Lauren Walker, Founder of EMYoga and Best-Selling Author of The Energy To Heal, shares her passion and experience of EMYoga with MysticMag. She elaborates on this amazing practice that is slowly but surely taking the world by storm.
Lauren, what can you tell us about your personal spiritual growth and development and how this journey has led you to where you are today?
I always think that for many people, and myself included, we don’t necessarily choose to be on a spiritual path but are thrown onto this path by circumstance. My father died unexpectedly when he was 49, and shortly thereafter my cousin died of cancer at the age of 15. The trauma and the ‘unfairness’ of my father’s death was the beginning of my spiritual journey, and the death of my cousin exacerbated my quest for meaning in life.
Six months after my father died, I went to New Zealand and was introduced to Reiki, Astrology, rebirthing, fire walking and energy medicine… All of these modalities brought me out of my mechanistic understanding of the world and took me down a different path. From this time on I have stayed on this journey of trying to understand the world and my place within it, how to keep my heart open in the face of traumatic and devastating experiences that, because of the abundance of the Universe, will continue on forever. Having a spiritual connection is so important so we can maintain our sanity and more importantly, continue our growth.
What is EMYoga’s philosophy and mission?
The philosophy is the understanding that energy is all there is. We are made of energy and we can shift our energy and experience massive changes and transformations that flow and stem from this, empowering the individual to understand that we have a co-creative power in our lives. We do not live in a mechanistic Universe but in an energetic Quantum Universe.
Our mission is to heal the world. This is of course a heavy lift, but it is important to have a mission statement that guides us in life. We want to be part of the evolution of the planet. This requires healing, and shifting of the mindset from scarcity to abundance and from fear to inclusivity.
How does Energy Medicine Yoga actually work and how can it be adapted into everyday life?
It works on the philosophy and understanding that energy is all there is. If you work with your energy primarily and foundationally to organize and harmonize it – health, manifestation, joy and thriving inherently all flow from that. We work with energy in a way that is very attainable. Energy is a tactile experience and in an EMYoga practice you are able to feel your energy very quickly and find ways to move and work with this energy and bring it into coherence. We have techniques that bring you into that feeling sense of your energy such as massaging and tapping, holding certain points… We work on the physical body and in the fields around the body. We work with these practices and perform them in the context of a traditional yoga practice.
Many of these exercises can be taken off the mat into any area of your life. The release of the energetics takes the trauma out of the body. We encourage people to create a daily practice, to have a relationship with their energy. The more that this relationship is cultivated, healthy patterns or habits are formed and from here the person is able to co-create more beneficial energies in the body, which leads to better experiences in every area of life.
We encourage people to use these one-offs when they need them and then to create a consistent practice so that they listen to the ‘whisper’ as opposed to waiting for the brick over the head. The body is constantly giving us information and talking to us but if we don’t know how to listen to this information – then it is lost in translation. We want to teach people how to hear and understand it.
What would you describe to be the immediate benefits of this practice?
Whatever it is that you are working on, you will start to feel better and notice things very quickly. You will start to feel your energy. It is one thing to understand intellectually that you are made of energy, but it is another to feel it in your hands and to actually transform things – your sleep is better, your relationships are better, your stress levels lower, everything starts to be better…
Initially, one may feel destabilized and experience a detox curve as we are shifting these patterns that are so firmly held in our bodies, energy fields and systems. The body has a mechanism that resists change. This is why we teach people to cope with this and encourage people to take warm baths in salt water, stay hydrated and other techniques that allow the energy to shift while staying safe at the same time. We want to get to that place where we are thriving in our lives but we are mindful that there is a transition time into this.
Is Energy Medicine gaining in popularity internationally and how do you see the future of this discipline?
It has been gaining hugely in popularity and a couple of my books have even been translated into several different languages. EMYoga has certified teachers all over the world. We have a robust internet reach and have about 50-60 countries represented in our classes.
We often hear, especially from our students that become certified EMYoga teachers, that they were bored with traditional yoga, they were no longer seeing results and benefits, were unhappy with the politics that surrounded the practice, and were close to quitting altogether. When they came across EMYoga, everything shifted for them and they started to feel real significant changes in their lives.
I hope that EMYoga becomes one of the dominant systems in the schools of yoga across the world. I have practiced many different styles in different traditions of yoga and none of them are as comprehensive, inclusive and holistic as EMYoga is. I say this as the founder of EMYoga but also hear this from many students and teachers of EMYoga around the world. I have had teachers say to me that it should be in every single yoga studio around the planet. I have to agree and my hope is that someday it will!
If you would like to find out more about EMYoga, visit https://www.energymedicineyoga.net/ or follow on https://www.instagram.com/energymedicineyoga/
