New Business: Merging Mindfulness with Outdoor Fun
Founder of Wild Bloom Yoga Lexi Stickel strikes a pose at one of her favorite murals in The Dalles. You may run into Stickel as she and her students are hiking a trail in hunt of a pose and a mindful breath.
By Sarah Cook
“Your life is not a controlled environment,” she said.
When Lexi Stickel, founder of Wild Bloom Yoga and steward of outdoor magic, said these words to me during a recent coffee date at Kainos in The Dalles, I knew this would be the first sentence of my interview.
She was beautifully describing the benefits of doing yoga—a spiritual practice with Hindu origins largely comprised of moving poses, held poses, mindfulness, and breath work—in less curated spaces than the air-conditioned yoga studios where such classes typically occur.
What’s a less controlled space, you might be wondering. Well, a beer garden, for one!
It’s not just a hike. It can be an adventure with a full yoga session.
Or at the midway point of a hiking trail. Through Wild Bloom Yoga, Lexi offers guided hikes and related outdoor adventures throughout the various ecosystems of the Columbia River Gorge, each one built around a full yoga session that happens at some point along the way.
The result is an increase in some of the most important qualities one can cultivate in life: Tolerance, acceptance, and resiliency.
“There’s something really special about doing yoga in nontraditional spaces, which is why Wild Bloom exists,” Lexi told me. “There are sounds you wouldn’t expect. You’re not in a climate-controlled room. A bug can land on you!”
How better to understand our place in the world than in our natural environment where all the elements construct our consciousness?
As someone lucky enough to have attended one of Lexi’s early collaborations with StudioFit—an outdoor yoga session that took place at Billy Bob Sno-Park, in a very toasty hut on a very cold Sunday in February—I can attest to all three!
Like this times 5 gallons.
“I just taught a few weekends ago at a brewery, and there were these two, 5-gallon buckets that were overflowing with beer 30 minutes before class started. So we all mopped and re-mopped everything up, and throughout class I kept having to check on the buckets. There’s something magical about that: Finding that you can remain calm and centered despite doing hard or inconvenient things. It adds a layer you can’t capture in a traditional space.”
And when you’re out on the trail at The Dalles Mountain Ranch? “Your yoga mat is not going to be perfectly flat,” Lexi explained, a twinkle in her eye.
The original seed for Wild Bloom Yoga was sown years ago back in Salem.
Before moving to the Gorge, Lexi had started attending events hosted by Women Who Hike, a community-oriented organization aimed at getting women outdoors together.
“There were a lot of women who were uncomfortable with the idea of hiking by themselves, who didn’t have friends who were hikers or who weren’t familiar with the trailheads, but still wanted to try out this activity,” Lexi explained.
She fell in love with the organization’s mission right away: The opportunities for connection, the emphasis on being outdoors, not to mention the fostering of a greater sense of stewardship of local places, which is both a direct and indirect result of such opportunities.
Lexi was soon invited to become an official ambassador for Women Who Hike, likely the result of her own enthusiasm, outward dedication, and her forward-thinking questions about inclusivity on the trails.
By this point in time, Lexi was already a huge practitioner of yoga, and an electrified question was starting to ignite something inside her: How could she bridge her love of the outdoors with her growing commitment to her yoga practice?
One obvious next step was to pursue yoga teacher training, but working at a food bank, as much as she loved the job, didn’t exactly align with the expensive cost of such training.
“I must’ve filled out the application three or four times,” she confessed, changing her mind at the last minute every time due to financial limitations.
Then, so the chorus goes: COVID happened. This was on the heels of Lexi and her partner relocating to the Gorge. And while she continued to serve informally as an ambassador for Women Who Hike, it was the early days of COVID, which meant even outdoor trails were shutting down.
Lexi found herself living in a new place, experiencing lockdown and the resulting isolation, and without access to one of her primary pastimes. Shifting her yoga practice entirely to home wasn’t an easy transition, either.
“I thought, ‘I can’t do yoga at home, my entire house is carpeted!’” she described, with hilarious accuracy, the squishy experience of setting up a yoga mat on something other than a hardwood floor. Coincidentally, the magical qualities of the uncontrolled environment solidified for Lexi in the highly controlled space of her own home.
“News flash: You don’t need a yoga mat to do yoga!” Newly inspired, and a little humbled, her yoga practice ensued.
And so the chorus also goes: Something finally gave. Stable in her new job as a Community Health Coordinator with PacificSource Community Solutions & the Columbia Gorge Coordinated Care Organization, and grappling with the effects of the pandemic, she was finally ready to pursue yoga teacher training. She enrolled through Flow Yoga in Hood River.
Lexi was 100% clear on her goal from the moment she turned the application in: she was going to bring yoga outdoors. Hearing her describe the clarity of that moment, there is a lighthearted power to it—a little wild, maybe even a little feral—that I suspect is the result of a very resilient person living through a pandemic with their creativity intact.
