Laura Plumb (USA)
Best selling Author, Television Host, Ayurveda counselor, Yoga Therapist, Jyotish
Laura Plumb, author of the best-selling book Ayurveda Cooking For Beginners, director of VedaWise, and creator of numerous courses and series on Ayurveda, Laura promotes sacred, sumptuous living through the Vedic sciences of Ayurveda, Jyotish, Mantra and Devi Sadhana. She has studied with some of the great masters of our time, practicing and sharing what she has learned from the heart-centered wisdom schools of the world. Her blog food-alovestory.com is an inspirational resource for Ayurvedic nourishment and delight.
What's your definition of a SoulJour?
A souljour is one who awakens to light (jour de soleil), one who journeys the mystical realm of the soul (soul journey), one who fearlessly stands for the indivisible, inextinguishable,immortal being, one who lives as Gandhi called us to live as a warrior of peace, a warrior for the rights and dignity of all.
What mantra (motto/quote/belief) do you live by?
“I wish I could show you when you are lonely or in darkness the astonishing light of your own being.”
- Hafiz of Shiraz
“Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.”
- Rainer Maria Rilke
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves... Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
- Rainer Maria Rilke
The above quotes inspire me, informing how I want to show up for myself and others. They are at the core of my teaching. The mantra, though, that I live by is the Hanuman Chaleesa. It sings each day alive, wrapping me in a shield of love and well-being.
What’s been your biggest life challenge?
I am not a person to share my life challenges, but truly there have been many which have torn and scraped to the bone. I sometimes feel as though early on I declared my core principles to live by - to which life responded, "Oh yeah? Well try this!" and then socked me with the greatest possible challenge. Rinse, repeat.
When I consider the challenges of my life I consider them opportunities to live my values under any and every circumstance, no matter what, to prove my heart and to make my life an expression of my deepest desires for all life - which is to love, to belong, to uplift. That energizes me to get up after being knocked down, open my arms wide, and take the next brave step forward.
What’s #1 on your bucket list at the moment?
I am looking forward to going to one of India's national parks to see the tigers. Big animals remind us that life is so much wilder than we usually dare to imagine. It's liberating, and at the same time somehow comforting. Nature is such a great healer and can itself be a great Yoga - a place where we experience unity and transcendence.
What does yoga mean to you?
Yoga, as a word, is said to mean union. As a practice, to me it means union with life. It helps me begin each day feeling whole, and end each day reconnecting all the various parts of me that went out into the world to make the most of a day.
Yoga is about listening to the voice of the heart, the wisdom of source, the intuition that arises from silence. It is about knowing our wholeness, and that we belong to the whole - the whole world, the whole of life, the wholeness that can be experienced in a moment. To be reunited with our primary life force through Yoga is to reknit ourselves back into the fabric of oneness, the weave of existence where we feel ourselves at once strong in self and energetically connected to all life everywhere throughout time.