Yoga with Laura Grace

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.....

After nearly 14 years of practice Laura Grace left the Ashtanga Vinyasa 'label' of practicing yoga. Still following the method and sequence but as set out by her inner teacher and not an external one. After the Ashtanga world was rocked, after injuring herself over and over by trying to force a method that did not work for her body, after being hurt by adjustments that worked against her body and not with it, after giving her authority away one too many times..... she left. Quietly and contently. She went her own way......

When she realised that you can still keep practicing and following what you believe in. When she realised it was her practice and no-one else's. When she understood that she knew her body and what was going on with it better than any other teacher. When she reclaimed her yoga practice exactly as it was....

Black Lotus Yoga

The black lotus flower is a symbol of the rebellious spirit, a symbol of the one who moves off on her own, who follows the path that opens up to her and refuses all pressures to conform. Her sole authority is the voice of her heart, and she follows that voice wherever it leads. This is how she stays aligned with her truth, and nurtures the unfoldment of her being—she relates to herself openly, in her own unique way, and she has her own dance with darkness. To do anything else, she knows, would be a betrayal to her soul.

Black is the color of sorrow, and the rebellious spirit knows sorrow intimately, for sorrow is the pith of human life, and that is what she eats for her nourishment. As the black lotus flower pulls the darkness up from the mud, and spreads it out upon its petals, so the rebellious spirit drinks deeply from the well. She allows the darkness to rise through her, and she holds it up to the light, where it shimmers with every color on the spectrum. In doing this soulful thing, she sustains a sense of her wholeness. There is nothing more natural to her being.

Sorrow falls through sweat and tears. Both have soaked the world, and made it more fertile. These are the rains of sorrow, and they always fall on time. They keep the soil soft for new shoots to rise. They seep into the depths of our hearts, and they collect in hidden chambers, to swirl with a potency of their own. Drought may strike above, and the body may harden, but the currents of sorrow continue to move within us. All that we love is ever slipping away, and some part of us is ever dying—these are the truths of human life. The question is whether we harden before them, and allow ourselves to stagnate, or we open up, and find the secret of renewal.