Resilient Grieving

Life is always presenting challenges, and we are all experiencing living in a collective trauma now. And I’m witnessing the pain of despair and grief. Loss is everywhere and there is no easy remedy to escape the sadness.

It's hard work to be resilient and to maintain the sweet magic in being alive. To live life fully, we must accept that life, whether we like it or dislike it, is to be present to what is being "presented" without resisting. Sometimes the best choice we can muster is to let out a fierce moan. Sometimes in the moment the best remedy is a welcoming smile, or a familiar song that holds our heart, and sometimes its a deep snuggle with the dog.

This week, my breath was knocked out of me with the passing of our dearest friend and brilliant yogi, Candy Stevens. Many of you know she was our dedicated teacher here at YAF for over ten years. Her Sunday class was our church service as she offered her loving reminders each week to nourish and care for ourselves. She found her passion in teaching and we are so grateful that she graced our studio with her light. 

In the middle of August, she called me one day to share that her stomach was hurting and that she needed a sub for a few weeks as she was waiting for her doctor appointment. Because of covid, she was frustrated that she couldn’t get to see a specialist till September 17! Regardless, she was optimistic as she kept trying to call each day for an opening.

I reached out on August 27, and a few hours later, her husband called me with the news that she had suffered a severe stroke. On Labor Day, I called to check on her prognosis and again the news was even more dire. The doctors had given her a CAT scan and found cancerous tumors in her pancreas.

This past Monday, September 21, our sweet light just got brighter. Her passing has left me with a deep grief and a profound sense of gratitude for the gift of her friendship. It has renewed my passion for living fully and to embrace each and every moment with the courage to LIVE IT.

My resilience comes from a profound practice of holding the opposites. I can hope for an improved future while being fiercely honest where I find myself in the moment. One without the other only leads to disappointment and despair. 

I ask myself the question with each decision I make, “is this helping me or harming me?” I am fortunate to have cultivated the inner preserver of my daily thoughts to have the ability to even ask. Most of us while experiencing our daily dose of collective trauma are not even aware of the possibility of choosing. In our panic of reactive emotion, we just stay stuck in the muck. We stay a prisoner of our mood.

Mary Oliver has a brilliant poem which always brings me back to a place of great humility, I Go Down To The Shore:

I go down to the shore in the morning

and depending on the hour the waves

are rolling in or moving out,

and I say, oh, I am miserable.

What shall—

what should I do? And the sea says

in its lovely voice:

Excuse me. I have work to do.

I am inviting all of us to grieve and yet, hold the brilliant opposite, which is joy. Be able to say at every moment, is this thought kind? Is this thought truthful? And then ask, what is the right action?

In our crazy upside down turbulent world today, we are witnessing great pain of suffering. The yoga philosophy gives us tools to overcome the pain of staying in a belief of hopelessness. It gives us tools to go forward. Struggling is our human condition but we have a profound ability to choose a better thought that can overtake the obstacle.

Yes, it’s hard work. Yes, it takes effort, but the beauty and wonder of being able to live fully is a blessing. That is why I choose to keep our community active. Whether on zoom or in the studio, we need each other as support. I made a commitment to support the teachings and to be present with my heart.

Each of us must nourish our inner support in order to fulfill this journey. As we move into the longer nights and are being pulled into the loss of what was, please hold the opposite. Witness whether life is pleasant or unpleasant and hold neutrality and grace. 

Use the tools to bring us inward to witness the choice of our thoughts. Take away doubt. Strengthen our pranic sensitivity to enhance our own immune systems. Calm of anxious thoughts. Shift our perception and resolve to live with an inner stability. Ask yourself daily, "is this thought leading me down the path of more agitation or should I choose to seek the wonder. To start my day in gratitude, seek the beauty around me and to the ask..What is GOOD about this moment!

Please remember, I offer a free community class, Living Your Yoga, each Sunday to help us navigate our yoga practice off the mat with the resources of our yoga deeper teachings. We all need each other, and my resolve is only getting stronger.

Love you each of you,

Laura Jane

Our New Reopening

Freshly Repainted lobby

My internal questions that I have asked of my self each day on this journey are:

    “Is it kind?”

    “Is it true?”

    “Is it the right time?"

The journey these last few months has offered me an profound opportunity to practice letting go. And yet, my dedication to our community is only stronger.

It is so true that no one can be teaching unless one is learning and practicing—just like a candle that cannot light another candle unless it is burning itself. I am aware that there are difficult concerns and uncertainties as we navigate these coming months.

We need our practice more than ever not only for the physical stamina of a healthy immune system but for our deeper emotional and mental challenges that are being presented through loss everyday. If we hold on too tightly to the past, we get stuck in the mind chatter of doubt and confusion as fear will presents itself in various emotional reactions. And if we move too quickly into something new, we miss the opportunity for deeper reflection.

The gateway for healthy new patterns needs to be fully established for stable foundations. We must remain steadfast and continue to focus on our blessings of gratitude for our community. We need to extend a continuous link of connection through the hearts.

I am offering my commitment that Yoga Among Friends will be a place to grow and nourish the deeper connections to our soul. I offer you a safe place to fall apart and to feel a deeper knowing with your inner light. Let’s continue to shine the way for the generations behind us who are needing to see the footpath home.

It’s been over five months since students have walked into our sacred space. We have been so blessed to keep our doors open with the incredible dedication of our community. Our heartfelt appreciation for all of our students who have continue to commit to their yoga practice by signing into our zoom classes and purchasing our Summer Special.

