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Corinne LaReau may have opened the doors to her Lexington wellness and movement cooperative, Source on High, less than a year ago, but the catalyst for it began more than 25 years ago, when she was one month shy of turning 18.
As LaReau and several friends caravanned from their Jessamine County homes toward Paoli Peaks for a ski trip on a clear winter day, the pickup she was riding in hit a deer. The vehicle flipped five or six times, ejecting LaReau from the passenger window.
“I remember I was flying through the air, looking at this beautiful blue sky and thinking: Make sure my mom and my family know I love them,” she said, recalling the certainty of her belief that it was the end.
Although physically unable to walk away from the accident because of two shattered kneecaps and a broken nose, LaReau said she immediately felt a shift in her being.
“Something inside me cracked open – I felt like I was spared for a purpose brighter than I knew,” she said. “I realized at age 17 that every day is a gift and to make the most of it.”
The shift she felt at such a young age geared LaReau toward a feeling of personal responsibility for doing something beneficial for humankind. Now – as the owner of a small business that specializes in helping others reach and maintain good health, movement and wellness – she can do just that.
But it took a journey and several crossroads to get there.
In the two decades following her accident, LaReau spent time in Hawaii, Colorado and San Diego, drawing inspiration from the lure and power of the ocean, the beauty of the Rocky Mountains and the holistic healing community that is so prevalent on the West Coast. Working as an architectural assistant in San Diego in her 20s, she began going to massage school in her spare time and training in three styles of yoga.
“I decided I wanted to help one person at a time rather than save the world,” she said.
After finishing massage school in 1997, LaReau started her own successful massage and yoga practice in San Diego. But in 2002, with two young daughters under her wing and a desire for more stability than the big city could offer her, she returned to Lexington, where she built up her massage practice at the downtown YMCA, as well as teaching some yoga and Pilates there.
“I had a vision of having my own wellness center, but it didn’t seem to be the right time with needing stability for my kids,” she said. Her work at the YMCA had reached a plateau, however, and the one healing technique she found most beneficial for her clients – a form of warm-water aquatic therapy known as watsu – was getting to be increasingly difficult without regular access to a warm pool.
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Feeling like she had exhausted all her other possibilities, LaReau decided the time was ripe to pursue the dream that had been welling up inside of her for so many years.
“I knew if I waited much longer, that window of opportunity would close.”
While shopping for a gift downtown in the fall of 2013, LaReau noticed a “for lease” sign in a storefront next to Black Market on High Street. Although renovations and a small bank loan were needed, the price was right, and the 2700-square-foot building (which formerly housed The Void Skateshop) was expansive enough for a yoga studio, massage rooms, and offices for other wellness practitioners to join her to create a cooperative. Importantly, the space also allowed room to eventually realize LaReau’s dream of bringing water healing to the Lexington community; the space is already outfitted for a watsu pool and sensory deprivation tank – a lightless, soundproof warm water pool used for meditation and relaxation – and she expects to install both this year.
“Besides my daughters, watsu remains one of the strongest drives I have,” she said. “What takes two hours to do on land [with massage] takes 10 minutes in water. All that gravitational pull that holds the tension in the body is sloughed away.”
Until her pools become a reality, LaReau is practicing massage, teaching yoga and Pilates, and growing the cooperative aspect of her business. Several other wellness practitioners, including Rosemary Rosenthal, Dean Holt and Tasha Fauxe, teach yoga and other movement classes at Source on High, with additional holistic healing services ranging from massage therapy to nutritional counseling also available at the center.
As a small-business owner with three growing girls, LaReau still lives with the fear of uncertainty, but it’s a fear she is able to face with growing confidence.
“I still feel fear every day. It’s there sitting on my shoulder – and some days it’s louder than others – but at least I know what it is and can sit with it, look it in the eye and make peace with it,” she said. “This work is what helps keep me grounded; that, and my girls.”
Hosting a soft opening on Mother’s Day last year felt very special to LaReau.
“I want to teach my children the responsibility it takes to run your own business and to be passionate enough to walk through fire to do it,” she said.
More about Source on High, including a full schedule of classes and a listing of services offered, is available at www.sourceonhigh.com.