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One of the women in the room who had been adopted, she had the most profound healing experience because the rules she had been playing by was that she was never wanted and she had never known her birth mom and in that moment she forgave her birth mom and as soon as that happened, she got on the phone with her mom and thanked her for always wanting her.
– Laura Wieck
Laura Wieck: One of the women in the room who had been adopted, she had the most profound healing experience because the rules she had been playing by was that she was never wanted and she had never known her birth mom and in that moment she forgave her birth mom and as soon as that happened, she got on the phone with her mom and thanked her for always wanting her.
Darla LeDoux: Hello and welcome to today’s episode of Retreat and Grow Rich, the podcast. I am super excited to be here with Laura Wieck. She is the founder of BodyMind coaching. She has a BodyMind coaching certification program and she also has coming soon a brand new bodymindliving.com which we’ll talk about. So Laura is passionate about helping holistic practitioners work smarter, not harder while empowering clients to live body-mind connected. Here, we’re going to talk a bit about… Laura has been featured on this podcast before so you can learn about the core of her work in our prior episode, but we’re really wanting to talk about this idea of what it is to be a retreat leader and how you hold life while holding space for your retreat and where those things merge.
So, this conversation sparked when we were doing a series called Transform the Leader and Laura and I happened to be texting about her retreat and some things that were happening on her retreat and it’s such a super unique story and Laura, I just want to set the context of when you’re a retreat leader, you’re getting the transformation as much as your clients. You’re opening this container for what’s possible for people to step into and when you do that, you’re also doing it for yourself and I’ve had all kinds of things happen leading up to a retreat or during a retreat or right after a retreat that are like bizarre things happening in life that have caused me to grow, that have caused me to go, “Oh gosh, this thing is happening… Can I share this on my retreat? It’s really fresh. Can I really grow to be someone who can have this happening in my life and share it on retreat?”
We have to make some of those decisions on the fly with the commitment to transformation, to being present, to being vulnerable, to trusting our own experience of our life and where it meets being a retreat leader. And in particular, I believe, Laura, that a lot of people delay hosting their retreat because they’re afraid shit’s going to happen, right? What if something happens in my life? What if I get sick? What if this happened? What if there’s a hurricane? All sorts of things that our subconscious can imagine and you’ve been hosting retreats for how many years now?
Laura Wieck: I think like four or five now. So…
Darla LeDoux: Four or five years you’ve hosted, I think you do what, like eight a year or something?
Laura Wieck: I’m not as baller as you are. We actually cut down last year. Last year, we only did I think four but yeah, I was doing, like, I think I did six the year before? So it’s kind of alternated, but yeah.
Darla LeDoux: So you’re a pro, we should say.
Laura Wieck: Thanks, thanks, thanks. It’s because I’ve learned from the best! Let’s just give credit where credit’s due. Yes, go ahead.
Darla LeDoux: Yeah. On our previous podcast we talked about how you originally really wanted to take people to a glamorous location around the world and have since settled in that on making it really convenient for you and trusting that people are coming for the transformation and the education you provide and they’ll come anywhere including where it’s convenient for you. So what we want to share about today is your most recent retreat, which thankfully was convenient for you and you weren’t around the world.
Laura Wieck: Oh my goodness, yes!
Darla LeDoux: So first of all, talk just a little bit, we’ll save the juice, talk just a little bit about this retreat like who was coming? Where did it fit in your business model?
Laura Wieck: Okay. So setting the stage, I’m going to add a little precursor for a question you’re going to ask me later because I feel like I have been setting the stage for this retreat in particular probably about six or seven years, because the reason I got online actually showed up in this retreat.
So last year we had some things going on and where is this retreat in the thing. So last year I did choose to keep all of my retreats in my hometown, which is Columbus, Ohio, because I knew that there were some things happening in my life that could be a big shift and that I couldn’t prepare for them the way that my brain wanted me to, right? So I have this body-mind coaching certification program and within it, we have a 12 week online course that we start people up with. They come to a live training, we call it BodyMind Live. Well at this point, we make an invitation, we’ve shifted some things moving forward. So neither here nor there, but we make an invitation for them to step into the next level. My Darla, my inner Darla, and…
Darla LeDoux: The Retreat and Grow Rich business is… [laughing]
Laura Wieck: Yeah! I don’t know where that came from! Yes. Just get the book, do the course, go to Darla’s retreat. You will like… I know we talked last time about numbers which have only gotten better since last time we chatted but yeah. So this is falling three months into, about three months into my live training, and yeah… [laughing] We’ll start there even though… Okay. I don’t know when the reveal is supposed to come so…
Darla LeDoux: So one of the things I was going to say, I love that you said we’re shifting some things for next year because when you master doing business in this way using, like, you learn and then you shift and you learn and then you shift, and that’s part of transforming as a leader, is really optimizing it for your clients effectiveness and for your life. So it’s happening in Columbus, you made the choice to stay local. You have people coming who are in a program, they’ve been with you for a few months, and they’re all coming to Columbus for this retreat.
