We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Laura Adrian. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Laura below.
Laura, appreciate you joining us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?
I’ve spent the majority of my life how to overcome adversity. In high school I experienced anxiety and depression. I was drawn to yoga because I simply felt better when I practiced. As with many of us, I’ve been following breadcrumbs since, learning new tools, philosophies, and practices as I go to deal with the waves of life.
One of my on-going passions growing up was nature. I grew up on 15 acres in Minnesota and nature was always a place that offered comfort for me during life’s storms. My dad taught me how to camp and some basic wilderness skills, so throughout my life, I’ve always been very comfortable in the backcountry. I would go on backpacking trips in Northern Minnesota, often by myself. I also went sea kayaking in the Apostle Islands of Lake Superior and it took my breath away.
In my mid-twenties I was a yoga teacher and the idea popped into my head that I could lead a yoga retreat to the Apostle Islands. I sat on the idea for a year or two and then idea just didn’t go away. I decided to just look into it more, and one step at a time created the wilderness experience. I had so many worries and doubts about the whole thing. To my surprise, there was a lot of excitement and the retreat sold out quickly. There seemed to be a real need for adventurous, empowered nature travel. Since then I’ve been combining yoga, empowerment, and nature in creative ways!
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I help people overcome difficulties through deliberately crafted nature experiences. My signature 5 day retreats help become face adversity with the support of nature. People come wanting to unplug from the stresses of life or wanting to shift a negative habit. Research shows that just being in nature has benefits. It can help us release stress and relax. Nature can also help us become more creative. The uplifting and supportive effects of nature coupled with tools for growth, healing, and transformation make for a one-of-a-kind experience that changes people’s lives.
I have studied so many healing modalities as I’ve worked through life’s challenges. What makes my work unique is synergy. I am always creating innovative tools that work with the mind, heart, body, and collective to create genuine change for the better in people’s lives.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
Even years into teaching yoga, I would always find teachers that I looked up to and I would try to be like them. I would see that they had a lot of success and their classes were packed. I wanted their success. For years, I would try to do what they did. I would try to follow their business model or even teach some of the things they did.
It worked okay, but things really took off for me when I started to embrace who I was. I have always studied many modalities and philosophies. A super-strength of mine is seeing connection and synergy. One of the first ways I started to combine modalities was by combining yoga and nature connection. I felt more energized when I did things my own way verses trying to mimic someone else’s way. Since then the universe has confirmed this time and time again: when I’m true to myself it feels more aligned and people seem to get more out of it as well!
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
In my mid-twenties, as I was just beginning my passion-filled journey as a yoga teacher and holistic healer, my life took a turn for the worst. I quit my job as a research chemist at 3M to live what I thought would be a more relaxed and inspired life as I slowly grew my business. The key word here is slowly, because six short months later I was at rock bottom, stressed, broke, and sick.
I lay in my bed on the 4th of July 2014 avoiding getting out of bed, as my body felt stiff with tension, which was unusual because I hadn’t lifted weights or done anything physically strenuous the day before. What’s more is when I mustered up the courage to move, my neck and shoulders moved together as if they were one unit. Any other attempt to move turn my head from side to side or shrug my shoulders, would add to the tremendous pain I was already in.
Days later, the dots connected. I spotted a red circle on my back with a red dot in the center—the Lyme disease bullseye. With no medical insurance and no more than $200 in the bank, I found myself frozen in fear. I headed to the computer and began searching for possible treatments, success stories, and regrettably horror stories. In a given hour my mind would swing from “I can heal this!” to “This is ruining my life.”
The emotional, financial, and physical stress, I tumbled down to a rock bottom moment. Any one of those stresses alone would be challenging enough, but all three combined turned into a colossal monster that was tearing apart my life.
Of course, it didn’t help to research the negative consequences of Lyme disease. As I searched the internet, I found that Lymes can cause serious problems. For example, Lyme arthritis can cause ongoing joint pain, swelling, and stiffness, mainly affecting the knees. It can also cause neurological problems including memory problems, cognitive difficulties, numbness or tingling sensations, and even more severe neurological conditions. In addition, Lyme disease can affect the heart, leading to irregular heartbeat and other cardiac problems. It can also impact other organs such as the liver or eyes. The wondering of “what-if?” added fuel to the worry fire in my head.
While I prayed and prayed for a simple, easy, solution, in hindsight, I’ve learned that some of our greatest challenges, these rock bottom moments, are a rich place where we can cultivate wisdom, compassion, and inner strength. Oftentimes, when we look back, there are beautiful gifts we’ve received from overcoming challenges. That is the case for me here, because it helped me to understand myself and the healing power of the Earth in a new way, that I would have never known through experience.
