Laura Guilliams and I have been knowing each other for a long while now, since we met in a tiny, quirky town in the Blue Ridge Mountains where we both once lived. In the years since, I’ve watched as she’s deepened her yoga practice, recently combining it with her long-standing victim advocacy work into a budding yoga therapy practice. Along the way, she and I have been doing some parallel work to let go of some deep and pernicious people-pleasing habits and she gave me a whole load more to think about in this conversation. Also, she has chickens.
There were some connection glitches during this conversation but since they didn’t interrupt the flow of conversation, Laura and I decided to let them roll. After all, this is an intentionally wabi-sabi project of being exactly where we are.
Laura Guilliams got a jarring wake-up call some years ago when a trusted teacher referred to her longstanding people-pleasing tendencies as a God complex. In the years since, she’s worked to find a healthier balance between her deep drive to make the world a better place and the boundaries she needs to both care for herself and give those she seeks to serve the full respect they deserve.
Find show notes at: https://rawzcoaching.com/laura-guilliams
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About Laura Guilliams | Advocate, activist, yogini, country gal
Laura Guilliams, MA, RYT-500, is the founder and owner of Laura Guilliams Yoga & Wellness, providing individual and small group yoga to survivors of trauma. She earned a Bachelor's Degree in Communication at Radford University (Radford, Va.) and a Master's of Educational Leadership from the University of Central Florida (Orlando). She has served survivors of interpersonal violence for 20 years in the education and non-profit sectors where she has provided crisis intervention and advocacy to survivors as well as advocated on the local, state, and federal levels.
She has been a student of yoga for more than 25 years and has been teaching since 2014. She is currently working toward her yoga therapy certification with her teacher, Sarahjoy Marsh.
She lives on unceded Saponi and Tutelo land colonized as Ferrum, Va. with her goodest boy, Duke (a shepherd mix of some sort) and her 14 entertaining chickens. She is a certified aromatherapist and a student of plant and herbal medicine, using her knowledge and skills in her small handmade soap business. She also loves to cook and makes a mean celiac-friendly, gluten--free gravy biscuit!
Laura Guilliams Yoga & Wellness:
www.lauraguilliams.com
Instagram: @lauraguilliams
Mountain Laurel Apothecary:
www.mountainlaurelapothecary.com
Instagram: @mtlaurelapothecary
Laura highlighted Ursula’s Café, a Roanoke, VA, a pay-what-you-can non-profit working to feed everybody regardless of their ability to pay; it’s also an event and community-arts center with a focus on inclusivity. Learn more at: https://www.ursulascafe.org/
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All Up in It is a project by coach SB Rawz focused on telling stories of growth and change from the thick of learning. Learn more about SB & her projects at https://rawzcoaching.com
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