Yoga Is..

Yoga practice isn't just exercise.. It is about open observation, that allows one to see (by feeling) what resonates with the inner rightness.. To learn to trust in what feels right and good and let go of all that feels tangled and wrong.. 

Yoga practice clears the slate so that we are free of our past.. 

Allows us to put the tangled knot of energetic, mental and emotional yarns down..

And when we pick it up as we leave the mat, we are more clear, the space has allowed it to loosen, and we are lighter. 

We are not our troubles, or the fearful grinding in our heads.. We are the loving-silent light that shines through the eyes and senses into this world, we are the soul that witnesses and delights and mourns in this brief merging of matter and spirit..

...dancing in and out of lifetimes...

Particles and consciousness knowing each other in arrangement after arrangement, and revering the beauty of each other's prism (body & life shape).. Like magnets playing in metal filings, arranging and rearranging intricate plays to stretch the limits of the infinite interface of metaphysical and physical. 

Dare you get stuck in just this current role and story, remember that you are an energy that is neither created nor destroyed, only changing in form. You are the actor, not the play. 

Yoga resets our clarity and connection to the part of us that is untarnishable and beyond this one trip in the world. Set your anchor in what is transient, you will suffer greatly, overwhelmed and confused.. Set your anchor in your consciousness, and you will know your truth without fear again.

Embarasment, Empowering Each Other, & Transcendence

It is not by disappointment in each other, disregard or force that we best catalyze each other's growth... 

When I am at my weakest, it is in seeing my reflection in the heart of those that love me and see nothing but the goodness of my heart, even when I fall far short of that mark, that uplifts and empowers me to face the sharp sting of messing up, to grow stronger and rise above it where I belong, shining brighter. Love ennobles us to transcend our shortcomings gracefully and without trauma.

We learn through our mistakes. It hurts like hell to truly mess up, and the burn serves as a reminder that we carry within, not to make the same mistake again. 

We often let the embarrassment of the revelation of our deficiency trap us in a cycle of shame.. But this is to debilitate ourselves and wallow in our own refuse, and does us not, nor any others, a bit of good. Self-pity is an ugly place to hang out, not very becoming on a human. Not productive in any positive way, it's just a lazy masochistic loop.

The pain of falling flat and messing up is like the wound of food poisoning. We lose all desire to repeat the same offense. We have no desire to eat the same food item for sometimes years or the rest of our days. So do our mistakes serve us, to grow us, if we allow them to be such.

"Love me most when I least deserve it for it is when I am most in need" ~Swedish Proverb 

Somewhere between letting go of unattainable ideals divorced from reality and genuine striving with everything you have within you and maybe just a little more, is a place. I'll meet you there.. Where we are very human, very authentic, and full of love. It is the place where the fullest potential is alive, and where honesty trumps pride. Truth and love, growing patience like a muscle, and total forgiveness are crucial qualities. Within those four pillars, we are everything we are meant to be. Messy, sloppy, sometimes tear-streaked, but full of honest love and reverence. Eyes shining, alive in our greatest potential...

Perfection and embarrassment have new meanings in the truly free spirit's vocabulary.

Perfection is complete honesty and giving all one has to embody their truth externally & internally, in the midst of all the quirks, roadblocks and of reality's detours. Integrity with one's own truth and with reality without resistance..

Embarrassment is the stinging slap of opening one's eyes to see a little clearer, like the clarifying slap to the cheek of one once hysterical. 

Shame has no place in our world, if we learn our lessons and forgive. No one needs an albatross around their neck anymore. We are all human afterall..The perfect wild stormy synthesis between physical and metaphysical energies. All-at-once sacred and just for fun, here we are in our perfect imperfection to love, laugh, cry, grow and revere. 