One of the big decisions for me was whether or not to pursue conventional treatment with antibiotics (doxycycline) or treat with natural medicine. Because I had believed the tick bite occurred less than three weeks ago, I first tried conventional medicine. From what I read, it sounded like if you catch Lyme’s within 3 weeks, antibiotics are the way to go. Unfortunately, as I took the antibiotics my energy lowered and my body still ached just as before if not worse. As I considered the side effects of long-term antibiotic use, I decided to go all in with natural medicine—herbs, energy healing, acupuncture, and direct nature connection.
As I struggled to cope with the decreasing money in my bank account from my business just getting off the ground, I somehow mustered the strength to continue teaching yoga which yielded a financial trickle. Yet I remember sliding down the downward spiral of thoughts, one worry building on the previous. The mental game was at least as difficult as the physical game. And then something happened that changed everything: I was gifted with a special practice from a new friend.
Sarah had studied the power of the direct healing from Earth connection through Warren Grossman. Warren was a psychologist whose mind and heart were opened to the healing power of simply touching the earth and paying attention while you do it.
As Sarah explained to me about how the practice of directly contacting the Earth by going on barefoot walk or lying on the Earth had literally saved her from a mid-life crisis, I was somewhat skeptical. One of the reasons I was skeptical is because I was already in nature quite a bit, so how could touching the Earth be much different from going for a hike in my tennies?
But what choice did I have? My world was crumbling around me and with no downside, I invited her to guide me through the simple practice in a little park near my home in St Paul. I placed a blanket on the ground under a grand cottonwood and took a few deep breaths. As I rested on the Earth, I remember feeling shocked at first, because there was nothing to do. I was so accustomed to staying busy with something, either work or something on the computer, it felt unusual! “Shouldn’t I be doing something?” I wondered. As my body began to relax the stress of the quiet dissolved and I felt a brand new feeling: the relief and joy of not needing to be productive or accomplish anything.
As I deepened into the experience, my body began to feel tingly. With my eyes closed, I felt connected to the support of the Earth and like I was being cradled by the most benevolent, loving mother. When I came out of the experience, I was surprised to see that 45 minutes had passed, when it seemed like a very short while. Physically I noticed the pain had let up for the first time since my symptoms began. I felt rejuvenated. And the emotional impacts were clear: In a time in my life where I was pushed around by physical pain, worry, and hopelessness, I felt fed by a wellspring of peace. From this simple practice of lying on the Earth I had tapped into a support system that I had no idea existed, yet was here all along, available for free, as long as I took the time to make practice.
I diligently took care of my body, heart, and mind through natural treatments. Day after day I practiced yoga, lied on the Earth, took a slew of herbs and stuck to an anti-inflammatory diet. Weeks passed and my mental health improved remarkably. I no longer went down slippery slope of negative thinking. While my mental health had made surprising progress I still felt tired on the regular. I would teach a yoga class and then spend the rest of the day in bed recovering like I had just ran a marathon.
I remember a moment in my tiny kitchen. I was looking out at the oak trees one November morning after my yoga practice, feeling a distinct sense of peace with whatever would happen with Lyme disease and my health. I was okay if I had Lyme symptoms my whole life. Not that I would be happy with it, but I wouldn’t let it ruin my life. I thought to myself, “I’ll stack the deck in my favor, do everything I can, and now I’m going to see what happens.” I felt as if I were falling and surrendering to the flow of life. Surrender for me didn’t mean giving up, no, no. It meant that I can control some things like what I eat and what I do, yet I can’t control what I heal, how, or when.
After the moment in the kitchen something seemed to shift.
Over the course of weeks, my energy improved, my pain decreased, and I could turn my head from side to side without pain. The symptoms dissipated. I had my life back. Yet, I was a new person from the experience. First of all, I had just witnessed a miracle in my own life. I had a reverence for life and an appreciation for my health that I hadn’t had before. Secondly, I was now a hard-core advocate for natural medicine (as it was clearly worked better than conventional medicine), especially this direct connection with the Earth. It struck me that more people didn’t know about this because its free, simple, and very powerful.
Have you ever experienced something awesome and you just can’t stop talking about it? That’s how I feel about simple nature practices. Since I’ve healed Lyme’s I’ve been teaching classes on grounding and nature-based healing. Through Whole Life Elevation, I teach classes in city parks or quieter regional parks. I also lead 5-day nature immersions where I guide people through practices such as lying on the Earth. To this day it still strikes me how intuitive these practices are (it’s like we evolved in nature), especially when given some instruction.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.wholelifeelevation.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wholelifeelevation/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WholeLifeElevation
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laura-adrian-0a1b044a/