Laura Wieck: Yes and I will tell you, how you were speaking of like should I change this? Should I move the date? I legit, because the thing that happened in the middle of this retreat, I had a conversation with my team a couple months prior of like, “Do I change the dates of this? Do we keep it the same? Do we move it? I don’t know…” And it was really… I practice drop into your body, tune into your intuition and it was just this moment of like just be here. Trust me, stay with this. It’s going to be okay.
So we chose to keep it exactly how it was, exactly, because we had sold it. We had sold it and we had people starting, which is when I got the news that my life was going to change. So they were actively in this program. I know that something big is going to happen around this. I have absolutely zero control over it, and I think there’s so much that I hear your voice in this, of surrendering and we talk about 20/20, that idea that alignment is not a stagnant point. To me, alignment is like a whisper. You just follow its gentleness and its pull and its nuance and this was something that the whole reason I got online was for this to happen in my life and here it was and I was like my brain wants to control and my body says surrender, trust, I got you.
Darla LeDoux: So you made the choice to listen to your intuition that said keep the retreat dates the same, it’s all going to be good. We got your back. So what happened?
Laura Wieck: I’m like, am I allowed talk about this? Okay. So what happened is smack dab in the middle of my retreat, I had a baby. So [laughing] like three months, what? How does this… I’m not crazy. Yeah, my husband and I welcomed our little baby boy into the world, it is an adoption and what happened was… I’m just going to cry. It was oh my gosh, Darla, it was everything! I want to go through all the details because the whole reason that I got online, I don’t even know how long ago, we’ve been trying to have kids for seven years, so it’s probably about seven years. The whole reason that I got online is because a doctor we went to, I was doing full time massage at the time and this doctor said the only way your chances of getting pregnant are less than 4% and we recommend IVF with ICSI, which if you’re in the fertility world, that is the most expensive IVF, although I’m sure there’s more advanced. It’s crazy what they can do with a sperm and an egg.
And he’s like it’s going to be $15,000 and by the way, you need to physically not work so much, and so having been in the coaching world, and that at that time I knew, “This is an opportunity.” And I had a friend who… I’m sitting here, I’m like, “Make $15,000, work less. Make $15,000, work less…” However, this does not compute in my head! And my friend mentioned, she was like, “Laura, you have this thing that you do,” I’d already been coaching people-
Darla LeDoux: On your massage table. So just so people know.
Laura Wieck: Yeah, I had already done one or two coaching programs at this point. I was a certified coach, I was doing massage and I was playing with this body-mind coaching thing and coaching my clients in creating this methodology and really feeling my way forward. So my friends said, “You know, Laura, what if you taught other massage therapists how to do that?” And that was how I got online, was we had a challenge, a fertility crisis. God’s saying “Hey, make more money and the by the way do less,” and I’m like… [laughing] Right? Which is now that I’m on the other side of this-
Darla LeDoux: And it’s totally your messaging.
Laura Wieck: It totally is, and totally freaking works, right? So that’s what got me online and since that point, I mean it’s together since putting all these things into play, the intention has always been I want to create space in my life, to have a life, to have a family, to have a baby. So what happened is last year we stepped into the adoption process, which is when I made the decision to keep all of my events local because I couldn’t control when this was going to happen. We had been matched twice before and both of those fell apart, and at the time, gut wrenching and also holding the faith that I tell our little boy, I’m like, “We waited seven years for you and you came right on time!? So even though there was heartbreak in all this, it just was the path. I knew it was always going to be okay.
So in late June, the program starts in July, we’ve sold 30 people into it and late June, we get matched. We go to this meeting with a potential birth mom who’s… By the way, Oh my gosh, I have even more stories from when I told you about this. I wrote out an ideal client or ideal birth mom avatar for my birth mom.
Darla LeDoux: Okay guys, write this down.