We hope that you have found comfort and a stable sense of wellbeing by being able to stay connected. It is our full intention to make sure our community is sustained, and we can open safety and with respect for all.

All of my gratitude goes to the outpouring of dedication that our teachers and staff have shared to move us forward into this new beginning. Yes, we are going to cautiously open the studio to students, as well as maintain our zoom streaming, starting on Tuesday, September 8.

We will be starting our new monthly subscriptions including 5, 9 and unlimited classes as well as offer single classes and gift certificates. We hope that everyone can appreciate the breakdown of our pricing to honor the reduced in class participation with the added effort of keeping our studio up to code with cleaning.

This fall season, in addition to reopening, I will be personally creating more opportunity to study the philosophy of yoga and to study the Yoga Sutras. We will be offering more meditation classes on demand. With these new offerings, hopefully we can maintain a presence in your life as a lifeline for stability. 

Blessings,

LJ

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A few photos of our newly repainted studio!

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Dancing with the Heart

“When striving for perfection, we think we have to get somewhere. When moving into fullness, we know we have to open our hearts to where we are.”

MARK NEPO

I’m always sharing with my students and reminding myself that perfection is a self loathing habit of our learned minds. We are taught early on to keep striving towards this invisible identity of perfection. And we feed our little self the belief that what we are is not good enough.

The longing continues to haunt us as a way to punish and beat ourselves on a daily basis. Exhaustion follows because we can never reach this impossible ideal.

Maybe for a moment in frozen time, we can pretend to be that perfect person. Ah, the pain of emptiness when we fall from this harsh judgement and realize that nothing is permanent, especially the illusion of perfection. 

To accept ourselves right where we are in all of our imperfections and with all our bruises of living life, the actual feeling of being content with ourselves is the profound moment of forgiveness.

I learned wrong! Life is not this constant need to get outside myself. My joy and happiness is not conditional on the outer but arises when I fall in love with my true self, this imperfect person living a full and joyous life with what I have and where I am—right here NOW. 

This is not an easy practice when my life is filled with obstacles, and I’m tired, overwhelmed, and frustrated with the world I’m seeing with my outer eyes. I need to go inward, to move my mind into the state of yoga and start to experience that I have a choice where to focus my thoughts. I shift from doing to being, focus on the movement of my longer exhales, and feel the physical grip of tension relax into a feeling of release. I let go of that inner need to get life; and instead, I feel my life.

In that moment, I touch the fullness of my life is pure blessing for all of myself, messy, chaotic, confused, and uncertain. I need the constant reminder to be kinder and gentler with myself, to not just sit in my pain, but to make a daily effort to move in another direction.

We all want to be more compassionate, but it must start with ourselves. It’s not very compassionate to beat on myself or resist change either. My daily practice is to quiet that inner task master, so that my reactive mind isn’t just going into its habit of self loathing and seeing life as a thing to conquer and get. In the midst of my confusion, it’s an opportunity to embrace what is being presented and to allow it to move through me.

Yes, sadness is being presented, worry is being presented, and yet with the same awareness, sweetness is being presented, ease is being presented, and love is being presented. To hold the opposites of all of it is the grace of being present to the fullness. It’s being alive to the awe and mystery being presented. It’s living fully in the abundance of all of me. Self acceptance and self forgiveness become my gateway into my true self.

When my mother passed, I found all of my report cards, even those from nursery school! Yes, my sweet record keeper held my life even in her death.

I found one remarkable story about myself that explains so much of my true nature. I must have been three at the time and in the report, the teacher made observations on my behavior. She wrote that I would refuse to play musical chairs since I didn’t want to push anyone off a chair.

I can totally remember this as even today my heart rate goes up just thinking of rushing to get that chair to stay in the game. Instead  when the music went on, I would dance around the room and remain still when the music stopped. I can fully recall the love of just being able to dance and not fight for a chair.

I laughed and cried reading this since it explains everything about my soul. For me, dancing as always been the answer to all my frustrations and stresses. Asana is my dance. But sometimes in moments of deep despair,  I turn the music up and wildly dance around my house. Dancing calms me and allows my mind to release the hold of a belief that there’s a lion behind me ready to eat me.

Yes, the sympathic nervous keeps the adrenal rushing even though intellectually, I know there is NO LION. My body is wired to fight and survive for my existence. I am taught that somehow I must fight or run to get away from the terrible fate of being eaten.

Daily, with this false belief, I am feeding the memory of learned habit and existing on false energy. And as children, we learned that if we don’t get that chair, we lose the game. Is purpose of the game of life to win at all costs?  Who said that I had to beat someone to their chair to validate my existence? Childhood games are competitive becoming the game of business, politics, and the game of striving.   

All of us learned that life is out there to get and be seen. When we identify with our outer shell (or as I call the body—the “container”) and when we attach our worth to the job, the role, or our stuff, we call this AVIDYA, the root of all our suffering.   

I must have decided early on to give my chair to another and dance to my own drummer. Life is always presenting opportunity to live fully, to share our abundance, and to thrive in our joyous truth. We just have to practice shifting that habit of believing the lie, that perfection would be obtained by getting that chair.

When one actually feels being ENOUGH, one has more to give. In the teachings of yoga, it is not enough to survive, we must honor the thriving of life.

Yes, living is filled with potholes and challenges, and I’m aware of the obstacles. But by practicing inner kindness and letting go of our inner judgement, we can offer a chair to others and still feel safe and steady in this very fast and furious world. 

I invite all of us to dance more, laugh more and be enough as imperfect people living perfect lives!

Many blessings,

Laura Jane