I Choose Loving You

For you
I will go to the edges of my mind
And let my ego show itself
In resistance
And I will wrestle it down and force it out

For you
In fact I see you being a light by which I better see
What is and isn't me

So for you
I will go to war inside my mind
When it produces an assault on our love
As minds tend to do with the familiar
And love will be made safe

I choose loving you
Because the work I will do
To keep it flourishing
Is the very same work I would do with out
To keep evolving anyhow
And sharing my soul & beauty & joy
With the one man I have ever found
That can appreciate every detail of me
Is something sacred and worthy
And deserves nurturing & protecting

Agony Births Ecstasy

Moods, emotions,

Like waves in the ocean

Come and go

Pulled and pushed 

By unseen forces

But hold tight

Shine on

Let go

Don't you know?

You are not the storms

That assault you

You are not the clutter

In your brain

You are not this flesh

That will become 

Earth 

Again

And 

Again

So take heed,

Have peace

You are the 

Glow of the moon

The shine of the sun

You are The One

Witnessing

This dance

This drama

This destiny

You are not alone

No matter how much 

Your heart aches

Down to your bones

Jaggedly

Tearing at your soul

This pain cannot tarnish

Your never-ending love-light

So don't fight

This pain

Tearing everything

Everything

Away 

Stinging

Agony

Peeling back the layers 

Tearing it all away

Every place you used to hide

This path is not for the faint

Exposing every detail

Of your humanness 

Enjoy the ride

Because for every freshly exposed layer of skin 

Burning as it faces the light

You step closer to a level of ecstasy that few fathom

Fewer accomplish

When outer life and inner light

Are one

The waves of agony

Are the pangs of contraction 

Giving birth to expanded consciousness & sacred action

You are the expansion of the universe

You are the destruction of worlds

You are the conductor of holy light

Giving dimension and meaning 

To the world

By witnessing miracles 

So when you are in the depths

Of agony

Repeat after me:

I am not this sorrow

I am not this pain

This hurt is beckoning me

To accept reality

Open my heart

And seek the light of joy

Happiness radiates

From the light pouring through my eyes

This pain is just the removal 

Of the disguise 

I will not hide

I will not run

I am the loving witness

The warm light of the sun

Let Go.

I can let go
Of anything
Witness the wonder
And I have seen
Countless times
When my world
Has crumbled
And turned to ash
And still
Better came
And I was glad
That my heart
Was torn out of my chest
I have no reason to doubt
But just as each
is better
than the last
This time
It was so sacred
That letting go
Is like destroying
My entire universe twice
And although I still
Must let you go completely
I have resisted
As long as possible
Not because I fear my path
Or lack faith
But because
Of the incredible circumstances
Under which we celebrated
Our union
Miracle upon miracle
And I now am embarrassed
Because I've outstayed my welcome
I have more dignity than this
I know better
I trust the universe
You'll come get me if you want me
And if you don't want me
So be it
The universe will bring better
I have faith
And know it will be so
Even if I myself can't fathom better
So here it is
I can't hold on anymore
And I'm being childish anyhow
So at the count of three
You become neutral to me
And I have no more right to remember you
And you don't exist
Until I heal
I'm sorry it took so long
You were my favorite
But I know better than all this
Much better
One,
Two,
Three.

Stress, Stretching Your Limits, and Transcendence..

The only way to become stronger when you workout is to extend just past your natural, comfortable limits. Well, that truth extends in every direction of life, tangible and intangible alike.

I tell my students regularly that when they practice, they should come to the point of comfort, then let themselves go beyond that, to the realm where it takes work to still breathe rhythmically and keep their facial muscles relaxed. We get to the edge of the comfort zone, and then where we would typically stop, we hover... And breathe.. And burn.. And let the intensity course through our veins and mind. This process is both purifying in our denial of limitation, our bold facing and enveloping of the sensations we may typically run away from, and in the growth it produces. We force ourselves to stretch our awareness to encompass more pieces of information in each split moment, instead of the brain's default maneuver: truncating anything remotely familiar and flattening it to a 2-dimensional version of itself.

