BONNYVILLE – Local entrepreneur Lauren Scherger began her career in hairdressing in 2002, but unexpected chronic back pain forced her to leave the profession. Despite the initial devastation, Scherger was plunged into a healing journey that led her to become a practitioner of the very modalities that she says healed her.
Now, Scherger is returning to her first love of hairdressing with a unique focus on wellness.
“I started doing hair in high school. I’d have all my friends come over and I’d do their hair for dances and prom. When I look back, I loved making people feel good. And how I knew how to make people feel good was to make them feel beautiful on the outside. What I do now is I make people feel good on the inside,” said Scherger.
Scherger became a professional hairdresser and worked until 2009 when her chronic pain became unbearable.
“I basically blew my back out. One day my back started hurting and it just got worse and worse and worse. It was so much emotional baggage. I held all my mental and emotional stress in my back. I was a workaholic – I basically worked all day with no breaks, and it was true physical, mental, and emotional burn out.”
Scherger ended up having to take a leave from work, that turned into full resignation from the profession.
“I had to take a leave [of absence], and everything I was trying ended up making my back worse, not better. Physio, chiropractic, acupuncture - they would do X-rays and CT scans. They were like ‘On paper, everything is fine’.”
With the chronic pain persisting, Scherger feared that her mysterious condition was due to something truly horrible that the doctors just had not found yet, imagining a tumor on her spine.
The severity of the situation offered Scherger ashes to rise from, and she decided to take her health into her own hands.
“After six months, I was like ‘OK, nothing conventional is working. I need to start finding other ways to heal.’ That’s how I found Body Talk, and then I started working at Herbology because I started getting into vitamins and supplements... I just went on a big journey to heal. I ended up essentially being off work for two years.”
Body Talk is a holistic modality that uses energy work and other non-invasive techniques to harmonize physical, emotional, and mental states to allow the body to heal itself.
Scherger reminisces about the lack of mental health awareness and support when she was going through her chronic pain.
“There was no vocabulary around mental health in 2009, which is crazy - it’s not that long ago. The word anxiety wasn’t even part of our conversations.”
Scherger found great relief within the modality and wanted to share it with others.
“My first Body Talk session, I thought to myself, ‘I need to do this.’ I spent several years taking every course associated with it. I took probably over 50 courses.”
Scherger found purpose in bringing different healers to her community. During her healing journey, she would often have to travel to Saskatoon or Edmonton, but now she reports an abundance of healers in the area.
“There is some type of vortex here in Lakeland. The amount of healers and people doing energy work is amazing - it’s incredible out here in the middle of nowhere.”
Scherger finds joy in uplifting other talented healers.
“I love when, for instance, our new acupuncturist gets a booking. I feel like I’m winning, because I want them to be successful. These women have these gifts and talents, and they just want to share them and provide them.”
Scherger believes it’s never a mistake who you choose as a practitioner, and that instincts will often draw a client to the right practitioner.
“There is no greater gift than when a client comes in and they share their story, their body, their mind, and their heart with you – to be able to help and support them, the gratification and fulfillment is irreplicable. It’s like an alchemy that happens.”
Scherger is an advocate for exploring different healing modalities and understands the nuances of individual healing journeys.
“It’s a case-by-case basis. Some people might need an actual physical adjustment, but for others it can be trauma. They need to go into the subconscious with the mental, emotional, and energetic. Some people need to be on medication.”
She adds, “If I get hit by a bus, take me to the hospital, don’t do Reiki on me. I want Western medicine when it’s appropriate and Eastern medicine when it’s appropriate. I don’t know how long it’s going to take, but the time is coming for the two to work with each other, with mutual respect.”
Scherger went on to be trained in cranial sacral, feeling it would be a missing piece and benefit her personal practice. She spoke to the parallels between cranial sacral and hairdressing, remembering how people's favourite part of a haircut was getting a head massage while their hair was being shampooed.
Scherger's life experience and training culminated in her wellness shop Herb and Stone, but she always envisioned a return to hair dressing.
“I truly respect hair, and I respect people... my teachings brought everything back together. I learned that hair is an extension of your nervous system - it’s like antennae, and it's picking up information in your environment. People being very protective of their hair makes sense because it’s like someone is playing in your nervous system.”
When asked if she feels like Sandra Bullock in her shop in Practical Magic she responded, “It’s funny you should ask that - a bunch of us girls were just talking about that movie and we found out it all had very different meanings and impacts on us.”
She adds, “For some it taught them about toxic relationships, or sisterhood, or about magic in the everyday, but for me I loved the idea of these women working together with their best friends in a cool herb shop helping people.”
Scherger encourages others to advocate for their own health, to explore their options, and create a path that fosters wellness and alignment in their lives.