At 10 or 11, when I was reading Harriet the Spy and A Cricket in Times Square, (what were you reading?), Lou Mccall was reading Yoga, Youth, and Reincarnation. In that book there are instructions on how to make clouds disappear. Of course, she set out to do just that in her town of Farmington, NM. And she did it! Later in high school, when I was reading only what was assigned to me by teachers, Lou picked up Siddhartha, a philosophical/spiritual novel written in 1922 by Herman Hesse. She was so stunned by the description of “enlightenment” that she had to drop the book and head out for a long walk. She has been on a long, consciously spiritual walk ever since! At 19 years old, when she moved to Albuquerque, she took her first-ever yoga class at the Kundalini ashram there. She remembers how great she felt after doing Breath of Fire and thought how she had never been oxygenated before! Lou started Transcendental Meditation when she was 23 years old and became a Buddhist soon after that. Her first Buddhist teacher was a Taoist who studied and taught Qigong and TaiChi. As if her toolbox wasn’t already deep, deep, deep, when Lou moved to Silver City, she practiced with a first-generation Iyengar & Feldenkrais teacher.
Lou wasn’t even living alone in a cave to make all of that happen! She studied Fine Arts & Filmmaking at The Art Institute of Chicago for 5 years, and “Artist” has been her primary identity since she was in elementary school. Painting, drawing, printmaking, animation, and filmmaking—Lou has done them all. But recently, she has dropped her visual art practice and become a writer. In 2024, she published Meditation For Everyone: Your Secular Guide To Spiritual Growth.
Lou was in a major car crash when she was 25 years old. Her neck was broken, her arms were paralyzed, and she had serious brain trauma. That experience has informed much of what she studies and teaches now. Lou teaches vagus nerve exercises to prevent migraines. She also teaches for the Love Your Brain foundation, Superbrain Yoga, and Neurobics! I haven’t taken any of these classes, but I have taken Lou’s Yoga Nidra classes almost every Thursday since October. They are absolutely amazing. She is absolutely amazing! I am unbelievably honored and thrilled to have Lou practicing with us on Thursday and Friday mornings, as well as Sunday afternoons.
Her website is: www.loumccall.com