During the spring of 2022, as the world started toying with the idea of a post-pandemic sense of normalcy, Lexi co-hosted the first Women Who Hike event in the Gorge since lockdown. With the founder of the organization in attendance, the group hiked Hamilton Mountain, a 7.5-mile trail on the Washington side infamous for its spring wildflowers.
“It was amazing. Being in company with women, there’s no judgment, and everyone is supportive of each other. It doesn’t matter if you’re breathing heavily or need to go at a slower pace.”
Energized by the recommencement of such group events, and seeing the end of her teacher training in sight, Lexi began planning Wild Bloom Yoga’s next steps. And she knew, now more than ever, that an increased attention to questions of inclusivity needed to be part of her business endeavors.
It’s no secret, for example, that elitist fitness brands can contribute to a homogenized version of wellness that prioritizes white, wealthy, able-bodied participants at the expense of other types of bodies. The result is a harmful narrative that suggests that certain forms of self-care must be earned and remain highly exclusive.
Given Lexi’s keen awareness of such problems, paired with her unwavering commitment to accessibility, it will come as no surprise to hear that most of Wild Bloom’s 2023 events sold out almost immediately, prior to Lexi actively marketing them.
Her Women's Yoga & Beginner Backpacking Trip, for example, which doesn’t happen until mid-July of this year, currently has a waitlist.
When people discovered what she was doing, they were immediately in.
“There’s a yoga element and a mindfulness element in every single offering,” she explains, a combination that people are clearly craving.
But it’s her ability to seamlessly consider logistics alongside issues of social justice that seem to be one of Lexi’s superpowers, all of which resides on the foundation of a genuine love of nature. For this reason, I was especially excited to ask about the impetus of Lexi’s business name, Wild Bloom Yoga.
“I just love the wildflowers,” she said with such enthusiasm that I saw her briefly transported to a local cliffside. “There’s this sense of rebirth every spring in the Gorge, especially living on the drier side. The hills turn greener, and they sometimes turn yellow along with the flowers blooming.”
Despite the hardships of COVID, Lexi was able to discover new local meadows & unsung trails during solo hikes and outings with her partner during lockdown. There’s no better metaphor for resiliency, really, than considering the way the flowers continued to bloom despite everything else happening in the world these last three years.*
“There’s such hope in the flowers. Some people think of new year’s as the time of rebirth, but I think it’s spring.” Lexi’s devotion not just to teaching but to stewardship is largely informed by her successful completion of the Master Naturalist program through OSU.
She notes in particular the “spirit of inquiry” that the program inspires, which encourages citizens to understand and value the natural history and ecology of the region. Lexi embodies this spirit by keeping the “Leave No Trace” rule at the forefront of her mind and making sure the groups she leads aren’t doing yoga in places that will damage the environment.
Given our shared investment in trauma-informed practices, our conversation was bound to cover the intersection of TI frameworks and inclusive outdoor facilitation. Gleaned directly from Lexi’s wisdom, here are a few ways to incorporate trauma-informed strategies into your teaching:
Give folks information up front—no surprises. “I always send pre-trip emails all the way through to the day of the event. When we gather, I review the agenda out loud.”
Promote “choice & voice.” Lexi encourages the group to decide when the yoga break will happen, making sure everyone gets a say.
Empower people to make good choices for themselves. “I always let people know how many breaths they can expect to spend in a given pose.”
Keep an eye toward safety. “I’m mindful to avoid vulnerable yoga poses when we’re out in public,” Lexi explains, depending on how crowded the trails are and where the yoga breaks occur.
The safety piece, as any good trauma-informed practitioner knows, is really what so many of these elements come down to. Lexi goes on to emphasize the importance of “options and invitations,” noting, for example, that she will invite people to close their eyes, but never, ever insist on it. “Sometimes you can just soften your gaze, or find a piece of nature to focus on. And nobody has to lie down when they’d rather not.”
“Because of comfort and safety,” I ask out loud, almost rhetorically.
“Yes,” Lexi asserts before adding, another twinkle in her eye, “But also, ticks.”
HOW TO PARTICIPATE:
Due to popular demand, Lexi has just added two new events to the 2023 Wild Bloom line-up: A yoga flow & nature hike on August 20th at Hamilton Mountain, in conjunction with Washington Trail Association’s Hike-a-Thon; and another one on October 1st at Tamanawas Falls. There’s also still room available in the Yoga & Rafting Adventure happening in Maupin on Saturday, September 9th.
For details about all events and to register, visit wildbloomyoga.net. While you’re there, consider signing up for Lexi’s newsletter, checking out her current studio offerings, or ordering yourself some local swag! You can also follow Lexi on Instagram @wild.bloom.yoga.
Wild Bloom Yoga donates 10% of the proceeds of each event to the trail association that maintains the given trail.
*Side-note: The flowers might not always bloom, friends! Our stewardship of the natural world is just as vital as our enjoyment of it. Please make decisions, including who you vote for and where you spend your money, with environmental justice in mind.
