Alyssa is a singer, songwriter, yogi, metaphysician, and contributing editor for Earth Mamma that lives in Utopia, Ontario. Stay tuned for more posts about yoga, healing, gardening, and child care.
It was within the first few classes of me dabbling in yoga that I had the realization that unlike the fashion world, Yoga wasnʼt about the clothes I was wearing, the accessories (my mat), how many celebrities were in the room, or if I was or looked the best in the studio. Rather, it was about closing my eyes, tuning in and creating a still mind through letting go of all the judgements and to-do lists, and when I started to do this, my life suddenly began to take a huge turn and transformation. The more and more yoga I practiced, with closed eyes and a still mind, the more I started to hear a inner voice that I immediately identified with as a deep inner truth. Everything it said and showed me resonated with me on such a deep soul level as right.
Yoga quickly went from a fun thing with friends once a month, to once a week, to every day, to a devoted practice twice a day, while spending the other majority of my day in meditation and also playing and writing music. The practice of tuning inward was slowly drawing me into my authentic self as a girl who loved to create music, write, be in nature, love, stand up for the wellness of the people, the planet and animals upon it, while continuing to create various forms of beauty. I can now say this transformation was for the best possible outcome imaginable, though, at the time, many watching may have thought it was for the worst!
With spending so much time practicing and honoring that which my heart and soul were calling me to do, I started receiving very clear, inspired ideas and visions which painted the picture of me living in a whole different way than I had been. From the parties, drugs, sex, glamour, money and living in the fast lane I did a 180 and began to devout myself to living more of a yogic life style and doing my best to act with pure intention.
As I seemingly left my career as an actress and model living in Hollywood and NYC, I certainly got the sense that my managers, agents and everyone else around me had thought I was not only making a bad move by stepping away from my career, but perhaps that I had gone right mad! I got the sense that they felt I was about to pick up the pot of gold and instead took a left turn and stepped off the side of a cliff.
Looking back now over the last 7 years, I certainly did take a step off the cliff when I left my career and life of traveling in glamour and luxury around the globe, gave away all my earthly belongings, cut all my ties with my agencies and went to my family farm in rural Ontario. I moved back to a very small town called Utopia, lived off my savings until they were gone, was faced with every childhood issue that I ever ran from, experienced various forms of dis-ease as I peeled back the layers of my wounds and unconsciousness. In the midst of the can of worms that I had opened, I carried and birthed two children with a partner whom I separated from with practically no money to live off. Ahhh! It was intense! But I am through it! I can honestly say that Yoga and meditation were my rock, and where I found solitude in the center of my storm.
When I found yoga I was living by the seat of my pants, constantly bumping off the walls to find where my boundaries were, constantly creating negative karma, battling bouts of depression, anxiety and feelings of loneliness and self medicating through every external momentary void filler out there. Through yoga and meditation I found an everlasting inner peace and contentment, I learned to forgive myself and my mistakes as I walked down the path of peeling back my own layers of unconsciousness and destructive thought patterns and behaviors.
Yoga and meditation have been the keys that have continued to open the door to communicating with the Great Spirit for me. The practice of them has hooked me up to the mamma vine so to speak and through it this force of flowing wisdom has led back to the earth, guiding me in growing my own organic food with my own hands, instructing me to follow my instincts, moving me to unconditionally care for my children, even though at the time, it appeared I didnʼt have the financial means or even the energy to do so. Through this experience and the daily inward tuning in, I have learned to tap into a reserve of strength that has prevailed and is always within me ready to climb any mountain. Through Yoga and meditation, I have become a student of a profoundly growing capacity of unending love and power and I have found it within.
Yoga and meditation have brought me into a place where I have learned to love myself when it seemed no one else did. Through this deep inner connecting and union with the divine, spirit has guided me through the flames of transformation, from burning off all that was un-serving and unsupportive of my highest life into the continuous expansion of my consciousness and the embodiment of grander expressions of divine love, peace, harmony and bliss. Most transformingly, spirit has taught me to trust the current of infinite wisdom within to guide me in every moment of the day. Doing so has filled me with peace, love, joy and contentment for exactly where I am presently, regardless of the circumstances and has opened the space for me to create so much beauty!
Yes I may have stepped off the cliff and yes it may have all seemed a bit nuts! Yes, I definitely hit rock bottom (which made me come to understand the depths on my inner strength) and I got hit by the tornado, but through it all, I learned to become the eye of the tornado, the observer, and that is yet another piece of gold Iʼve found in the pot of yoga and meditation. That left turn and off the cliff and hitting the bottom led me to the pot of gold of self realization and the uncovering of the empowered fulfillment of feeling my own growing authentic and holistic success and true wellness all found through the continuous and devoted practice of Yoga and meditation.
Beautiful spirit… and gorgeous pics!