Laura Wieck: Talk about business market and when we did our profiles for like you have to make a book, I used my graphic designer who is amazing and we did it all on brand and I wrote my copywriting towards my ideal birth mom. All my business tools, I was like, “This is the most important marketing I’ve ever done!” So we go to this meeting, which is like the most awkward meeting of your life because we went to a little Mexican restaurant for lunch and there’s the head of the adoption agency, there’s Casey and I, there’s this birth mom, and she has a three year old, and you have lunch. And it’s like this weird awkward lunch where you’re trying to get to know each other and trying to get a feel for each other and then at the end, you get this call of whether or not the birth mom says yes or no.
It’s just this weird sense of reality and obviously we had been to a couple of those. We had been matched a couple times before, and we walk into this thing and we meet this birth mom and it was just the easiest thing ever. She was exactly everything I wrote down on my ideal birth mom avatar.
And I was like this… [sighing] Right? Because a lot of times and especially with the agency we work with, they get a lot of traumatic things that are coming in, addictions, women who are incarcerated, there’s all this stuff that’s coming in, and you sit down when you do your application and your home study, you have to go through like it is pages long of like, “Would you consider a baby who’s addicted to this, addicted to this? Would you consider a birth mom who did this?” Like, all of these situations, every single thing you have to go and tick off these boxes and it’s really intimidating! It’s really scary, and I get that they’re supposed to prep you for, you don’t know what’s going to show up and every baby needs love, there’s a parent for every child, and I went into this and I said, “We want a healthy birth mom. We want a healthy baby.” Casey wanted a boy. I was like, I just want a healthy baby and it was just so amazing to walk in and it was like we met her and we’re like, “This is cool!”
So we met her right when my program’s about to start and we were told that she was due October 14th, and my workshop was at the end of September. I’m sorry, middle of September. So I’m like, well good, no problem. A week later, we get a message that she had gone to the doctor and her due date got moved up to, my workshop was I think the 18th through 21st and we get this message of like, “By the way, she’s actually due September 24th.” And so I was like, “Holy crap, what do I do?!” And that’s when my team and I sat down and we’re like, “Do we move this? Do we keep this?” And I was like, “We keep it. What else are we supposed to do? We’re going to keep this, it’s going to be fine.”
Darla LeDoux: It’s interesting, I told you before we got on here that we’re moving. We know we’re moving, right? And so there’s the planning of that, and how does that affect the choices you make? And you just got to do it! If you’re in business and you’re doing retreats and you’re worried about things that could happen or people in your life, you just have to make some choices and trust. So, the baby came early.
Laura Wieck: Okay. Yes. It’s not just that. So, we’re going to the appointments with her, which was just such a blessing for us, and the week before, my brain is like trying to control everything. She’s ready to go. She is done being pregnant, ready to go and on the Friday before my retreat, it’s a Wednesday through Saturday or Tuesday through Saturday, we have a little bonus mastermind day on the front end which you graced your presence with and she’s like, we go to this appointment and the doctor says on Friday before my retreat, he says, come back Monday, if you’re ready, we’ll schedule a day to induce, right?
So that weekend I’m sitting here like, what the fuck? What the fuck? What the fuck? Either induce her on Monday, have this baby, good. I don’t have to worry about it or wait till later. My brain was trying to put it into a framework that I could grasp onto and every time I did that I would stress out. I couldn’t breathe. I was completely contracted and constricted around it and I could feel that and again, practice what you preach. I’m like, okay, fuck, it was I think Sunday night. I have this moment and I’m like, you know what? Have you ever heard of a Kylego exercise?
Darla LeDoux: No.
Laura Wieck: It’s something that Kyle Cease teaches. It’s basically future pacing. It’s where you go to a day in the future to write about what happened in the past and then you create your future. Does that make sense? He describes it better. So what I did is I wrote a journal entry for the Sunday after my retreat, so that would have been September 22nd. So I dated September 22nd, this is the Sunday before. I date it for the Sunday after and I write this journal and it says “Thank you universe, thank you God for having this week just be amazing. It was a miracle. I could never have planned for the way this unfolded. I could never have imagined, seen it, planned it. Thank you for providing all the support. Thank you for all the resources showing up. Thank you for my clients having an amazing experience for me to be held. I’m so grateful for how the universe works…” And I just write this letter that’s like I am surrendering control and I am fully going to hand this over to you because, trying to map out and plan what this is going to look like is beyond me. It is not my place. It’s not helping anything. I’m just going to surrender this and I remember writing that letter and I was like, “Love, Laura” and I just felt like the weight just get released off my shoulders, the worry, the anticipation was just gone.
