Today we’d like to introduce you to Leah Cullis.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
It started when I had a career-ending fall as a cheerleader in my first year – I sprained my neck and hurt my lower back, and instead of properly rehabbing, I just tried to move on. That trauma got buried under everything else going on at the time: my parents’ divorce, a breakup, needing to work and hustle through school. I pushed forward and didn’t look back.
Years later, deep into a fast-paced career in political campaigns and fundraising, my body forced me to. What started as tingling in my foot spread into numbness through my entire right side, and one morning, after a really successful fundraising event, I couldn’t feel half my face. I landed in the emergency room being told I’d likely had a stroke, then possibly MS. It was terrifying – and it was the wake-up call I needed. My body had been trying to get my attention for years, and I’d been too busy achieving and striving to listen.
That’s when I found my yoga practice, and rediscovered my breath and the power of inner listening. The body communicates in the language of sensation – it’s personal, and it’s real time. The question is: are you listening? That moment of breakdown became my access point to a whole new level of awareness, connection, and ultimately love. There was deep wisdom being communicated within my body; I just had to slow down enough to hear it. That’s the heart of yoga and Ayurveda, which are foundational to all my coaching work today – align with intention, and make it a lifestyle.
Yoga became my way back into my body, and eventually into a twenty-year devotion to the practice — teaching, training, and collecting accolades like leading yoga at the White House for eight consecutive years during the Obama administration, appearing on the cover of Yoga Journal, the world’s largest yoga magazine, and authoring my internationally published book, Power Yoga: Strength, Sweat & Spirit.
Then I became a mother, and everything reorganized around a single truth: this is my highest calling. I stopped compartmentalizing two decades of yoga, Ayurveda, and wisdom traditions into “practice time,” and started weaving it into every ordinary moment – with the intention to turn the mundane moments of everyday life into magic. That thread runs through everything I do now: my work as an Integrative Wellbeing Specialist at Miraval Austin, building MOM in ATX, my community of mamas celebrating the journey of modern motherhood together, and coaching high-achieving women to live with more intention, energy, purpose, and joy. Your most vibrant life isn’t created by changing who you are. It’s created by remembering who you’ve always been.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Not even close – and I believe the obstacles and redirections are the real teachers.
That cheerleading fall wasn’t the only one. In my twenties, I let my work life consume the rest of my life, living almost entirely in my head and disconnected from my body – the same pattern of pushing forward instead of healing. I was thriving on the outside while quietly falling apart on the inside, until a series of breakdowns landed me in the emergency room with half my body numb. It was the most humbling, and necessary, wake-up call of my life.
That’s when I made a choice that changed everything: instead of pushing forward like I always had, I chose to look for the light and find the wisdom in the fall. Rather than powering through, I went within, and yoga became my roadmap for an entirely new way of living.
As women, we are cyclical beings — we don’t live in a straight line. I believe fully in embracing the cycles of life: death and rebirth, not holding on, surrendering the old as a process of renewal and awakening.
I’ve come to believe that intensity has been a necessary part of my path – every fall, every breakdown, every misstep has been essential to my growth. It all serves. We learn through contrast. We have to know our edges to find our center.
So when I became a mother in my late thirties, after already building a couple of full careers and two decades of identity around my practice, and felt the ground shift under me again, I recognized the pattern. I didn’t fight the disorientation or the dismantling of who I used to be. I let my simple rituals – daily alignment of energy, intention, and small moments of joy – guide me back to myself as I awakened to who I was becoming. And I found my community of mothers and a circle of support, the way yoga and yoga studios once had.
Every struggle has been raw material for the work I do now. I work with women who are holding it all – careers, relationships, endless roles and responsibilities – and helping them remember that prioritizing their own self-care and self-love isn’t selfish, it’s foundational. When a mother fills her own cup, it overflows into everyone she touches: her kids, her family, her community. That’s divine feminine power, and it’s what I help women step into – honoring the whole self, the light and the dark, the hard and the soft, through the same practices that carried me: how to fall, and how to rise looking for the light. It’s not just how I struggled and survived. It’s how I coach now.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I’m an Integrative Wellbeing Coach – I work at the intersection of yoga, Ayurveda, and wisdom traditions, translating them into practical, daily tools for modern women. My specialty is helping high-achieving women who are holding it all – careers, relationships, endless roles – reconnect to their bodies, their intuition, and their own vibrancy, without having to abandon the lives they’ve built to do it.
Professionally, I’ve spent over twenty years in this world: I led yoga on the White House lawn for eight consecutive years during the Obama administration, I’ve been featured on the cover of Yoga Journal, and I authored the internationally published Power Yoga: Strength, Sweat & Spirit. Today I bring this foundation into my work as an Integrative Wellbeing Specialist at Miraval Austin, into my private and group coaching practice with women, and into building community through MOM in ATX (formerly Moms of Mueller).
What I’m most proud of isn’t any single accolade — it’s the throughline. I’ve built a practice and a community where women don’t have to compartmentalize wellness into something they get to once they’ve earned it. I teach women to weave ritual and intention into the messiness of daily life – the school pickup, the client calls, the 2am wake-ups – and the mundane into something meaningful and magical, weaving the sacred into the simplest moments.
What sets me apart is that I’m not teaching from theory. I’ve lived every transition I coach women through: the burnout, the breakdown, the identity rebuild that comes with becoming a mother later in life. And I lean fully into our feminine power – the belief that when a woman fills her own cup first, that abundance doesn’t stay with her. It overflows into her children, her partner, her friendships, her whole community. I’m not just helping women feel better. I guide and support women to become the kind of grounded, radiant force that lifts everyone around them, and to live their most vibrant life, now.
Is there anything else you’d like to share with our readers?
I don’t think so!
@leahcullis
leahcullis.com
Thank you!!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://leahcullis.com
- Instagram: @leahcullis