This doesn't just happen on the yoga mat, or in the gym, but in our daily lives as well. At least, we are invited into this process, whether we embrace it or not is our choice. We tend to think of stress as something other than life; something we can escape one day, something not present in heaven or nirvana. Stress is ever present though, stress is a major guru in life- the heat and pressure giving us an opportunity and the energy to turn the coal of our untrained mind into the diamond of pure loving awareness and authenticity of spirit.

STRESS AND CHALLENGES ARE NOT OTHER THAN LIFE, SO DON'T KEEP WAITING FOR THEM TO DISAPPEAR BEFORE YOU START LIVING AUTHENTICALLY OR MORE FULLY!! Instead, use stress for what it provides- a potent opportunity for purification and growth. Anyone can be perfectly loving and peaceful on vacation, with zero responsibilities, no time constraints, but it takes an advanced soul to begin to generate love and peace right in the hot mess that is child-rearing, career, time schedules and limitations of time and space. THIS is our opportunity and challenge. THIS is life: life is love... And life is mining for the diamond of love inside yourself and letting its light guide you, not around or avoiding the dark and dangerous areas of life experience, but going right through them, feeling them, aching, hurting, falling, embarrassing yourself, stinging at the mistakes, and this letting that memory of pain motivate you to hold stronger to the truth of your heart in every single situation.

THAT is real life. Those moments where you are completely free from stress are blissful... Pure bliss, and you earn them by learning to dance with stress and welcome it as the training grounds. Eventually, you can handle an astonishing amount of stress without any ill effects, just a great deal of growth. It requires the development of intense self care as well: knowing when to rest, relax, hide, only to recharge and run right back into the ring.

Life is beautiful, amazing, pure love and miracles are unfolding around us and through us constantly. However, stress is part of this gorgeous experience. Stress and other suffering is the catalyst for real growth, real expansion, and the development of true, functional, unshakeable peace.

Let your desire to be a more loving, wise, compassionate, decisive and authentic being pull you through stress, let it motivate your development so that the more it hurts, the more you work on forming habits that express your inner goodness and sense of rightness. Slowly we stretch our limits and retrain our reactions, and down the road a little ways, we can see how far we have truly come. And the journey never stops... This is what it is to be alive as a human being.

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What I Learned Today About Life & God and Stuff

How much can we grow in one day? Exponentially, especially on the days we feel ourselves kicking and screaming against the grain. Throw your hands up in the fight against uncontrollable elements of reality and the unknown. Go with feeling. Strive, force, fight to root yourself in love, NO MATTER WHAT!

I did that today, and here is some of the gems I discovered, or the new depth and shine I saw in these perennial wisdoms:

Exfoliation for the soul: The Divine is the fabric of the universe. The strife, the misery, the struggle, the suffering of the world and in your life is like the abrasion of rough material to slough off the tired shell of ignorance, resistance, self-imposed limitations and to enable to know yourself as your truth.. To strengthen you to live your passion and purpose, and to empower you to live love.

Love All Just As it is: Love no matter what is who we are. Everything is radiant loving conscious energy.. We are here to learn to love ourselves and the world and all in it in our perennial imperfection and luscious creative majesty, trial and error, fragility and all. Bodies that will someday fall away and decay like overripe plums falling from the tree, souls that shine through eyes and all the magic and misery of the interfacing of an energy being with a physical form.

BOUNDARIES: Just because our role is to generate equal love for self, creation and all life, doesn't mean we need to subject ourselves to disrespect or abuse. In fact setting healthy boundaries is a form of love.. Self-love and also a lesson to the who is informed of the boundary.

LOVE: Everything, EVERYTHING is an opportunity for this work.. Discovering wisdom, truth, health and LOVE! Omniscient, omnipresent, unconditional and vast love that is what we are made of..