I go to the appointment Monday, find out she’s checking into the hospital Wednesday at midnight to be born on Thursday. My retreat is Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. I was like, “Oh hot damn!”, and at that point I was like, okay, I can work with this. So Tuesday’s wonderful. Again, Darla comes in and talks with my mastermind and we had a great time and thanks Darla and then Wednesday is when the full group comes in and I don’t want to give away any surprises or any of like Darla’s magic but we do an exercise at the end that is designed to really bring the unconscious rules that you’re playing by in your life to the surface and so we do this exercise and we’re about to wrap up for the day. So this is Wednesday night. By the way, the hospital’s about an hour and a half away. This is relevant in this story. So we finish this and I…
Darla LeDoux: And at this point, Laura, does anybody in the room know this is happening in your life?
Laura Wieck: Only my team. Only my team because the other thing is one of the adoptions that we were matched with, the birth mom changed her mind right before the baby was born. So there was still that fear in my heart of like, “What if she changes her mind? What if this doesn’t happen?” I’ve always said this is not official until it’s official. So I was hesitant and also I didn’t want to… I think I was still, as much as I want to say is I had surrendered it, I didn’t want to bring any doubt or fear into their mind, because I think if I had told people, I would have made apologies for it or I would have tried to justify it, or knowing me, I probably would’ve tried to like over-deliver and give even more for this thing. So we did this game and I get up there and I say… and there’s so much in this but, “When I stepped into my entrepreneurial journey, when I got online, when I started my own business, I had so many people who would tell me that’s great that you love to travel and host these retreats and go these places but when you’re a mom, you’re not going to be able to do that. When you’re a mom, you’re not going to be able to just go to Hawaii. When you’re a mom, you’re not going to be able to X, Y, Z.” And I was like… [sigh] Right?
This whole time, this whole seven year journey, I am intentionally creating space where, truth be told Darla, prior to baby coming, I’m allowed to say his name. It’s my child. His name is James. James! Actually, James Harley. Casey calls him James, I call him Harley. So he is now James Harley, but prior to this retreat, prior to him getting here, I’ve grown a team. I have people who are working for me, we have an associate coach program. So there’s so much support, it’s so robust within the program. I was getting bored. There was just so much spaciousness and it was really not bored, it was that that in between space where I knew that something was coming and instead of filling it with a lot of unnecessary doing, I just needed to sit in it. It’s really uncomfortable.
So Wednesday night, this rules game, I get up there and I say, “Here are the rules that I have been playing by.” And when you are asked to shift the nature of your rules, when you acknowledge that I am done playing by that set of rules, you and I both know that the universe gives you an opportunity, which might look like a challenge, or something bad, to say…
Darla LeDoux: I call it the cycle of proving.
Laura Wieck: Yes, to say are you sure? And this was my moment and so I end the day, and I said, so here’s been my journey. Here’s what’s going on. I’m going to the hospital tonight and I’m having a baby. And the look on their faces was like just stunned, happy, crying and big hug, big group hug and what happened immediately after that, I had two women come up to me and say, I was adopted. I was like that’s crazy and we also had a couple of pregnant women in the room. So for them to watch me in the middle of my business go have a baby, they were sitting there like, “I’m allowed to do that? I’m allowed to actually choose me?” Right? In the middle of all of this! And so I got into a car, my husband picked me up, we drove to Dayton. It’s an hour and a half away. We checked into the hospital with the birth mom. We were in the room with her, spent the night there, and that Thursday, my team taught the whole day. It was literally, I’m like, okay. On Monday when I found out, I went through and I said you’re teaching this, you’re teaching this, you’re teaching this, and what happened was… So one, I got to receive this love and support from my community. I got to receive the support from my team. They stepped up and I have been trying to get my team to teach and like pull out these different sections for the longest time, and they finally freaking did it! All right? And what was so great about this is that they received what it’s like to be in this role. They received an upleveling for themselves. So many of my clients are moms, want to be moms. They actually saw me live this message.
