Today we’d like to introduce you to Laura Kate Means.
Hi Laura Kate, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
Art has always been a part of my life. I still have a picture of an elephant I painted in kindergarten, and another picture I won an award for in an art contest in elementary school. My dad’s father, Grams, became an artist later in life, and I spent a lot of time making art next to her. I still use many of her paint brushes today.
While I started yoga in college, I lost touch with both my art and yoga once I joined the United States Army. I spent 13 years as an officer in the Military Police Corps, during which I deployed to Afghanistan, served two tours in Germany, traveled throughout Europe, met my wife and started a family. While I had many wonderful experiences in the Army, I also had some not so great experiences. Unfortunately, those bad experiences ate away at the bond and sense of camaraderie that was so essential to my purpose and reason for continued service, and eventually resulted in medical retirement due to PTSD.
After moving to Charleston, South Carolina with my family I found the Warrior Surf Foundation, which helped me begin the healing process. And through the Warrior Surf Foundation, I found my way to Yoga Teacher Training with Flow State Wellness and Kate Moon. The community I found through Kate helped me reconnect with my Self through both art and yoga. Just as the lotus flower emerges from the dark, muddy swamp to bloom into a brilliant and beautiful flower, I learned to draw light from the darkness and channel it into something I find beautiful.
And so I started Lotus Blossom Arts & Yoga – my way of sharing that beauty with the world.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It’s been a pretty bumpy road with quite a few struggles. My wife and I have a four year old daughter and 18 month old twins. The twins stay home with me during the day, so finding time to create art or design yoga sequences is always hard. I started painting at my kitchen table, and lost quite a few drying watercolors to cat paw prints before we were able to make space for a home studio. And there are always periods when my past comes back to haunt me, but my yoga practice has been essential in getting through the rough days.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
On the art side, my favorite medium is watercolor, and my watercolors are saturated with color so they are very bright. My themes vary from beach and surf scenes to local Charleston sights to whimsical cryptids and meditating animals to the mythological and esoteric. I am most proud of a large painting I made of a golden orb weaver named Diana who lived on my front porch for a few months, but I also love all my paintings with seawater, as well as my Medusa and yeti paintings. I’ve also branched out into acrylic painting on fabric, such as tote bags, tea towels, and custom shoes and shirts.
On the yoga side, I teach vinyasa (matching movement to breath) style yoga with fun and creative transitions. The community aspect of yoga is very important to me, and I recently bought half of Everybody Yoga & Fitness on Johns Island to really lean in to that community. I also teach yoga for the Warrior Surf Foundation, so that I can give back to an organization that gave so much to me.
Do you have any advice for those looking to network or find a mentor?
I believe the most important aspect of finding a mentor is finding someone who resonates with you on a deeply personal level. A good mentor should provide support and honest yet constructive feedback, but if you don’t truly respect and admire your mentor, that feedback won’t really matter. I have been fortunate in that I have stumbled across my mentors when I wasn’t looking for them, and the mentorship developed organically because I valued so much who they were as people. From there, the relationships we established drew me towards both the art I create and the yoga I practice today.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.lotusblossomartsnyoga.com/
- Instagram: @laurakatemeans
