises, as a purely human experience, is honoring the gift of being alive. Allowing the soul to cultivate deep compassion for all humanity is awakened through grief. To block, avoid, to push back on this sacred doorway only creates the mind to suffer more pain.

To inhabit the ease of releasing resistance is my daily practice. Falling into the grief allows for a profound unfolding of love to be revealed. I am fully in love when I embrace the impermanence of my life in this physical body. I’m only here for a short while in the grand picture of humanity and yet I have been blessed to live in this time and space with great self-love and to embrace it by nourishing my soul daily.

Death is also a part of living. I know this is not the conversation we invite nor is it a comfortable topic for the average day as we play our various, daily roles of identity and function. The mind resists any idea that brings up the shadow of our being. Stress will keep presenting itself in the moods of depression or anxiety and then the habits of hiding begin to form. All my additive behaviors flourish in secrets and tend to hide the light of my soul from shining.

However, I am choosing today and every day to embrace and celebrate the possibilities of miracles that are available in the presence of living fully in the NOW. I am waking to gratitude for this day and appreciate the sweet fragile spaces between each breath. I choose to live fully with each opportunity to tell someone that I care, I see you, and I am listening to your heart.

I must practice to remember that perfection is a curse of my need for love and not the ability to be the love. As I accept all of myself with all the faulty parts, I can embrace the wholeness for life. Only from this perspective can I see how to navigate the mystery with all its hardships and blessings. I choose to be in love with life with all the messy pieces. I practice forgiveness that I am human while knowing I have the ability to choose my thoughts, my words, and my actions.

Yoga is living in the presence of the mind’s attention to focus inward. It takes continuous practice to learn the tools that allow for the activities of one’s mind to become stable and focused in order to see clearly in navigating the various choices and challenges of daily life. Our many classes offer wonderful opportunities to continue thriving as the teachings must be experienced as a living transformation. Please check out all the upcoming workshops and classes we are proud to present!

May you be led forward for the highest good of all as you go about your crazy day filled with great joy!

With love and light,

Laura Jane

Infinite Ground of Being

I love the expression of the source as the “Infinite Ground-of-Being”, a Buddhist understanding of true self. I struggle with any understanding of esoteric ideas to reach past my limited intellect’s bias of learned conditioning. What does that expression mean to my lost, wandering, confused state of mind when I am hurting and in need of a simple hug?

For me, spirituality is useless unless experienced through a life of touch—to hug and to feel connected to something greater. The sensation offers a pure grace of being visible and valuable. My soul needs to be expressed in touch, the sound of laughter and the moan of tears.

I am a human living a life of seeking something more than ideology, dogma, and rules of religion. I am a seeker of honesty rooted in the gut of life’s deepest fears and struggles to understand anything. I don’t have anything to offer except love and acceptance in being alive.

Human beings are fragile and make mistakes. We all experience loss as the crack in the armor of the ego. Keeping that small space in the heart open becomes the profound gateway for the light to come through.  

It’s 25 years this month that I fell into the Midwest. What I thought would be a few years visit turned into a deep-rooted homeland. Yoga Among Friends was a beginning for me to establish a place to teach yoga. I had no idea it would be the start of something so much more.  

It has been and continues to be a community of love and profound healing for many amazing souls that somehow find their way up our long and winding stairway. The courage to begin some new path is more than a quick fix. It is a deeper doorway into something unknown.  

Over the years, I have been protective of our mission to remain unique and offer more than just a place for a “workout”. It is a safe zone in a world filled with corporate dialogues and driven product numbers. Each soul that enters into our space is given attention and welcomed. Respect and care for the journey; offering safety and support in being awkward and confused.  

In a constantly fluctuating outer world, our mission has been to create a place to fall apart and discover the deeper richer places in each of us. The soul matters, and collectively we need community and belonging to let love in and also to shine it out. Where technology has become way too overwhelming, we offer a place to remember to be still, to listen to those quiet inner sounds of intuition, to risk the mystical entering into our consciousness, and to be present and alive to this feeling of being “grounded in being.” 

I am always amazed at the shifts that take place as students continue their practice over the years. The door opens with new students with hesitant feelings of uncertainty. For each, beginning something new is a huge moment of courage beyond their familiar comfort zone. I admire and encourage beginnings. Regardless of what is going on in the outer world, we come into a place of acceptance. I like to call it the Magical Zone of the Unlimited Self!  

This month I am also welcoming my 65th year of life, a time to redefine my life’s expression. Yoga is my vehicle, but healing is my love. I am not fond of only teaching information; my inner desire is to share the tools for transformation—offering love, compassion, kindness, and forgiveness.  I am passionate and committed more than ever to keep the doors of our center open as we welcome this new decade. In turbulent days forward, there will be moments where we need community to feel stability and peacefulness.

In a world where many of us are invisible, and touch has been misused, and healthy boundaries have been disregarded, I remain steadfast in my commitment that touch as a hug is a healing tool. To live in the physical body and connecting to the greater essence of our consciousness, we must experience safe touch.

