Summer Ease at YAF

Welcoming summer is a celebration of the light. Oh, how I love taking all those layers off and walking freely outside, feeling the warmth of the summer sun on my skin! The Midwest is not my first choice for ideal living conditions, but no one does summer better than us.

Celebrating the long days and the glory of those sweet nights on my front porch. Feeling the ease of life’s pace slowing down and enjoying the outdoors. Living my yoga off the mat but always coming back to my mat as a reminder that everything of gratitude starts with my yoga practice.

Starting this Sunday, June 4, we will be hosting a weekly summer class, Sunday Yoga in the Park, from 9-10:15 am, weather permitting, in Washington Park. What a great way to enjoy being in nature and breathing in the sweet morning air! An outdoor practice can be a resource for nourishing your creativity and resilience. I encourage you to adopt an attitude of curiosity, and join us to explore this new practice environment with all five of your senses.

This summer we are also offering new and exciting classes taught by experienced, talented new teachers who are sharing their vast wisdom. We are so honored that they want to teach at our studio since many travel from Chicago, the north shore, and the northern suburbs. They know our students want to go deeper and move into healing all layers of the mind.

We have added a Tuesday evening Iyengar class for beginning students. And have new series classes which will continue throughout the summer weeks, including Yoga for Kids 6-12 years and a book study on the Yamas and Niyamas with movement. We are also hosting some exciting workshops to offer more ways to connect with our deeper intelligence, including Saturday’s Guided Sound Bath Meditation, Sunday’s Gua Sha Facial & Restorative Yoga , Neurogenic Yoga on June 13 and Yoga Nidra on June 18. Lastly, we are excited to be offering yoga classes specially designed for plus-size students, a new multi-style class where a variety of yoga postures, breathing exercises and meditation techniques are taught, and an asana-based class, Meditation in Motion, that includes breath work, aromatherapy, mini guided meditation open to all levels.

Yoga Among Friends (YAF) is known as the studio for delving deeper and refining the practice to truly balance our physical, mental, and emotional systems. In the world today, we all seek community and safe places to feel nourished. With 5 certified yoga therapists and 7 certified 200/500 level, professional yoga teachers on staff, I feel YAF is turning into a true place for healing yoga. Click on a photo above for more info about each teacher.

In a world struggling to find balance, I am forever blessed to remember my breath and appreciate being human. Summer offers me gentleness, time to read a good novel, catch up on the daily gardening, learn new ways to prepare healthy meals, reflect on the many ways life is beautiful and people are good, and practice yoga with summer ease. Please stay in the light, knowing we have a choice. Keep safe and cool, and appreciate the ways you are moving forward through the heart. —And we hope to see you join us for these classes and find your summer ease!

Let me know in the comments below what you are looking forward to this summer at YAF and elsewhere.

The light in me honors the light in you,

Laura Jane

Chop Wood, Carry Water

Sit quietly.
Refuse the rush, the hectic pace that distracts your heart’s desire.
The desire to come home.
Breathe into THIS, this space that is your True Self.
Light illuminating from the heart. Shine bright the star, the moral compass of love.
Present in this.
Alive with vibrant joy in the midst of sadness. Grateful clarity guides me inward and gives me the courage to slip into the space that awaits my sound. The voice is yours.
The essence of touch supports me forward. Leap into the new beginnings and just say, “YES”.

I found this in one of my many journals. If someone asks me what twenty-five years of living looks like for me, this is it. It’s a constant reminder of daily practice to connect to the source. I am forever humbled by living a path of yoga teachings. I cannot claim to get it perfect, only that I followed a deeper calling, my dharma.

The Buddha is asked what life is before enlightenment, and the reply is, “Chop wood, carry water.” He is asked what life is after enlightenment, and the reply is, “Chop wood, carry water.” It means the day in and day out of simply living the routine tasks of life. The everyday moments that lead us forward. The daily making of the bed, cleaning the dishes, watering the plants. Each day brushing our teeth.

Within the daily task, the awareness of my attitude is the commitment to finding joy in the ordinary. How I walk up those stairs of the yoga center, how I use the many hours of carting the toilet paper from Costco with an attitude of gratitude, and how schlepping yoga mats from one place to another and teaching all these years is just my blessing. Life becomes a constant ritual of motion that one day marks a crazy number of years.

Maintaining a yoga center is not something my ego would have leaped into without the greater desire to host a community and share the depth of the yoga teachings. The love and support of our teachers and our students forever humbles me. Thank you. This is our beginning as we move into the next phase of our existence.

The event held last week was a tribute to so many. We introduced our nonprofit, Sanga Space, and all the funds raised from the auction will go to offering programs for those in need and creating scholarships for future teacher training programs. The need for mental health is greater than ever. We are committed to serving a population in need and hope to ease the financial obstacles.

As we move into this beginning, yoga therapy tools are needed more than ever to help with the merging acceptance that science is finally catching up to the spiritual. We need healing of the entire system. We are offering new classes this month with some amazing teachers willing to drive from distant areas to be a part of our community. We encourage you to leap into your passion to thrive and continue going deeper into the practice by exploring one or more of these.

We are collectively healing the greater world of humanity. It is a daily acceptance that in order to see the world shift, we must be able to shift our perspectives. Pain is real and yet it is a gateway to asking for help. Let us at Yoga Among Friends be a safe place to heal.

