Community Highlights: Meet Leah Grace of Vitalist Institute & School

Today we’d like to introduce you to Leah Grace. Leah and her team share their story with us below:

Leah Grace is a co-founder of The Vitalist Institute and one of the head instructors at the Vitalist School of Psychospiritual Transformation. With over 20 years of experience working with clients, conscious entrepreneurs, and leaders, Leah’s journey has been guided by one question, “What is it that allows humans to live to their fullest potential?”

Through years of relentlessly pursuing mentors, training, and her own personal development, Leah has developed her own unique methodology integrating tools rooted in psychology, spirituality, somatic, and trauma therapy as a way to offer the most efficient and effective path to lasting transformation.

Leah believes her purpose in life is to lead the leaders. Using her tools, in a somewhat unconventional way, to work with practitioners and entrepreneurs to address everything from practicing aligned business strategy to healing unresolved trauma.

Her profound and intuitive ability to reunite individuals with their truest potential stems from a space of deep integrity and passion for this work. She is a champion for those longing to learn how to operate from a space of inner authority, clarity, and authenticity so they can move towards a life of more purpose, freedom, and alignment.

Leah is a certified trauma professional and holds certifications from a multitude of organizations starting with Kalamazoo Center for the Healing Arts in Somatic Emotional Release & Bodywork Therapy in 1999. Since then she has received certifications and training from iPEC an accredited international coaching federation, level 1 & 2 certifications of the Biodynamic Breathwork & Trauma Release System, Healing developmental trauma certification from BBTRS, and more.

Micah McLaughlin is a co-founder of The Vitalist Institute and one of the head instructors at the Vitalist School of Psychospiritual Transformation. During his earlier training in traditional naturopathy, he discovered that in order to get to the true root of health, humans must get back to their true selves. Micah has worked for more than a decade incorporating the tools of psychology, spirituality, and somatic therapy to support clients in finding their innate freedom.

Micah was trained at the Naturopathic Institute of Therapies and Education and founded Continuum Healing in 2008. He further studied western herbalism, Bioenergetics, Reichien character structures, somatic coaching, and the Enneagram, deepening his passion to treat the whole person. In 2014, he co-founded the Wellness Collective with Leah Grace in Grand Rapids, MI, and continues to assist clients, students, and practitioners in their transformational work.

Micah utilizes holistic dialogue, breathwork, and somatic therapies to support clients as they find their way back to full embodiment and presence. By working to integrate the childhood beliefs, developmental traumas, shock traumas, and patterned behaviors learned in youth, Micah supports his clients as they learn to FEEL again, making it possible to create lives filled with safety and meaning. Lives are not dictated by past beliefs and habitual patterns, but lives immersed in the here and now, fully present to the unfolding experience of each moment.

Through this therapeutic process, physical and emotional pain is dissolved as the nervous system regulates and the mind and body are returned to homeostasis. Micah works with each client at the pace and intensity that allows them to safely find paths back to their authentic selves.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It is so funny because this has been the hardest one for me to answer. I guess I just don’t think this way.

Bringing such progressive healing modalities to a more conservative community is inherently a challenge and yet, it feels like what we have been called to do. When people experience this work in their own bodies, they get it, they know they have found their community and the next steps on their spiritual and healing journey.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Vitalist Institute & School?
At the Vitalist Institute, we believe that life should be a full-body experience. That the journey to embodiment touches and transforms every aspect of a person’s life. Personal healing and transformation should include learning how to breathe, feel, and be rooted in the experience of being human.

We are trained and experienced practitioners committed to providing our community with intentional opportunities for connection, deep healing, and expanded consciousness. For decades we have been dedicated to supporting humans on their journey from suffering to meaning. It is our deepest joy and passion to share this work.

The Vitalist Institute exists because we know that you are capable of living a powerful and connected life filled with amazing acts of love, compassion, and courage. We believe uncovering and living out your most authentic expression creates more space and vitality in your life and the world around you.

We would love to show you how to find that life.

Vitalist Institute has multiple offerings that will support your journey within!

We host a monthly Song Circle where we gather to share and celebrate songs of devotion from all around the world.

Our Embodiment Series takes place each Wednesday. In each session, you’re guided to enter a non-ordinary state which takes the prefrontal cortex offline. In this state, we have access to liberation in our body, mind, and life without having to wrestle with our minds (as much!).

Take a deeper dive into embodiment with our Cacao, Breathwork & Sound Bath Ceremony. This three-hour ceremony of returning back to your essential self creates new pathways of finding ease and vitality in your body and life.

A 1-day Breathwork Retreat combines all three of these modalities for an immersive day of breathwork ceremony, somatic work, dance, community, and deep healing.

Finally, we offer Vitalist School, a nine-month intensive study program. The Vitalist School exists to provide a deep and full-bodied transformational experience for coaches, counselors, body workers, or anyone with a commitment to creating more consciousness in the world. While this program has been written and designed for practitioners, it is not essential that you are a practitioner. Most skills learned are applicable to family or friends. Anyone taking the course will have an opportunity to do their own transformative work due to the nature of the content. However, considering the depth and intensity of this school, it is not recommended that this be your first foray into developmental work.

This program is for practitioners who are tired of giving “suggestions.” It’s for those who are tired of hearing the same story on repeat without significant change. This is for practitioners who are as dedicated to their own growth, healing, and deep work as they are to their client’s transformation.

The nature of working to such depth and vulnerability with other humans is life-changing and a deep honor. Any participant taking the program will run into their own traumas, stuck places, fear, and shame. While the nature of this work can be heavy at times, we will rely on playfulness, humor, and not taking ourselves too seriously as we transform and remember who we really are.

Can you talk to us a bit about the role of luck?
If anything we were lucky to find each other.

We have been doing business together for almost 10 years and feel more aligned and lucky to have one another to navigate business, life, and our individual healing together. We are so similar in how we see the world and yet we are constantly pushing one another to heal and keep growing.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.vitalistinst.com
• Instagram: @thevitalistinstitute
• Facebook: @thevitalistinstitute