So they got to receive, not only am I sitting here teaching you, trust your body, listen, feel your way forward, I am literally in the freakin’ retreat living this message, that I’m creating the rules of my life. I’m creating the rules of what it looks like to be a business owner and a mom. And this brought me to tears, we were still waiting for the baby, I had a debrief with my team. I called her at lunch and she said the most beautiful thing happened. One of our members, she received an opportunity, she felt a stirring in her heart to say, “Hey, I think we should just take a moment and give some love and some energy to the birth mom because she’s going through a whole process. She’s having her feels and yes, we’re sending love and energy to Laura and Casey but let’s send some love and energy to her.” So they had a moment and sent her love and energy and one of the women in the room who had been adopted, she had the most profound healing experience because the rules she had been playing by was that she was never wanted and she had never known her birth mom and in that moment, she forgave her birth mom and as soon as that happened, she got on the phone with her mom and thanked her for always wanting her and I’m like, this baby isn’t even here yet and he started like…
Darla LeDoux: He’s already a healer.
Laura Wieck: I know! The very presence of just how he’s showing up into the world is changing people’s lives. So…
Darla LeDoux: That’s so beautiful.
Laura Wieck: Oh my God. It was amazing and yeah. Yes.
Darla LeDoux: Well, you know my wife is adopted, so that’s a conversation we have quite a lot in our house too. So I just really love that you were able to provide that.
Laura Wieck: It was something my mind could never have planned for and I think it was something that was so in her blind spot that she couldn’t see it. So this experience that’s showing up is… You talk about when you, the soul of the retreat and inviting spirit in, like spirit knew this is the thing that you need to heal because you are wanted, you are loved. From the very moment you were born, you were wanted and…
Darla LeDoux: And she got to witness that with you.
Laura Wieck: I was in awe, right? And every single one of my clients and attendees, they were having a ball, they’re like, this is everything. They got so much more even though I wasn’t the one in the room doing the delivery. [laughing]
Darla LeDoux: No pun intended.
Laura Wieck: No, that was not intended but yeah.
Darla LeDoux: And I think it’s really important to underline for people listening both as a retreat leader, thinking about your participants and if you’ve ever been called to attend a retreat and your logical mind comes in and goes I don’t really need that, I can figure it out on my own, I can just listen to the podcast and learn how to do retreats or whatever it might be for you. If that stirring is saying, go get in a room, you don’t know why and that’s the magic of retreats. It’s also what makes it a little bit challenging to fill retreats because people’s soul know that something’s going to shift when I get in that room and we don’t know what because it’s all out of our control and if she had been marketed a retreat to heal her relationship to being adopted, that wouldn’t have likely worked for her, right? Because she didn’t even know she needed it.
Laura Wieck: No, she should probably… I’m fine. I’m good. I’m over that. That’s done. It’s in the past. It’s just even as you say that, that stirring to be in the room, I was recently at a retreat in Virginia and this was after James was born. I was invited to a retreat and of course, like logical brain, everybody was like, you can’t travel with an Uber and I know that not all of you hear those voices. This is very much what has been passed down to me through family. I’m in freaking Ohio guys, okay?
So I was invited to this retreat and I was like, I think I need to go and I was like, “Casey, we say that we’re going to travel with this baby, we’re going.” So, packed up the car we drove, because I wasn’t ready to put them on a plane yet. That’s coming next. We get there and there’s a woman in the room who her and her husband want to adopt and her whole family is telling her that she’s making a mistake, that it’s going to go wrong, that she’s not going to get a healthy baby. Her family’s language is not very healthy, or loving, or supportive, and I know I was called into that retreat for her because literally I went in and had him strapped to me and sat there. And she needed that and also she needed to hear that us having a baby was not let’s go figure out doing what we’re doing to go find the 15,000 in the framework of how we’ve always been doing it.
I always say like, “Your business needs to serve and support you first so that you can go and give to the world.” I heard a Vishen Lakhiani talk and he made two comments that have kind of become intertwined in my brain. He said, “Your business has to be about you so your life can be about others”, right? And I heard that and I was like, oh my goodness, I think as healers and givers and people, we kind of have flip that. We’ve created businesses that we think need to be about everybody else, right? And we lose ourselves in the process. So since this fertility thing has happened, me investing in my business has been the way that I can serve and support a family and for this woman to see, one, you can adopt a child, you can adopt a healthy child, you can have an easy, amazing experience and you can have a kick ass business in the process like…
Darla LeDoux: Unbelievable and that you listen, right? That you listen to your own inner knowing that said I need to be here.
Laura Wieck: I need to be, yeah and I’m like hot damn, our child is a healer. Okay, we will just…
Darla LeDoux: Well, that makes sense.
