Lauren Walker is the author of Energy Medicine Yoga: Amplify the Healing Power of Yourand The Energy Medicine Yoga Prescription (Sounds True, 2017). She created Energy Medicine Yoga while teaching at Norwich University, the oldest, private, military college in the country. Her goal was to help students have more ease and calm in their lives and access the core part of themselves that is always whole. The huge success of her work there led directly to the publication of her first book. Lauren teaches EMYoga across the United States and internationally and has been featured in Yoga Journal, Mantra+, Yoga Digest, and The New York Times. She also trains teachers to teach her highly intuitive, simple healing method. EMYoga is compatible with all types of yoga. It is also the only yoga style in the world with its own built-in health care system in the form of thousands of practitioners trained at Donna Eden’s school, Innersource. Energy Medicine practitioners to work one-on-onewith to get their clients’ energy working for them. Lauren was named one of the 100 most influential yoga teachers in America by Sonima. She is passionate about healing, building a toxic-free world, and reversing the effects of global warming. Without a healthy environment, we have nothing! You can find her complete schedule at EMYoga.net ॐ
Background:
Lauren was raised in Worcester, Massachusetts, and had an early love for the arts. She published her first poem at age eleven. She went to NYU and majored first in theatre, at Tisch School of the Arts, and then moved on to graduate with a degree in english and creative writing from the Gallatin Division. She turned down a fellowship in publishing to travel the world, in order to gain a different kind of education. She wandered over the globe working in various countries, including teaching snowboarding in New Zealand and Montana and selling chocolate brownies in Ecuador. She returned to New York City in 1996, and began work on a novel. Her roommate gave her a flyer for a yoga studio in the neighborhood so she could do some form of exercise. Lauren had always thought yoga was snore-bore, until she stepped foot into the Jivamukti yoga studio on Second Avenue; her life was forever changed. After completing a yoga teacher training program in 1997, she taught yoga in New York City at Integral Yoga Ashram in the West Village, before relocating to Montana and beginning to teach classes there. Life in the city felt stultifying to her. She was used to playing in big mountains. She founded and operated the first yoga studio in Northwest Montana, Satsang Yoga Center, for three years, before dissolving it and relocating to Canada as a war protester. In her first winter in Canada, her amazing yoga teacher, Mary-Jo Fetterly, had a ski accident that left her a quadraplegic. The loss of her yoga teacher, and her own studio, made Lauren re-evaluate her life, and she stopped teaching yoga for the next seven years. During this time she pursed her passion for the arts, continuing to write novels and screenplays, play in a folk band, and train as a sculptural welder. She also continued traveling the globe, spending time in New Zealand, Europe, Alaska, and the far northern reaches of Canada. She spent time immersed in the primitive skills practices of Tom Brown Jr. studying at his schools in California and New Jersey. She also discovered the work of Donna Eden, author of Energy Medicine, and began her lifelong immersion into Donna’s work. With the election of Barack Obama, she moved back to the United States, to a tiny town in Vermont. Her yoga teacher at the time told her she needed to start teaching again. So she started teaching again at Norwich University, and the experience there changed her life, renewing her devotion to the transformative power of yoga. She put to use her diverse and eclectic background to create a program that the young men and women of Norwich could use on their own fierce journeys in the world. That program became Energy Medicine Yoga. She also continued her artistic endeavors, writing a musical, SLaM: The Hockey Rock Opera, which was performed to sold-out houses in Montpelier, Vermont, and received a notice in The New York Times. It went on to a musical theater festival in upstate New York. Lauren rewrote it as a screenplay, and it is currently under option for production. With the success of EMYoga, Lauren has put her attention on teaching, training teachers, and sharing the powerful and simple tools that she’s gained over the years. Energy Medicine Yoga – Lauren Walker from Sounds True on Vimeo.
“Sometimes I feel like the Accidental Yogi,” she recently said in an interview. “My life’s path has been so wild and varied. I could just as easily ended up in theater or film, writing novels or performing music. It is a stroke of dharma that the yoga practice I created to heal my own wounds and trauma is becoming so popular. It truly is a culmination of everything I’ve ever learned. From the joy of creativity, to the discipline, to the power of freeing your mind from dogma. Yoga, which means union, has literally united all of these different aspects of my life… But I still don’t really consider myself a ‘yogi’. I’m just struggling through life, like everyone else. Using tools I’ve learned to mitigate the challenges we all face. There is no magic bullet to having a good life. Like everything else, its a practice.”
ABOUT Energy Medicine Yoga:
Energy Medicine Yoga is a tantra-based practice. The Sanskrit word tantra means “to weave and to stretch towards.” More broadly it also refers to systematic techniques for achieving a particular outcome. The yoga part of EMYoga is grounded in a practice with emphasis on various techniques to help you accept your innate perfection and from there transform into, or stretch toward, becoming your best self. When I first started studying tantra yoga, I was amazed at all the things involved that seemed to have nothing to do with my idea of “yoga”—things like Vedic astrology, gemology, and aromatherapy, as well as things like gratitude, journaling, and rituals. But as I’ve come to understand the deeper meaning and power of yoga, it all makes perfect sense. If we want to reach the goal of ultimate union with ourselves, and with the divine, we need to master more than just the physical body. In EMYoga you’ll learn asana practices (physical postures) that incorporate poses and moves to access your underlying energy. Some of the poses look similar to yoga poses you may already be familiar with. Others will be complete departures from standard yoga and are used to influence specific flows of energy. You’ll use the electromagnetic energy of your own body, often with your hands, to affect the energy in your body – sort of like those old games where you pull a magnet around to draw features on a face with iron shillings. The power and comprehensive practices of EMYoga incorporate pranayama (breathing practices), meditation, visualization, journaling, EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) tapping, nutrition, diet, body image, and belief systems. The beauty of energy work is that it translates into every facet of your life—from what, how, and when you eat to how you think and how you feel about your body, mind, and life. It only starts on the mat. EMYoga touches every area of your life because energy touches every area of your life. The result of this practice is a deep love, appreciation, and acceptance of yourself just as you are now. This is one of the most powerful takeaways: self-love. From that place, all healing, transformation, contentment, and peace are possible. Being in flow with life, having gratitude for your very existence and experiences, joy at your abilities, compassion for others—these are the gifts life has to offer and the fruits of your EMYoga practice.
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