Lighten Up and Stay Cool

Life is messy, especially when we let go of being perfect.  I am always reminding myself that I am a work in progress. It’s a gift to be willing to enjoy the uncertainty of living. I can set intentions and let go of striving to reach a goal. I may be able to create venues of learning and let go of who might answer the inner invitation to join.

My identity is always changing with my various roles.  My true purpose is to create safe havens for the mind to rest and for the soul to be nourished. Yoga is a lifestyle of living in mindful awareness that to bully me is to feed the wrong mind.

So today, as the temperatures outside begin to cool, I am cultivating a presence of patience. Cooling my inner frustration by shifting my need to fix or do. I am enjoying my puppy as I accept the insanity of my new life, and I will continue to nourish vitality and passion for cooling the mind and keeping the hearts warm.  Humor and laughter are the paths of the soul.

Celebrating this new beginning is the art of living wisely. I engage in the blessing of keeping the joy of laughter in the midst of great sadness. I am constantly refining my listening for that silent knock on my heart that keeps inspiring me to love more. My greatest challenge is to actually begin when my little mind conspires to stay within its safe boundaries of the familiar and stay the same.

Life is moving us forward, and the willingness to let go and answer the siren call of the soul. I trust that this moment calls us all to live consciously as loving human beings.  What is the new horizon in you that wants to be seen?

It is clear that the world is overheated, and our inner heat is presented as frustration with overwhelming tensions of thoughts spinning. The mind has lost the ease of focus as exhaustion fills the entire body. Our outer world is a constant reminder of the ever-changing uncertainty of living. To live wisely and with ease is to accept change as a constant.

The teachings of yoga remind us that suffering is the resistance and fear of change. How do we remain balanced with the grace and stability of being present as we practice shifting the random roaming mind into the awareness of a deep breath?  The inner wisdom of the witness is the constant quiet voice of forgiveness for learning wrong. When I feed fear, I only stir up the activity of my anger to fix and strive for my safety.

The breath is the bridge home and allows my nervous system to ease into a shift of perspective. I practice constantly to clear my lens so that I might see clearly that life is presenting a new opening. To trust the stillness of being patient with uncertainty is living wisely even when my little mind is screaming to run away. To say out loud, “Laura Jane, you don’t know anything”, is the gateway to my human vulnerability laughing at myself in loving kindness.

May we all find ourselves in our own sitcom of life when we realize to control is only causing more anger. Set an intention to live with more laughter, as we “lighten up” the present horrors of what we might be seen in the world of anger and rage. I am speaking of compassionate humor, which allows for the heart to be lighter and the blessings of joy to expand into the world.

May this August be cooler and yet the hearts warmer.

Blessings always,

Laura Jane

Healing Into What You Are with Laura Jane Mellencamp

On Season 1, Episode 37 of the Strongoo Podcast, Laura Jane is a guest and sits down to chat with Joe Donar. Calling her one of his most amazing teachers, they discuss how we can activate more vitality in our lives by listening to that kinder voice inside us. And how painful it is to accept all of who we are so we can heal by building the tools we need to put our pieces back together again.

Listen on Apple Podcasts here.

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Joe Donar’s intention for the Strongoo podcast is to help individuals to create action by opening up, being vulnerable, getting uncomfortable, and having hard conversations. “To learn how to act, we must first learn how to feel. This gives us the emotional resiliency to overcome any challenge that stands in our way.”

The inner light, our Prana Shakti

Waking today and lighting my pilot light. The inner fire of passion becomes the illuminated light of the soul shining. I have been asked why there is so much anger in the world now. We are wired for self-preservation, our mind is always roaming, looking out for our survival.

Fear of NOT having is the motivator for life which turns on the fire for survival, doing, getting, striving, and it never turns off. Anger keeps people alive, but it never allows for resting and cultivating a quality of peace or ease.

Living in a wildfire of anger blinds the mind from seeing clearly. Exhaustion follows, and fatigue will also blur the mind in an emotional haze. We call it “depression,” as the desire for life fades. This dullness of existence paralyzes the soul. To constantly feed the mind lack is fear. To be full of life, to be enough, and actually experience life as a true feeling is to cultivate the awareness of Prana Shakti.

If we constantly feed the mind the fear of not having enough, then we only keep spinning in a rage of competition, harming each other. We have learned to get more, hoard more, and defend the ownership of superiority over those that have less. We can feed the anger of survival and continue to shame ourselves and others.

For thousands of years, mankind has defended its existence by fighting the inner demon of fear. It is not until we embrace it and honor our fear, that we find the desire to move in another direction. We need to be willing to move the mind inward and take that ember of fire and breathe it into our life force and slow down the panic in our systems.

The flow of breath can shift our nervous systems and create a profound shift in healing. The actual pranic flow of our life awakens the soul. Light the flame of passion and desire for being present to love. This is our pranic shakti, our life force.

Yes, it all sounds so ridiculous to the small mind that doubts. It takes profound courage not to react to what is being witnessed all around with the same biting and spitting of human anger. But the integrity of something greater is to move into another direction and cultivate a response that is healing.

What is healing humanity at this moment? We must cultivate the ability to pause and acknowledge our fear and yet not fall into its trap of anger. Respond with compassion and hold all beings with honor and respect. Experience a shift in the chemistry of the mind and feel the body relax. I am more passionate than ever about teaching and sharing the tools of yoga for our health.

The harming that is happening is learned, and its patterns of self-loathing are being taught through our thoughts, words, and action. Self-loathing is fear which moves into anger. Anger manifests in the moods of frustration, agitation, and feeling of being overwhelmed. To have a mind of doubt, worry, and confusion is the smoke from the fire gone wild.

Healing is to shift the mind into a focused state of balance. Observe the constant movement and let go of fixing the thought.

Yoga is not to fix anything. It is simply the ability to learn tools that can balance the mind/body and inspire a positive shift in attitude in all moods. This takes practice, a teacher, and the desire to thrive and enjoy life for the beauty and the wonder that is always being presented. Light the flame of love and have the enthusiasm and the passion to live it. This is humanity at its best. Be alive and celebrate health.

We are a healing yoga center; this has been my passion as a mental health provider for over 30 years. When I saw that individuals were not connected to the somatic experience of their breath, I decided to become a yoga therapist and leave my role as a marriage and family therapist in CA. I knew the work of somatic healing was yoga. My relationships with students must be based on deep trust, which is meeting each person where they are.

Yoga is a deep philosophy of profound, subtle experiences. In our world of biased opinion, yoga became more of a body attachment to how one looked. I believe, it is how we feel.

We are starting a new teacher training this September, and I hope to inspire health practitioners to learn the actual methodology in which these deeper tools are used to maintain their own well-being and then to inspire others suffering from the illnesses that our society is seeing today. Consider joining us on Saturday, July 22 for an information session about this transformational program.

Our community is based on healing and awakening the soul’s desire of being the light in the world. This is our passion at YAF. Let us light our pilot light today and be willing to shine.

With Love,

Laura Jane