Laura Wieck: We’ll just follow your energy where you need to go because literally it’s just him being who he is is healing.
Darla LeDoux: And you didn’t need to have him come through you as a healer to have him be in that energy and that lineage, which I think is really interesting.
Laura Wieck: Oh my goodness. Yeah, exactly and I think the same is true as you as a retreat leader, you as a healer is your presence is the healing, and your presence doesn’t maybe have to necessarily be in the room to be healing! [laughing]
Darla LeDoux: So to go back to talking about containers, right? You created a container for this group and that experience showed up within that container just divinely perfectly and so many people get stuck on I have to show up, I have to present, I have to be professional, I have to have my life handled, I have to make sure there’s no cracks and…
Laura Wieck: What? [laughing]
Darla LeDoux: But the container is holding all of it. I can look back at my life in different groups I’ve had during different years and like the things that have happened and why it’s been the perfect group for that thing and why my life, even things falling apart, has been perfect in service of a certain group.
Laura Wieck: Yes. Yeah, as you’re talking, two things are showing up is one, my business is for me. I do these programs and these containers for my growth and my clients are my teachers. They show me how to deepen this process every time. I do this because it lights me on fire and it is an opportunity to deepen and experience life over and over again. If I waited to be perfect, hot damn, this could not be happening. And the second thing that comes up is there’s the quote, it’s a Philip Shepherd quote. He says, present nothing, experience everything, and I think that’s true. For me that has been what a retreat is.
Yes, I have things that I want to talk about and cover but I just show up there to experience and to feel and to… I always say that the online stuff that we teach is for your head. The retreat itself is for the embodiment and you’re really not going to be able to… The things that you desire in your life and your business, it’s when it becomes embodied that the shift really happens and that’s the power of leaving your comfort zone, traveling. People have breakthroughs when they travel. People have breakthroughs just scheduling time away, and I’ve had countless clients who are like, oh my goodness, my husband and I or my relationship with my kids changed because I actually got out and that was the thing that they needed.
Darla LeDoux: Yeah. That’s beautiful. So let’s go back to, because I know there’s another piece of receiving that got to show up for you. So you spent Thursday with James and then, then what?
Laura Wieck: [laughing] Okay, so Thursday night my dad actually drove to Dayton and Friday morning he drove me back to Columbus, and I taught all day and I have to tell you, Darla, hot damn, I was on fire. I was like, so tired, and so alive. It was amazing! I just had never felt like, oh my God. I was like this is it! I am doing the thing! This is everything that I’ve been praying for. It was amazing. That’s not what you were talking about though.
Darla LeDoux: That’s amazing.
Laura Wieck: And what got to happen is my husband actually got to be the one to stay at the hospital and he got the little wristband. So he was matched with the baby and at this point the birth mom had left, she had been discharged, and he got to stay in the hospital and he got time alone with little James Harley, and that was something that… I think if I was in the room, I probably would have tried to control, I would have been like, no, hold him this way, do it that way. So Casey got to receive this beautiful bonding experience and just a precious way that is his for the rest of his life. He gets to hold that moment and I have to tell you, like I went back and driving back, I was like, there’s a voice inside me that says I should feel guilty that I left my child. There was a voice inside the other day that said I should feel guilty leaving my clients. I didn’t feel that at all. It was the ‘should’ voice and I was like, “Oh, I hear you. Thank you very much. I’m good.” It was so powerful.
So I taught Friday and then my parents picked me up Friday evening, drove me back to Dayton, went back to the hospital and then Saturday morning my dad drove me back. I taught my last day. My mom stayed with Casey and drove home with the baby because it was an hour and a half drive, and I used to say that giving and receiving are two sides of the same coin. This experience showed me that I really believe there’s only receiving. Everybody got to receive. Everybody got to receive and in that receiving, we all amplified our ability to give. So it wasn’t this let me put the energy into giving and one day I’ll eventually receive the thing. It was like, no, everybody just received. My parents got to receive being grandparents. They are over the moon excited. It was all receiving, and the amplification of that allowance, that surrender, that just being in the moment and experiencing, right? You cannot be present if you’re not receptive. It was only receiving and it, hot fucking damn, it was amazing.
Darla LeDoux: How do you imagine that this experience is going to change your business?