The teachers at YAF  respect and understand when a person chooses to be invisible at times, since the world can be exhausting, and privacy is needed for deeper listening. The center honors where you are and acknowledges it’s an individual journey as much as a collective anchoring. I willingly accept my role as keeper of the space!

We begin the new year with the commitment to be the “Infinite Ground-of-Being” and to sustain the effort of practice as we nourish our inner souls. I am forever in gratitude for the brilliance of our teachers and the love they shine out. I welcome 2020 with joy and peace for a healthy and vibrant new journey of the heart. I am a student always and learning each day to be more in love with life!

 
Blessings of love,

Laura

Practicing Fearlessness—Motherhood!

Taking really long exhales and feeling the exhaustion. After two weeks of racist and racial unrest on the Syracuse University campus prior to Thanksgiving break, we managed to get my daughter home on an earlier flight—only to have her return days later in a blizzard. Unable to change her ticket after hearing the horrible weather reports, we sadly dropped her off at O’Hare.

What should have been an easy direct flight became a ten-hour travel nightmare. Within minutes of trying to land in Syracuse, NY, the airport closed down, and her flight was diverted to Rochester. After hearing the plane was then going to return to Chicago, she found three other students, and they talked an Uber driver into taking them the 87-mile journey to the university in whiteout conditions!

Then what is normally a little over an hour trip became a near four-hour nail-biting wait for this distant mom. As her cell phone was down to dangerous low battery levels (and she left without a winter coat or hat!), she finally arrived in her dorm late at night. In over 150 years, Syracuse has only canceled classes four times.

And of course, my freshman would have such luck as a first-time solo traveler! Kudos to the Uber driver and grateful that throughout this stressful travel there were so many amazing blessings.

Building life experiences and cultivating the tools for living our authentic path is accepting the struggle in the journey. Letting the journey unfold is accepting that life has a bigger picture for us and the story is always unfolding.

"Buddha realized that true freedom lay not in withdrawal from life, but in a deeper and more conscious engagement in its process.”

—Manger Rinpoche

Living is all in the experience and each soul must be willing to take in the “whole of life” as hard as it is for the mind to embrace the learned fears. My mind can cause my heart to beat faster as I feel the heat rise in my chest because I am feeding it my habit of worry, doubt, and resistance. I spent the time feeling the mind wanting to take me into the rabbit hole. My past experiences were directing my emotions and memory was holding me hostage.

As a mom, I was trying to prevent future suffering by trying to reroute her flight, and yet she chose to go ahead with her planned itinerary. It was her decision to leave the airport and get in the car, and at some point, it is her fearlessness to go forward. Who am I to direct her life’s experiences?—even though I so want to do so!!

So I return to my practice to stay present. When I reinforce the emotion with memory and bad imagination, I am choosing to exaggerate it by going into my habit of creating drama. I only create a chain reaction of ripples. Those ripples take me into future suffering.

Instead, I stay with the emotions rather than turning to the reaction. I breathe into the emotion, and feel where it rests in my physical experience, and then allow my mind to settle into the feeling of being present. I accept my role, my emotions and instead of panic, which is my nervous habit, I let go. Trusting at some point, I’m powerlessness to be there physically, and I accept she doesn’t want nor need my reactive frustration.

Instead, I go to my practice. As I feel my body releasing the gripping fear and the tears of grief, I accept she is now on her path of adulthood. My emotions become my friends instead of my foes.

I can have a good cry and still be joyous about her courage. I am fully aware of the duality of emotions running through my mind. I am present, honest, and even though I might not LIKE the situation, I am allowing for the experience.

This is not easy to do without developing and refining the mind in meditation. Practicing daily for short spaces of time will help cultivate these better patterns when needed for the journey. Tools for living is the path of yoga.

Does it getter easier? I don’t know, but I am grateful today that she is safe at this moment and grateful that the sun is shining and all is good with my soul.

As we enter this holiday season, let’s commit to being kinder to ourselves. Know that we are all filled with emotions and feelings and that at times we will struggle to understand many of life’s painful experiences. To be able to hold our hearts with the acceptance that we are human, that we make mistakes, that we see wrong at times, and that we can forgive ourselves in loving kindness for learning wrong.

I hope throughout this season, you will practice turning on your “heart lights” and become your own friend to your stuff!! When I can laugh at myself and see myself as a good sitcom instead of a “lifetime” drama, I can be a better friend for all of you.

At this season of holding vigil for the light, let us continue to reflect on the spirit of gratefulness, always cultivating an opportunity to help and give back what we have received. We are collecting for DuPage Pads, and on the website is their wish list.

On my wish list is that each and everyone enjoy the wonders and the beauty that living fully presents, even within the daily struggles that might challenge our wellbeing. May all beings feel the gifts of being loved. Be Joyous!

Love and light,

Laura