Today we’d like to introduce you to Chad Carpenter.
Hi Chad, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstories.
I grew up working in Construction in my family’s electrical contracting business, joined the trade right out of high school. I ended up getting 3 complete ACL (Anterior Crucial Ligament) replacements at a young age. I had my first surgery when I was 13 and my 3rd when I was 20. The rehabilitation processes led to a lot of physical imbalances, and I ended up with a poor physical quality of life, with lots of knee, hip, and lower back pain. I had a decision to either medicate or get proactive and did lots of research, finding Yoga to be a good way to take care of the body, especially the joints. Having struggled with addiction to prescription pills in high school, I told myself I wasn’t going back down that path and decided to go the proactive route and gave Yoga a try. I was pretty much instantly hooked as I experienced profound physical benefits after the first class. I started taking classes regularly and, after some time in the practice, also noticed other positive shifts in my mood, personality and relationships. Yoga helped with anger and depression issues that I struggled with from a young age and gave me a quality of life I never imagined I would have. After really experiencing the benefits of a consistent Yoga practice, I quickly decided to make it my life’s mission to help others experience the same benefits and relief from the many stressors that plague us in our day-to-day lives. I am particularly passionate about sharing the practice with youth that normally don’t have access to these tools to help them deal with the struggles they are up against every day. I work with local nonprofits in running mindfulness programs to share these tools as much as possible. Through my Yoga practice, I have learned that every breath we take is a beautiful gift, and when we take the time to stop and just spend time with ourselves through Yoga and meditation, we are gifted with this awareness to experience just how beautiful and special this life truly is.
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?
I think every road certainly has its challenges and this life doesn’t discriminate in offering those challenges to each and every person. They call Yoga and Meditation a “practice” because it’s something we have to work at every day. We don’t come to a realization one day and are then freed from a certain challenge or struggle, it’s something we have to set aside time for every day. Each realization gives us a little piece of how we can do something to achieve a certain result, but we still have to dedicate ourselves to walking the path. Every trial and tribulation is an opportunity to learn and grow if we dedicate the time and effort to laying aside our ego and look into ourselves to see how it can make us better and more capable human beings. This has certainly been my work and my struggle. I would often jump to the blame game when things didn’t go right and would avoid the lessons that I could learn because my ego was so over-inflated. Through my teaching, one of my biggest struggles is getting people to open themselves to giving yoga and mediation a chance. It is still seen as very taboo for many people, and many have simply written it off. I simply aim to give people the opportunity to experience the benefits of these practices for themselves rather than trying to preach it to them. This is certainly easier said than done and offers many challenges in encouraging people to open up to themselves.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
To wrap all of what I do up into one word would be to say that I am simply a servant. Serving people has always been my greatest passion and I’m incredibly grateful that I get to wake up every day and serve people in the most profound way possible, which is essentially helping them to connect with themselves. Everything that exists in our society, no matter what it is, originated from inside someone’s heart and/or mind. Every great philosopher or spiritual teacher has stated this truth in one way or another. The state of our society is simply a reflection of the state of our own individual well-being. I spent years fighting to change things in the physical world until I came to this realization, which is why I spend my time now guiding people to internalize their awareness and work on themselves. If we want to change something in this world, we must change ourselves first, and then the physical world will be changed simply as a result.
Growing up, no one needed to tell you not to cut off your own hand. Of course not; this is because you understand that your hand is a part of you, and you wouldn’t destroy something intentionally that is a part of you. If we can bring ourselves to a place where we understand everything in this existence as not separate from ourselves but rather as a part of us, then there will simply be no more need for morality. No one would need to teach you to be kind or don’t do harm to others. You would do so organically because you understand everything as a part of yourself. Encouraging this shift in awareness is my life’s work, and in order to make it a reality every single one of us has to take time every day to simply sit and be with ourselves. We have to be willing to strip away all of our titles, achievements, and relationships and simply be with ourselves to understand first the state of our internal being and then second determine what in our beliefs and perceptions actually came from within ourselves and what was simply projected upon us from the outside world. With this gift of awareness, we can then consciously decide what we want to keep and what we want to discard.
This process can take place through practices of Yoga and Meditation but can also take place through breathwork. Somatic Breathwork is an incredibly powerful tool for clearing out self-limiting beliefs as well as clearing our physical traumas held by the body. Our bodies are incredibly intelligent, and they are taking in data and energy from every experience we have, including traumatic experiences. Through research, we are realizing that trauma is just as much physiological as it is psychological. Breathwork taps into that physiological aspect in an incredibly profound way and has the potential to clear decades of trauma in just one session.
Guiding breathwork journeys like this has become a niche passion of mine, primarily because of the profoundness of the healing that they can bring people.
I would say what sets me apart from others is that I lead with love and a desire to add value to people’s lives. I experienced earning a six-figure income and living a relatively comfortable life working in construction sales, and I was about as unfulfilled as a human being can be. I left that behind so that I could use the time that I have to help people change their lives. What I do with my time and how it influences the lives of others if far more important to me than how much I’m compensated for it.
I left pride behind some time ago, so I don’t have anything I am proud of, but I’ll say that I am incredibly grateful to live a life doing things that really means something to me and means something to others because many people aren’t that fortunate.
Where we are in life is often partly because of others. Who/what else deserves credit for how your story turned out?
Whoever first said “It takes a village” definitely knew what they are talking about. There have been many people that saw something in me when I simply saw nothing of value in myself.
Paul Martinelli was my first and biggest mentor and gave me an opportunity to represent him working for a nonprofit in Guatemala. I helped to develop and manage a sustainability project in a community there, and that experience showed me so many truths about this world, and I’m so incredible grateful for that experience.
Marie Mathieson saw something in me enough that she handed over her Yoga studio to me after she had spent 3 years of her life growing it and didn’t ask for a dime in return. Her actions made me really believe that there might actually be something in me that is of value to myself and others.
My parents, Cheryl Smith and Vance Carpenter, put up with a lot, and I mean a lot of headaches, so that I could become the man that I am today. I just wish I knew the value of everything they did for me at the time.
There are many more people that sacrificed things so that I could be here today, and I work every day to make sure that sacrifice wasn’t in vain and that it means something to this world.
Contact Info:
- Website: soulspacewpb.com
- Instagram: @chaduranga_wellness