Validation via MIRRORING: we shouldn't seek approval from others and we don't need to justify our truth!!!!!! We don't need to justify self-care!!!!! BUT we all get worn and maladjusted and askew, and keeping positive people in your life and allowing each other to lean a little as needed strengthens both... We are all mirrors of each other's goodness.. By living our love and presence an truth, we present others with a reflection of their greatness and beauty. And we all can stand to hear that our best is more than enough, that we are loved, that we are good.. Not that we don't know, but when we are so tired an harassed by the limitations of this body-soul interface, we blossom from this soul-nourishing reminder.

WE ARE LIMITLESS SOULS (in limited bodies): limitless souls get pissed off when having to face their limitations due to time, space and the needs of the physical form.. We can stretch, bend and transcend many of these limits but at the end of the day, we cannot break them all.. Not today. Accept this. Smile, laugh. Love.

DO EVERYTHING WITH LOVE!!!!!!!!!!!

Stop doing pointless tasks...
And start doing the everyday chores with love... Dishes and cooking..

I decided SO WHAT if most of the few short years I have with my son are spent making food and art.. Mostly food... Extremely nourishing food...?? So what?! If our memories are of our time in the kitchen, what better way to teach my son how to be a man: nourishing his body and those of others, pouring love into his tasks and thus his life, never to half-ass what he does, to take care of self and others, and to share heartfelt conversation with his loved ones, equally exchanging talking and listening, both done from the heart. Why fight reality? Why not make it a sacred experience!!

EVERYTHING IS SACRED!

Don't stop smiling! Be yourself at all costs!!!!

I will not suppress my joy, my love, my awareness, or my feminine style and grace. I will not suppress my wonderment, my girly excitement, my sweetness, or my undying urge to pour loving consciousness into the open hearts of any who cross my path, and to specifically treasure those who walk this life path with me for some time.

Never give up, no matter how rough. If the unknown is threatening, investigate, know what you can. Demystify. Inform yourself. And let go of what can't be googled, like what will happen next week. Be excited. Feel what you feel. But LIVE NOW! LOVE NOW!

And that's most of it.. That's just one day.. A pretty strange and isolated yet interconnected one.

Oh yes And we need to strive to be independent, know ourselves, take responsibility for our own health and happiness.. But God manifests Miracles through us all... So talk to Him with your feelings (no words needed, just feel and dedicate) but talk to the beings I. Your life.. They are God as well, and you are God as well, and so is the stereo and your car and the sky and the dragonfly and the neighbor and the rats and dogs and everything else that is. We are are like cells in the Divine body, all a part of the net of All That Is.

Love and blessings~

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Embarrassment As Teacher (and exploration of Gunas)

Written for Healing Springs Journal's Feb/March 2013 issue:


The Role of Embarrassment As Teacher
and exploring the Gunas to understand energy and experiences in spiritual growth

by Laura Harrison

It hurts to be embarrassed by our actions. It burns our hearts to make mistakes, it is a complete and almost unbearable form of vulnerability, belly exposed and everyone can see our fallibility. Most people stop there, dwell, form hardened scars, and carry a heavy collection of regrets. But this is not where consciousness is asking us to stop, that is not the intended usage of such experiences. Instead, we stop, and feel that pain, and sit with it, recognizing it, and openly observe. Pieces settle into place. We can journal, talk to friends, practice meditation, energy healing, or yoga asanas. We can connect with animals or nature, walking and hiking, or sitting peacefully. We can think, and we can more importantly cultivate spaciousness... the spaces between the thoughts, and the pieces fall into place, insight arises, and the pain has become an agent for our spiritual development.

The regular and unconscious response to pain and discomfort is to avoid it. We tense against it, we close.. this is resistance. We learn in the path of mindfulness to instead open wider, to offer NO resisitance as we observe all phenomena, all experiences equally without judgment or favoring. What happens when we cease to resist the pain, is that we feel it more accutely and intensely, but it leaves us more open, more free, and more conscious. We can learn from the pain- the sting of embarrassment teaches us not to repeat the same mistakes, like the memory of a burned hand teaches us not to touch a hot pan, or the memory of food poisoning provides a visceral reminder to be more cautious of what we eat.

