Lauren Flynn says that one of the major reasons she decided to focus her professional life on teaching yoga is that “Yoga has saved my life on more than one occasion.”
It sounds pretty dramatic and it is. After a few years of teaching surfers basic moves in impromptu classes in Malibu, she attended a six week residential yoga teacher training at Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health in Lennox, Massachusetts. Upon her return to the west coast, her home burned down and she moved up the coast to study under a Vedic monk in Carpinteria. Until her second home burned down just a year later in the 2008 Tea Fire. “It was a time where I had no choice but to rely on myself and my inner resources to survive.”
She continued her personal practice and taught yoga while working through the PTSD from the two natural disasters. Eventually she decided to move to Boulder, Colorado to be closer to family and integrate her self-knowledge and what had been unearthed by the trauma of natural disaster. It was during this time she experienced her third disaster – a flood along the Front Range in 2013 – that once again wiped her out.
“I had deliberately entered into a spiritual practice where I wanted a healthy relationship to attachment and I got it. I just forgot to tell the universe I’d received the lesson after the first fire.”
She continued to lean heavily on her yoga practice while moving deeper into songwriting and producing music. “That’s when things really began to click for me – at the intersection of the search for self-knowledge, healing and creativity.”
She expanded her classroom teachings to retreats, partnering with others to offer things like “Hiking as Meditation” at the Shambhala Center in Northern Colorado, teaching breath-work techniques to vocalists and writing for Elephant Journal and other popular publications at the time. Her curiosity around meditation prompted her to take a Biopsychology class to learn about the nervous system which lead to a two year study of astrophysics. “To me it’s all different branches of the same tree.”
In 2017 she realized that she had started to rely heavily on drinking to ease the anxiety from the natural disasters so she made the decision to quit cold turkey. It was then that she decided she wanted a slower pace of life and a quieter life. “I was on the phone with a friend who lived on Whidbey and she was jokingly complaining that there wasn’t much to do past 9:00 pm, and I thought ‘that’s where I want to be.” So she packed up her car, headed up for a visit and never left.
Lauren’s strength is in private lessons, where she can hone in on a student’s personal needs in the physical, spiritual and emotional realms to assist people in creating a practice that is unique to them. She has used her practice as an aid in her sobriety and recovery path, and she passes that knowledge along to her students. She uses the intuition that is often unlocked for people who have been through severe and complex trauma. She also leads the occasional Restorative Yoga classes with live music, where she guides students into postures supported by props, walks them through breathing instructions and sings and plays guitar while students enjoy deep relaxation and song. “My practice started in Redmond, WA in 1996 as an athletic activity that I thought was pretty cool because Madonna was doing it. Over the years and in my travels, I’ve been lucky enough to study with teachers like Richard Freeman, Seane Corn and Bo Forbes, who have taught me about whole body integration, the mind, and the benefits of slowing down.”
Lauren is available for private instruction for individuals or groups and teaches public classes as well. To join her mailing list, read testimonials and learn more, visit her website: www.laurenflynnyoga.com
