My Shiny Happy Life

imageMy life is all rainbows and unicorns. That’s right, every morning I wake up and little birds help me put on my yoga clothes. I meditate calmly with no monkey mind for a full hour, after which I drink pure lemon water from the stream before getting on my mat for a focused, intense yoga practice on my own. After that the day flows easily with the perfect healthy food, all of which I make myself. Abundant clients throw themselves at me willy nilly. I easily handle all personal interactions. If there is the rare time of stress, I handle it with equanimity, without being overly reactive. I NEVER go crazy and do something self destructive. I am totally at peace, regardless of what life throws at me.

Yeah, and if you believe that I have some ocean-front property in the Everglades you might like.

No, the truth is I am a work in progress, just like everyone else. And despite the beautiful veggie/smoothie/raw dessert shots I splash all over IG, I also eat out too often, just to get out of the house when being a solo-preneur makes me feel trapped. I am also more reactive than I’d like. In face, yesterday I was upset by a personal interaction and totally lost my cool, ate all my travel snacks in a row and then ended up beating myself up for an hour or two. But because of so much yoga practice and work on myself, these times are rarer and rarer. I have more ‘wins’, more grace and calm breathing through crisis as time goes on.

I think it’s easy in this digital world to see only one side of things. I have FOMO too by the way! SO much. I should definitely quit Facebook. Yeah, right. That’s gonna happen.

Even though I try to show some of the messiness and talk about the ‘hard parts’ of life too, I’m not sure it completely hits home. And it’s important to show the struggle. After all, how can someone help you out of the ditch if they haven’t experienced what it’s like to be stuck down there themselves?

Understand this: whatever emotional eating issue, body image crisis, lack of motivation, beating yourself up, perfectionist, pendulum swinging thing you are going through, I have been there. More than once. And after so many years of slogging around at the bottom of that ditch, I know how to help you climb out of it.

That doesn’t mean life will be all rainbows and unicorns and kale salads. Though today was a great day of meditation, yoga, healthy food, productivity and calm mind, tomorrow I may wake up, check facebook from my bed and haul off to the diner for a stack of pancakes slathered in syrup while stewing over all my faults. I really hope I don’t, but if I do, I won’t whip myself erotically after the fact. I will walk around the block, drink a green juice (or maybe a great glass of red wine) and get over it.

This is balance. Just like some of those crazy yoga inversions, it is not a static spot. You don’t land there and say “ah, balance, there you are.” And just stay stock still. You have to make constant micro-adjustments to stay there.

Can you get down with that? Then let’s get there! My 90-day bespoke program is designed to help you tune into your own needs, joys, likes and dislikes and tune up the vibration to help you find that place of balance that is delectable and sustainable for you.

Book your free consultation now and let’s get going>>

With love, lemon water and (raw) chocolate covered cookies.

-Laura

The Pose I Wish Wasn’t

Eka Pada Bakasana A
A number of months ago my friends at the Ashtanga Dispatch hosted an Instagram Challenge, and one of the required poses was “the pose you wish…wasn’t.” So yeah, my immediate reaction was to avoid that challenge! But seriously folks, there are very few poses I wish didn’t exist. Though there are plenty of poses that challenge me, I find most of them enjoyable to work on. But there are one or two poses that feel more than challenging. They feel impossible. As if there is no finger hold. Nowhere to begin. Like they were designed just to show me my limits. There’s no work, just a feeling of inadequacy. READ MORE >

Crazy Pants, Body Image and Musings on an IG Challenge

baddha hasta sirsasana D“You know, there really is so much too much of you!”-A Tale of Two Cities.

This is sometimes how I feel about myself. Too many thoughts, too loud, too curly, too curvy, too many asanas, singing when I should chant, talking when I should be silent. Part of my journey of yoga: embracing it all. There is exactly as much of me as there should be. Yes, self-transformation can be good, but self-acceptance is even better. If it’s true as the Baghavad Gita says, that “yoga is the practice of tolerating the consequences of being who you are,” then I may be slowly, slowly almost practicing yoga. I see the growth and the stuck places too, everywhere in my life. And it’s evidenced in my yoga pants and my Instagram account. Say what??? READ MORE >

You Can’t Go “Cold Turkey” on Food

 

Anorexia

I feel like I’m leaping off a bridge.

Today I had this piece published on Elephant Journal. I meant to get it up and out there for NEDA (National Eating Disorders Awareness) week. I meant to start the conversation long ago. I meant to do a lot of things. But I hesitated. Putting this out there in the world scares the sh*t out of me a little. After all, this is A Life Delectable. Aren’t we supposed to be talking about rainbows and unicorns and magical brownies that are both delicious and good for you in a world where no one ever feels fat?  READ MORE >

Getting Comfortable in my Skin (or leotard, or dress…)

natarajasana tahoe modifiedIt took me way too long, but I finally embraced my perfectly quirky/pretty, wear a leotard for yoga style. We all want to look and feel our best, whatever that is. And when we find what makes each one of us feel most comfortable, it’s more likely to happen, with less pushing and pulling and sucking in of stomachs and discomfort and spackle… READ MORE >

The Power of Ritual

hands with tea and lemonWhen I was younger, my family was deeply steeped in Jewish ritual and family tradition. We were kosher. We went to temple on Fridays. We celebrated holidays with candles and Challah and Matzoh and prayer. And we went to my Grandmother’s house for a meal every Sunday. Sometimes these rituals felt like a pain. We were tired. There was too much to do. We had to get up early the next morning…There always seemed to be a reason to skip the ritual. But we didn’t.

As I got older and moved away from home and into my career, these rituals faded a little, leaving me feeling disconnected and forlorn. Recently, I began structuring my time around these gatherings again. READ MORE >

A Touch of the Rebel

confluence hanumanasana b

Photo: Tom Rosenthal

I am very traditional about my yoga. I’m an ashtangi after all. We do the poses in a specific order, on specific days, in specific ways, staying true to the lineage that has gone before us. I often liken ashtanga yoga to Bach, or scales in music. It’s classical, steeped in tradition. Orderly. But even though I deeply believe in the system, even though I honor all the little details of the ashtanga yoga, I find there needs to be a little wiggle room, just like with my diet, just a tiny bit of rebellion to keep me going. READ MORE >