The evolution of consciousness that we are all undertaking as embodied souls requires this trial-and-error process. As we raise our awareness, as our energy changes, that which used to serve us no longer does. Old habits that were real and important and part of us before, are no longer connected to who we are. These ghosts need to be released. This requires a humbling sense of openess and flexibility of mind, and it can be hard to imagine that those who know us can adapt as our personality evolves with us. However, people connect, disconnect, and sometimes reconnect as their energies are harmonious or disharmonious. Fear of loneliness cannot prevent our evolution, because when one person leaves, another will come. We are here to live our truth, no matter what the cost. And furthermore, if we do not live our truth, we will suffer deep inside, and that suffering will grow like a disease and eventually cause so much ugliness and hurt that we will begin to take it out on others. It never does us or others justice to maintain falseness.  

Spirtiual Puberty

This process of uncomfortable yet delightful evolution is almost like puberty.. with all the awkwardness and embarrassment, confusion, agonizing discomfort, getting lost, figuring, exploring and blossoming into deeper and deeper levels of confidence, strength, and more palpable connections to inner rightness and truth. Just like puberty, the changes are happening, if we wish them to or not. It makes it harder if we fight reality, and since that would be futile, it only makes sense to open wider and wider to the painful but beautiful lessons we earn.

Everything happens in natural cycles; seasons of light and dark, birth and death and rebirth. Life in the physical is filled with nested spirals of evolution; microcosms tucked majestically into macrocosms. Linear paths are typically human in invention, everything else spirals around and around. Forgetting and remembering are part of the journey. Loneliness and rediscovery of interconnection are part of the path as well. As are mistakes and forgiveness

In yoga philosophy, the Gunas are used as a handy way of discussing different qualities in energy. Our cycles of evolution can be seen and understood more with the help of these ideas. Don't worry about grasping the idea and labelling things.. let it help you to articulate what you already feel in your experiences.

The Gunas

There are three gunas. All three are present in all of us, but certain energies, people, or actions can have a strong dominance of one guna in particular. Remember that these labels are to help you articulate and process what you feel, so maybe meditate on an example of each and feel the differences in the qualities of energy.

Tamas is the guna of stillness, of lethargy, of delusion, darkness and depression. It is present in aparent solidness and stagnation. It is part of the "darkness" of negativity, the delusion that we are seperate and the objectifiying other beings and taking advantage of them out of fear or greed. Depression and being overweight are states of excess tamas as heaviness. Tamas is also present in sleep and consistancy, so it is not all negative.

Rajas is excited movement. It is nervous energy, anxiety, scattered or flighty minds. It is like too much caffeine or hyperactivity. It is the inability to sit still, the need to be in constant motion or stimulation. It is chaotic and can be draining because it is unguided. It is abundant, unfocused energy.

Sattva is extreme energy, but where rajas is also extreme energy, rajas is out of balance, and sattva is in balance, focusing that energy into one flow, like a laser. Sattva is considered the higher and lighter state of energy and it is the goal to cultivate an abundance of sattva versus rajas or tamas, according to Vedic philosophy. It is great peace, great love, the ability to accept what is in each moment without fear or resistance.

 The trick is that we can demonize all the other states of being. We can demonize the pain of embarrassment. We can demonize ourselves for learning slowly over many painful experiences, but it doesn't make sense to kill the messenger, to hate the process, the journey. Life IS a journey, your everyday life is your spiritual path. Vacation isn't the only time to be free and accept the flow. Its here and now. In the painful AND blissful experiences of life alike, we are evolving, growing, and becoming free of all the chains we've allowed to bind us.  In every moment we are living our life, choosing how to write our story. And it takes patience, acceptance, and experiences of all kinds to hone the spirit in its interface with the physical.