Learn more about our new classes and sign up here.

Love and light,

Laura Jane

25 Years of Joy Hunting

“No creature can live without joy, and every single moment of life is an active-seeking of a greater joy. If this motive force is removed from life, the entire existence tumbles down and permanently comes to a halt. The movement of life is continued and kept up by the dynamism of this joy-hunting “.

—THE TAITTRIRYA, UPANISHAD

As my teacher would share, “none can breathe on the face of the globe and continue to live if the source of all joy was not there in his heart." That all joys we gain in the world are flashes of the brilliance of the True Self. When the mental agitations are calmed through the fleeting enjoyment of the sense objects.

When the activities of the mind can come into a stable state of balance, these experiences open the container to the inner qualities of calm, peacefulness, and contentment. This pure essence of our nature is revealed in the experience, which allows for the possibility. A living experience of feeling the expansion in our collective hearts. Humanity is kind, gentle, and forgiving. Accept being human with the vulnerability of loving the divine within us so deeply.

I am not speaking of the attachment to the ego mind’s need for pleasure nor the resistance to what it does not like. I am not speaking of the need to get, strive, or grasp at “happiness” but the profound falling in love with that which is not tangible nor visible. The depth of this all-pervasive quality of love is the stable support of being able to rest that roaming mind in that which is greater than any material-changing world.

It takes great effort to move into a consistent practice and experience the effortless ease of being present to the Self. To be fearless in shifting the patterns of doubt, worry and anger and bring light into the heart of this truth. We are this sweetness of loving, compassionate kindness in our intrinsic nature. How wonderful to desire this truth which is healing and sustaining!

My favorite teacher, Joseph Campbell, whom I have embraced for years, would say that “life is the joyful participation in the sorrows of the world:”

• To be able to sustain a loving mind in the midst of perpetual obstacles where fear and anger are so prevalent.

• To be able to sit in my own sadness and grief and sustain my contentment to be alive.

• To be grateful that I am able to willing be of service in love.

• To share the tools of my years of practice, not for my need to be seen, but in the co-creation with the Great Source.

• To understand that I am more than my little mind’s need to control the constant thoughts.

• To release the tension of gripping and resisting the constant fluctuation of my mind.

• To maintain the stillness as I allow the witness to just observe the flow of this panic sensitivity.

• To desire to live fully in the trust that humanity is healing as we witness the destruction of the old patterns and move forward through the heart.

I know for many, this sounds so “Pollyanna” and naive. It takes a great desire to move away from all the habits of the mind wanting just to fix the outer world. Changing the attention of the mind from the sensory to bringing the intention with attention inwards becomes the path of yoga. It takes courage to shift the habits of a learned mind.

I always say, “I go kicking and screaming into my life.” I would never be teaching if my little mind was the boss! I am always humbled by the ardent effort of being at Yoga Among Friends daily for the past 25 years. I am always the student as I share these words.

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We are celebrating the journey.

For 25 years, it has been a path of joy and at times deep sorrow. The roots need to be watered everyday, and we must share the fruit. We are grateful to be partnering (and sharing the fruit) with Sangha Space, a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit volunteer-run organization which supports mental health initiatives through community enrichment programs. Sangha Space develops, implements, and provides community-based art and yoga programming while giving opportunities for equal access to these programs that enrich the mind + body connection.

Earth Day seems like a great day to throw a party and bring the Yoga Among Friends community together to celebrate our 25 YEARS of YOGA AMONG FRIENDS IN DOWNERS GROVE!

Join us Saturday, April 22nd, from 6-9pm. At this family-friendly event, there will be live music by the Chicken Dolphin band, a community potluck, and raffle/auction items to bid on, sponsored by Sangha Space. 

In addition, I’ll be teaching 2 special community classes in celebration of our anniversary:

• Friday, April 21, 9:30-10:45am, 25th Anniversary Community Class–Studio & Zoom. This is my regular Friday Vinyasa Flow class that I am gifting.

• Sunday, April 23, 11am-12:15pm, 25th Anniversary Community Class–Studio & Zoom. This class will be a gentle asana practice leading into meditation.

These classes are free to the public, but you must register online in advance; no drop-ins. With our limited studio space, we kindly ask that you only register for one class so that others can attend.

These special events are our way of saying “thank you” and showing appreciation for the vast community that has helped sustain our commitment to healing and thriving over the past 25 years. In a world struggling to seek balance, we are forever grateful for the loving community we have created. Joy is an inside job, and nature sustains the entire system in purifying the patterns of worry, doubt, and fear. Let us continue moving forward and welcome in the love of living our yoga, JOYOUSLY.

Read more about our 25th Anniversary Weekend Celebration

With love and light,

Laura Jane

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*All proceeds from the raffle, auction and 50/50 split-the-pot will benefit Sangha Space’s community scholarships for programming at Yoga Among Friends

*Sangha Space, a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit volunteer-run organization, develops and implements community-based art and yoga programming while giving opportunities for equal access to programs that enrich the mind + body connection. They are committed to nourishing and integrating into the communities in which they serve and to providing programming free to all participants. Sangha Space believes these opportunities provide an alternative path for children & families to learn, care & nurture themselves for a lifetime. Sangha Space is currently housed out of two locations (Chicago, IL and Downers Grove, IL) with planned expansion in 2024.