Meet Laura Loewy of Backcountry Yoga in Woburn

Today we’d like to introduce you to Laura Loewy.

Laura, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I found yoga while living next to the Teton National Park of Wyoming in 2012. If you enter “Jackson Hole” into google, you’ll see it’s one of the most beautiful outdoor recreation meccas in all of the United States. There I not only developed a love of hiking, white water rafting, and camping, but also fostered a deep meditation and yoga practice that took me into the mountains, rivers, and valleys of the wilderness.

After moving back to Boston I enrolled in a 200 hour teacher training with the desire to combine my love of outdoor adventure with whatever career path I chose. I didn’t exactly know that yoga would end up being that path, but I knew that I had to figure out a way to combine passions.

After spending some time teaching at studios… I decided to take a step outside and bring my students on an adventure. In April of 2015 I left my office job, went on a month long mountaineering excursion in the Pacific Northwest and founded Backcountry Yoga, a company with a mission to teach people how to thrive outside through hiking, yoga, and outdoor adventure.

The Vision:
I remembered a time in my life when I was always waiting on other people to join me on my adventures… and that it would often prevent me from going anywhere at all. I was finally hit with the realization that I needed to just start doing things on my own and hope that someday I’d get to stop walking the path alone. So With Backcountry Yoga I wanted to create a community of like-minded individuals who are searching for “their people”, who have the interest in doing more outside in nature, but don’t have their own tribe of friends or family that want to get out there with them.

Don’t get me wrong we love our groups of friends that come together on these adventures! But we also love that so many people sign up on their own and have an opportunity to meet other adventure seekers.

So far Backcountry Yoga has done exactly what I hoped! I am honored to bring amazing people together in the great outdoors practicing yoga, and teaching people that life’s fulfillment is as simple as a breath of fresh air.

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
The hardest piece of being an entrepreneur is having so many jobs, and having to be effective at all of them. At Backcountry Yoga I am the founder, operator, website developer, marketing manager, publicist, event coordinator, legal team, accountant, trip leader, and safety provider. It’s been quite the experience of learning so many new things. There are a lot of opinions out there how you should go about doing things… and it can be hard not to get caught up in the little stuff when you’re really much better working with the big picture.

Outside of the regular ups and downs of starting a new lifestyle brand/company, Weather has been our number one obstacle. Being located in the New England has its fair share of obstacles. It is always a hard call whether to move forward on an outdoor trip rain or shine. Safety is extremely important to us, so we’re constantly glued to the weather radar trying to make sure we’re setting up everyone in our groups for success. Thankfully New Englanders tend to be a hardy crew and we’ve had some wonderful warm, rainy yoga classes that really get you down to being with nature.

We’d love to hear more about your business.
We offer guided yoga hikes and outdoor yoga adventures. Our trips range from half day hikes in local reservations, day hikes in the White Mountains, or overnight backpacking trips. Everything including yoga & meditation.

Backcountry Yoga is about more than just loving yoga and bringing people outside, it’s about fostering a mutual respect between you and the land… about how we can experience the world and preserve it together through attracting more people on adventures and giving them the tools to thrive outside.

Outdoor education is really important to me and I want to teach others how to be as responsible as possible. I think this is what really sets us apart from other yoga organizations. I teach people things like trail etiquette, how to layer properly for different weather conditions, the definition of Leave No Trace and how to implement it in your daily life.

As it becomes more and more important to get people outside enjoying our national parks, and preserving our public land, those of us that want to guide other outside have the responsibility of creating a generation of safe and conscientious outdoor recreation lovers. I have so many clients that are now getting out on the tails on their own with the proper gear, and tools to understand what they’re getting into. It makes me so proud to know I’ve contributed to their self-empowered adventures. There is nothing I love more than to receive a text from a client’s winter hike, or their first summit of a 4,000 ft. peak 🙂

What were you like growing up?
I’ve always been a little adventurer. I loved imagination, magic and playing outside. Growing up my parents had a huge back yard with tall pine trees. On a sunny day in the summer you could almost always find me in a princess dress climbing to the top of a tree convinced that someday I’d be in ‘Guinness Book of World Records’ for highest tree climb.

Throughout my adolescence and teens my parents were awesome and took us camping every summer in Acadia National Park, sent me to adventure camp where I went on my first multi day canoeing trek, and taught me how to ski! These were all things they didn’t grow up doing themselves, so I am always very grateful that they gave me the gift of adventure by planting seeds early.

As an outgoing introvert I’ve never been a very competitive person, so team sports have never really been my thing, but I’ve always loved self-empowered expression in the form of hiking, skiing, camping, climbing, running, music, dancing, and yoga. I’ve never been much for rules, and have always taken my own path so I pretty much love anything that allows me to move freely through the world.

My life is fueled by passion.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://www.backcountryyoga.com/
• Email: info@backcountryyoga.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/BackcountryYoga/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BackcountryYoga/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/BackcountryYoga/
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/backcountry-yoga-boston

Image Credit:
Athena Gomez-Hipolito ( profile photo & last three photos )