Healing doesn’t always have to be heavy

There’s something we don’t talk about enough in the wellness space – the idea that healing can actually feel good. That it doesn’t always have to be the deep dive, the shadow work, the sitting with discomfort until something cracks open. Sometimes it looks like turning up the music, getting on a trampoline, and letting your body do what it was always designed to do… move, play, and feel alive.

I’ve been in seasons where movement felt like punishment. Where my body was something to manage, not something to enjoy. When I was navigating chronic Lyme disease, 70 pounds heavier than I am today, covered in rashes and hives from the toxic overload in my system – moving was the last thing I wanted to do. But rebounding found me during that time, and it gave me something no other form of exercise ever had… an emotional connection to my body. Not a performance. Not an outcome. Just connection.

I used to put headphones on, stand on my rebounder on the deck in the Berkshires, watch the birds come alive in the morning, and for the first time in a long time feel like I was coming alive with them. It wasn’t intense. It wasn’t complicated. It was just me and my body finding our way back to each other.

So when Rachel Lawrence started popping up on my feed – this woman bouncing on a mini trampoline, radiating joy, clearly having the best time – something in me just knew. This is what the world needs. Workouts that feel like play.

Meet Rachel Lawrence

Rachel is the founder of Radical Rebounding – a Sedona-based studio owner, entrepreneur, and movement guide who has spent nearly six years building a practice rooted in something beautifully simple: joy as medicine. At her core, everything Rachel shares comes from lived experience – not just movement, but healing, resilience, and learning how to come home to herself after seasons of burnout and disconnection. The trampoline became a tool, but the real work has always been about nervous system regulation, self-trust, and remembering our bodies as safe, wise, and powerful.

What I love about Rachel is that she doesn’t separate fitness from healing or spirituality. For her, they’re beautifully intertwined. And that comes through in every word of this conversation.

How it all started

Rachel came to rebounding during a season of her life where she was carrying a lot. She was navigating chronic anxiety, raising two young kids, and moving through a chapter that had her feeling disconnected from herself and stuck in her head. She had read the books, done the inner work intellectually – but she couldn’t bridge the gap between knowing something and actually feeling it in her body.

Then she came across Tony Robbins talking about rebounding, bought a cheap trampoline from a big box store, and bounced so hard she broke it in two weeks.

And something shifted.

She started laughing again. She started playing. She started feeling that spark she knew was possible but couldn’t access through thinking alone. And slowly, she began taking action in areas of her life where she had been frozen – making big decisions, reclaiming her independence, and eventually building an entirely new life from the ground up.

What struck me most about Rachel’s story is that she didn’t start with a business plan or a brand vision. She started with a deep desire to feel good. She was leading classes in the mirror for a year and a half before anyone ever showed up. No audience, no strategy – just a woman bouncing in her living room, following the thing that made her feel alive.

The science is real – and so is the emotional release

One of the things I appreciated about our conversation is that Rachel doesn’t shy away from the science. Rebounding stimulates the lymphatic system through that constant up and down motion – valves opening and closing with each bounce. It’s low impact, so the weight is distributed evenly across the body instead of pounding into your joints. NASA has studied it. The cardiovascular benefits are significant. The balance, proprioception, and strength gains are real.

But what Rachel kept circling back to – and what resonated with me the most, is the emotional component.

She talked about how women especially need a space where they can move without the hard hitting, without the pounding, without the constriction. A space that feels safe enough to be uninhibited.. to be free.. to be, as she put it, a little feral. Or a lot feral.

That landed in my body.

Because I think so many of us have been taught that exercise is something you endure. You push through tired, push through discomfort, push through the parts of you that are screaming for softness. And then we wonder why we dread it. We wonder why we can’t stick with it. We wonder why it feels like one more thing on the list instead of something that actually nourishes us.

Rachel’s classes end with heart-centered music during the cool down, and that’s often where the tears come. People message her after class saying they had a full breakdown on the way home. And she celebrates that – because the movement opened something that needed to move.

There’s a difference between pushing your body to extremes for a temporary high and cultivating a frequency that actually stays with you after the workout ends. What Rachel has built is the second thing.

From “I have to” to “I get to”

One of my favorite moments in our conversation was when Rachel described the shift that changed her entire relationship with movement – and eventually, her entire life.

She had always loved being outside, walking, hiking. But somewhere along the way it became an obligation. The fitness industry is relentless with that messaging – you have to, you have to, you have to. And Rachel got honest about the fact that she didn’t want to live inside a “have to” anymore.

Rebounding was so fun that it broke that pattern. She didn’t wake up dreading it. She woke up excited. And then that energy started bleeding into everything else. I get to move my body. I get to be a mother. I get to create things. I get to have these experiences.

That reframe is so simple, and it’s so powerful. Because so many of the women I work with aren’t lacking ability – they’re living in freeze. They’re coming out of difficult chapters where their confidence has been shaken, and they’re terrified of making the wrong step. And what Rachel’s story shows is that sometimes the way out of freeze isn’t a big dramatic decision. Sometimes it’s play. Sometimes it’s putting on music and bouncing until you laugh.

Courage is not the same thing as confidence

When I asked Rachel how she found the courage to start her business, she corrected me in the most beautiful way. She said she didn’t have confidence – she had courage. And courage is what didn’t stop her when people laughed at her for telling them she got fit bouncing on a mini trampoline.

She borrowed money for her first set of trampolines. She found a studio that gave her a discounted rate. She was building this during a massive life transition with almost nothing in the bank – and then Covid hit right as she was getting started.

She had never wanted to be on camera. She hated video calls. And then lockdown happened and it was the only way to keep doing the thing she loved. So she got on Facebook and started leading bounces online. She went to her therapist the day of her first recording and broke down crying, saying she couldn’t do it.

And then she did it anyway.

That’s how every brave thing starts, isn’t it? Not with confidence. With courage. With the willingness to feel terrified and take the step before your brain has a chance to talk you out of it.

Rachel also talked about the people along her path who just kept telling her to stay in it. Stay in it. Stay in it. The friend who believed in her before she believed in herself. The therapist who carried her through the hardest season without asking for anything in return. The angels, as she called them, who showed up exactly when she needed them.

I think that’s the part of building something meaningful that we don’t talk about enough. It’s not just grit and strategy. It’s the people who hold you when you’re falling apart and say – keep going. This is the process.

Your power is your birthright

Near the end of our conversation, Rachel said something that I want to leave you with. She was talking about her gratitude journal and the power of writing your own words, and she shared something she tells her classes all the time…

This is yours. No one can take it and no one gave it. It’s your birthright.

She also shared this metaphor that stuck with me – the stronger the tree is, the more shade it can give. If all of us are strong in our roots, healthy in our trunks, the shade we offer to the world around us plants the seeds that will keep growing long after we’re gone.

That’s what Rachel is building with Radical Rebounding. It started as a woman bouncing alone in her living room, following a deep desire to feel good. And now it’s a studio in Sedona, online classes reaching people all over the world, trained instructors, and a community of people who are finding their way back to joy, strength, and play – one bounce at a time.

If you’ve been in a season where movement feels heavy, where your body feels more like a burden than a home, where you’ve forgotten what it feels like to just have fun in your skin… let this episode be a gentle nudge back in that direction.

And if you’re sitting on a dream, terrified to take the first step, let Rachel’s story remind you – you don’t need confidence to begin. You just need courage. And maybe a trampoline. The episode drops tomorrow, I can’t wait for you to tune in.

Xoxo, Lauren

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