Laura Jane M.A. E-RYT.. Yoga Teacher

Laura Jane Mellencamp, M.A.,E-RYT has over 20 years of yoga teaching experience. She is the founder and director of Yoga Among Friends, based in Downers Grove, IL, a suburban of Chicago. In 1998, she opened Yoga Among
Friends. Certified by the White Lotus Foundation in Santa Barbara, California, and having studied with B.K.S. Iyengar, K. Pattabhi Jois, Richard Miller, Rod Stryker and Erich Schiffmann, she brought many years of yoga training and experience to eager students.

Laura Jane was a yoga teacher in Los Angeles from 1989-1995 before she heard her calling to "the heartland." She was teaching jam-packed classes at YogaWorks in Santa Monica and the Center for Yoga owned by Ganga White and Tracey Rich. She had many celebrity private clients as well. But the fast pace of L.A. wasn't for her. Rather, Laura Jane said, she "was looking for community and intimacy."

When she decided to leave Los Angeles, Laura Jane knew she wanted to live near a metropolitan area but not in one. So in 1995 she moved to Naperville because she had a friend there. Laura Jane "fell in love with the land of the prairie-a place without earthquakes and little concrete." She met "great people here with big hearts and no ego." She explained, "The area was a place where my first three chakras felt right at home and I could feel grounded."

Laura Jane started teaching yoga wherever she could-at health clubs and renting little spaces here and there. At the time, there were no yoga centers in the suburbs and relatively few in the city. When she felt she had developed a big enough student following, she opened Yoga Among Friends in a renovated warehouse space in downtown Downers Grove. Soon after, two of her students, Joyce Owens and Ellen Duff, went off to be certified by the White Lotus Foundation, after which Laura Jane brought them on as yoga teachers, along with her good friend Michael Taylor, an Iyengar instructor. Since then
Laura Jane has added nine more teachers. She feels "each teacher brings their own gifts and an opportunity for students to go deeper with their yoga practice."

Her intention at Yoga Among Friends is to create an "open-minded,
open-hearted community center which provides students a safe environment to grow." Having a master's degree in psychotherapy and clinical psychology, Laura Jane incorporates her understanding of the mind and behavior into her yoga classes, encouraging students to break free of their rigid patterns and habits to release themselves physically, mentally and spiritually. She combines the work of the five layers of the mind to reach the authenic self. Currently, Laura is in year 2 of the four year yoga therapy program, 1000hr training under Desikchar in Chenni, India.

Laura Jane Mellencamp M.A. RYT, Dir. Yoga Among Friends..... Visit Laura Jane's website: www.yogaamongfriends.com