“The greatest journey she ever took was to heal herself. You can go around the world a thousand times. Until you go inside your soul and make peace and LOVE, you have not actually gone anywhere. How kind can you be to yourself in the next moment? That is the journey.”
—Jaiya John
These words are my new mantra. Again reminded this past week that vulnerability is the only gateway to the heart. I crashed off my patio while looking at the full moon and landed on my right side. My wrist and knee are now recuperating, and I am humbled just to be still.
This active whirling dancer is sitting on the inner journey of listening and releasing the habits and patterns of my “doing” identity. I’m grateful nothing is broken; just the ego is bruised.
This month we begin our fall season of classes and workshops. Our teacher training is coming to its completion in October, and I’m debating on how to move forward. So much of our teachings at YAF are sharing the tools needed to move into our healing and connecting to our true inner selves of the heart.
I want to begin teaching the philosophies and the methodologies of deeper, refined meditations for releasing the old patterns of traumas—the anger, the hurts, and the old beliefs that no longer serve in learning to love. So I have decided to open Tuesday evenings for healing circles and, later in the season, Thursday evenings for sutra study and group discussions of the teachings.
***Laura, are you prepared to announce healing circles on Tuesday evenings? I thought this was a once month invite-only Trauma session for Sara’s patients? Is there something else I need to add to the schedule?
Yoga therapy is not just a physical practice but offers the teaching with a heart to heart individual relationship between teacher and student. Holding a safe place to shift the mind’s struggle of gripping onto the patterns of thought, speech and action that only add to the suffering.
The mind is in the body, the breath, the thoughts, the behaviors of identity and our moods. Each tool of yoga can influence these layers, and ultimately through practice and nourishing of new patterns, open the gateway to our deeper intelligence.
To learn self love versus self loathing is a journey of the soul. This is my life commitment to keep growing, and so I surrender my need to be perfect and accept my humanity. I am forever grateful for my injuries to remind me to come back to my practice in a new gentle way.
As I prepare for my retreat in Portugal, my injury becomes a gift to move deeper in mindful meditation and to accept my limits by nourishing my grateful heart.
Everyday healing is not for the weak of spirit. My hero in this moment is Michael Taylor, my dear friend and colleague who is truly living the moment-to-moment acceptance of cultivating patience as he sits each day in uncertainty. His entire system is healing from the transplant last April.
And for anyone undergoing any type of treatment whether a cancer diagnosis, or an autoimmune disease, or just a much needed mental rest from all the exhaustion of living, know that we at YAF are holding the space of love and supporting each other. May we all be nourished and feel connected as a community. This is what it means to be human.
Let’s meet each other where we are. Learning the gift of shifting anger into passion, fear into love, and appreciation for the brilliance of all the teachers that walked this path before us. Moving each thought, speech and action from harming to healing. What a gift of freedom to be able to know the difference! **I’m struggling here with this ending. How do readers learn the gift of moving fro harming to healing? do we do that with the Tuesday evening class? If a you put yourself in the reader’s shows, someone who is truly struggling with trauma or a disease, how does this ending help them? What steps do they take?
With love and light,
Laura Jane