Without the movement of rajas, we can never transcend tamas. We learn to process the massively intense amount of spiritual energy that is present in each moment, and at first we are distracted and scattered and thrown back and forth between tamas and rajas. Then we learn to ride the ship, to yield and move with the flow in grace, and we touch sattvic states. Eventually, we rarely taste tamas, and we learn faster and faster to cultivate our rajas into sattva. We become balanced and whole again, our essential state, our Self, shines brighter then ever before. We meet our Self.

The recent universal shift in energy was from rajas to sattva I believe, that is how I am experiencing it.. so instead of being bombarded by rajas, we are becoming surronded by sattva.

Our journey is individual, but we all go through it, it is universal as well. Don't hold too tightly to anything, let it all flow through you and your experience, and as it does. Drop the judgement. Drop the false sense of control. Drop all the ideas of saving face, or what your face really is. Who you are is a constantly refreshed river, always new. Open wide and let pain and pleasure, highs and lows teach you, they burn off all that is no longer serving your journey and fll you with fresh love and light. Balance dilligence and receptivity, and you will learn the dance. Let the experience be your guide.

Laura Harrison is the founder of the Natural Yoga Method, and the director of Enlighten Yoga in Amsterdam, NY. She is a yoga instructor, life coach, vegan/raw chef, mom, nature lover, artist, and poet. For more information see EnlightenAmsterdam.com or LauraLovesTheUniverse.com or call her at 518-866-3621.

The Purpose of Suffering.. or at least one of the positive purposes it serves

What I have seen in my life, coming into sharper and sharper focus, is that fact that suffering has many positive purposes. Granted, if we all always suffered severely, we would probably just want to die and give up on this whole physical plane thing, but suffering comes and goes in cycles like anything else.

Generally, suffering comes from resistance, fear, and destructive/loss cycles of life... times when we lose something or someone, or close a chapter to our life story. One chapter closes so that another can begin, though, we must always remember that...


What I have seen though, at least as a healer of sorts, is that every single way I have ever suffered has given me a connection to another being years later.. my struggle that I overcame in the past (sometimes distant past, sometimes maybe a week ago!) is the very same way in which this other person is now caught, suffering, struggling, and I now have the direct experience and thus humility and insights, to in some way be of service.

This has happened many times over in my world. It gives me more peace when I go through difficult times, since I know that I am not alone. I cease to feel sorry for myself, or at least get out of that self-pity pool much quicker, perhaps just a fast dip! I can see the purposeful patterns emerging in my lifetime.. and I cannot pretend to know exactly what shall be, but as my intuition sharpens I feel it happening from an earlier and earlier point.

It is hard to roll with difficult experiences with grace.. it takes enormous trust, faith, not in the conventional sense so much as faith in your own inner strength and ability to persevere. Trusting that life brings about purposeful experiences and a purposeful arrangement helps give us something to hold on to. This concept is called "vinyasa" in Sanskrit- purposeful arrangement, to place in a special way, or a cycle with phases, such as the seasons or moon cycles.

 Another concept that ties into this is synchronicity, which, once you are open to, gives you a LOT of inspiration, joy, and strength... Synchronicity is seeing everything that happens as purposeful, and thinking that coincidences don't blindly exist, but instead are very meaningful. A way to view it is as if everything that happens in your life is part of a conversation with the universe (or a higher power or however you perceive it to work in your worldview)... everything is purposeful, even your suffering.. and when you see yourself heal, move on happier then ever and more full of life, you can easily start to feel this way. Then when you in turn, quite naturally, see the opportunity arise to use that experience to help ease another's suffering, it can be powerfully encouraging. Then when you find another difficult transition, confidence has grown, it becomes easier and easier.

Life is not bleak... it can be bliss... we just have to adjust and attune our perceptions to an increasingly larger and larger view to see it....

Blessings!  ~<3, laura