Lauren

Lauren recently moved back to Austin after seven years in New York City, where she taught yoga full-time. Runs on the hike and bike trail, performing improv theater, her family and the amazing yoga community here have enhanced her transition back to this city.

During a free lunchtime yoga class at the corporation where she worked, Lauren was shocked at how little time it took in a forward bend for her legs to go numb, and she didn’t think downward dog would ever be a “resting” pose. But after a few months, she was hooked and practiced at studios all over New York. Lauren didn’t know at the time how yoga would affect her life — its path in general, but more significantly each moment on it. She began to notice all the beauty around her once she started to feel it within. “I’d wanted to try yoga for years before I finally did. Like many, I thought it would be about making myself strong and flexible and maybe get me into some impressive-looking poses. No one told me about the bliss.”

It was only a few years later that Lauren’s yoga journey took her to Costa Rica to study Interdisciplinary Yoga at Nosara Yoga Institute. She followed this experience with an extensive trip through Central America, during which she bartered yoga classes for hostel beds, meals and surfboard rentals.

Though Lauren’s main practice is Vinyasa, she studies and teaches many different styles of yoga, inspired by the Interdisciplinary approach, which is that no one lineage is dogma; they are all pathways back to the present moment, back to the self, which is the real teacher. She uses the asanas (postures) as tools to discover more about the self, to release judgments and to arrive into the present. Students in Lauren’s classes can expect creative, challenging sequences that build to a peak pose, offering options or variations so students can adapt the practice to their experience level––or energy level—that day. Her classes combine pranayama (breath control), voice (chanting), kriya (physical and breathing exercises for purifying and cleansing the body) and hands-on adjustments to strengthen the sensations to which the pose is already giving rise.

Lauren finds yoga a constant discovery and rediscovery each time she practices and each time she teaches. Even still, she sometimes resists getting on the mat, only to find that she has the same thought every time, “This is my favorite thing! Why did I want to skip this?” Sometimes it’s hard to show up and be present and let whatever you may be feeling move through you and breathe anyway. Though her personal practice is important, she loves taking class and finds support in practicing in a group. "The energy shifts. Each person is having an individual, authentic experience all at once. It’s magical."

Influenced by her own experience, many things have led Lauren deeper into her yoga experience: her students, teachers Don and Amba Stapleton, the practice of Anusara yoga, certain Kundalini kriyas, Seane Corne, Shiva Rea’s Trance Dance and slack-line yoga, just to name a few.

Click here to see when Lauren teaches.

Lauren recommends:
The Science of Breath by Swami Rama, Rudolph Ballentine and Alan Hymes
Yoga: The Spirit and Practice of Moving into Stillness by Erich Schiffmann
Wheels of Life by Anodea Judith
Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihayi
Free Play by Stephen Nachmanovich

Favorite quotes:
“The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.” – Joseph Campbell
“You will not be punished for your anger. You will be punished by your anger.” – Gautama Siddhartha Buddha