Hello, I’m Lara
I create moments to soften into deeper connection and shine a light on what’s been left unspoken.
I’m all about choice and remembering we are co-creating our experience.
I’m learning to view life through the lens of everything is happening for me and remembering to make art when it’s time to bring more beauty into the world.
My ongoing apprenticeship within Shipibo lineage of plant dieta has led me to sitting in isolation in the Amazon jungle for weeks at a time, regularly fasting from food and water, surrendering to life without distraction to learn directly from nature through the spirit of the plants. They teach me a lot about what it means to devote, giving loving attention to what already is, and to accept what is happening in this moment without resistance.
Life is a process to surrender to.
Meanwhile, my inner artist teaches me what it means to participate with life, and how to move any unwanted energy through creativity to transform my experience. Because of her, I remember I am a co-creator who is free to choose when to alchemise my inner world, and in whatever which way makes sense to my heart, through art forms like poetry, song, dance, visual art, and prayer.
Life is also art to create with.
I work with people who are experiencing a loudness in their lives. Those wanting to get quiet enough to listen to the voice inside them that knows. Who are learning the art of listening to what their experience is trying to reveal to them about the disharmony happening beneath the surface story. Often calling out for attention through pain or illness in the body or mind, or challenges in intimate relationships. Whatever brought you here, I don’t believe in coincidences, this is a chosen part in your story – even if you only glanced.
Life is made with intention.
A bit about my journey
I’ve lived a life so far that, when I look back on it, makes me feel a lot of gratitude for being here today. I have that “how am I even alive?” voice that reminds me to not ever miss out on feeling that gratitude fully.
We have to live with the choices that we make until we forgive ourselves for them. I see forgiveness as accepting every version of me that I have ever been. Not condoning her actions, but accepting responsibility for them, and having compassion for the place of hurt that those choices were made from.
I’m talking about the darker choices of course. I made a lot of reckless ones when I was spiritually bypassing a tonne of pain that I was in. I hurt my body a lot, and also hurt others too; some that I barely knew, and some that I love deeply.
I’ve had my own “hell and back” journey, which I imagine you might relate to if you’re here. I wrote a poetry book to piece together the versions of myself I was throughout a period of dissociation and bypassing. Poetry can be a mask for a denser depth, and there is a grittier story that holds the bones of this beauty. One that took me 6 years through psychosis
Embodiment saved me. I felt the sh**tiest things that I never wanted to feel; the things that, up till then, I had avoided feeling at all cost - and it was horrible, but that was it. It was horrible. Then it wasn’t. It passed. What I thought would never end, did. And all I had to do was feel it.
At this point, I’m pretty sure all of life just needs to be witnessed. By a loving awareness. Sometimes it’s soft and other times it’s fierce and wears the face of a jaguar protecting her cubs. Sometimes we can do it for ourselves, other times we need somebody else. I’m working on being that loving awareness, for myself, and for whoever else needs me to be it for them.