Laura Wieck: That is a great question my dear, and my dogs like the question too, if you hear them in the background. I think it’s deepened my trust. Even post retreat, I’m coming back into work. Oh, that’s fun, my husband actually retired and he is 100% stay at home dad. That’s been an experience and so I’m still working a couple of hours a week but, not but, and that was by design. That was intentional, the whole way through. How has this changed me? When I…
Darla LeDoux: It sounds like a really powerful statement that it is all receiving, and I’m just curious how that weaves in.
Laura Wieck: How that weaves into the day to day and to the business…
Darla LeDoux: Your business or what you teach or how you… Yeah.
Laura Wieck: I definitely think it has shifted how I teach in that the message is really… It is your job to receive for your gifts. You say this, I hear you in the back of my head and I might be quoting you in my upcoming masterclass that if you have that desire in your heart, so too… I might need you to say it exactly so I can write this down. If you have a desire in your heart, so too is the way to make it happen.
Darla LeDoux: Yeah. Where the desire is present, the way is also present.
Laura Wieck: That, yes.
Darla LeDoux: … and I learnt that from my mentor, David Nagel.
Laura Wieck: To me, receiving and surrendering and allowing are all very much the same energy. So, especially when you think of surrender and receiving, they feel very different because I think our head likes to think that surrender is letting go. I think surrender is fully allowing and receiving what is. And that shift just from this where I haven’t even thought about this or made this connection. This last round we had 30. We’re on target to do 50 for the next round. So we’re enrolling more people. There has been so much more ease and lightness in the business, and it’s really shifted, obviously having a baby, my schedule’s very different. I’m really just ebbing and flowing with how this works and…
Darla LeDoux: I would imagine your team is serving in a different way after that experience too.
Laura Wieck: Oh yeah and they’re uplevel. How they’re showing up, their engagement in the community, we’re adding new associate coaches, the whole thing that’s happening is we’re growing and it’s coming from this space that everybody is here to receive and grow together. There’s not this I need to give to you, so you get this and then prove and all that energy. It’s just very much… It’s been a lot lighter and so much more expansive.
Darla LeDoux: Amazing. Yay, well thank you so much.
Laura Wieck: Thank you my dear. Oh my gosh, I’m so excited.
Darla LeDoux: So people can find you and your coaches at bodymindliving.com…
Laura Wieck: Yes, that’s-
Darla LeDoux: And your adventure over there. Is there anything else if someone is a holistic practitioner and they want to make more money and decrease their workload?
Laura Wieck: Yes which is possible because you don’t even have show up to your retreats. I’m just kidding. Yes, so…
Darla LeDoux: But there’s truth in that, right? It’s like, well, what else is possible? What else is available? We had clients lead segments of our last retreat and it was awesome. I wasn’t needed. It’s amazing.
Laura Wieck: It’s funny how that in itself, the ego shifts that has to happen to be like, it doesn’t have to be me. So…
Darla LeDoux: Oh yeah, I’ve spent years on that one.
Laura Wieck: Yeah, it’s such a trip and it’s like, oh wait, I’m allowed to receive more. This can be easier. It doesn’t have to all be on me and everybody gets to receive in the process. What? Can that really be my reality? Yes it can and it’s so much more impactful is what I’m experiencing and living now. So if you are a holistic practitioner, thenewbodymind.com is where you can go and find more about our certification program. We’re going to have all of this linked up on bodymindliving.com. We’re launching an online magazine called BodyMind Living and it’s really here to demonstrate and show people what it means to live body-mind connected and I’m really excited and it’s going to be magical. So…
Darla LeDoux: What a beautiful demonstration Laura. Thank you so much for sharing your story hot off the presses and just really thank you for embodying your work in the world and continuing to show up. It heartens me to know that we are doing this work together.
Laura Wieck: Yes, and thank you for being on my journey because so much of this has come from my time with you and what you teach and what embody and show the world, too. So we all get to receive and be it in together…
Darla LeDoux: All receiving.
Laura Wieck: It really is all receiving! Like I just…
Darla LeDoux: I love it. Laura’s next masterclass, ‘it is all receiving’. Coming soon.
Laura Wieck: That might be my first feature in the magazine. Awesome. Thank you, Darla.
Darla LeDoux: Okay. Bye Laura!
Laura Wieck: See you soon. Bye.
Darla LeDoux: Bye everyone!
Have you been called to integrate retreats into the way you do business?
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If so, it might be time to start leading transformational retreats. Transformational retreats are only going to get more popular as our world gets busier, and more and more people are opting to invest in experience and transformation over stuff and information.
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