Meet Laura.
Chef. Cooking Instructor. Health Coach. Reiki Practitioner. Chakra Devotee.
ABOUT ME
Hi, I’m Laura DePalma Isabella, and I’m so glad you’re here!
As a trained chef, cooking instructor, integrative nutrition health coach, reiki practitioner, chakra devotee (wife, mom… the list goes on!), I believe that holistic wellness is more than just eating healthy and exercising. It’s a multi-dimensional approach to caring for your mental, emotional and spiritual health, too. It’s learning how to feel balanced and grounded. Optimizing nourishment. Opening yourself up. Finding deeper connections. Enjoying beauty in everyday moments. Realizing a renewed sense of purpose in life.
Being multi-passionate, it took me a long time (much longer than I’d like to admit!) to bring my passions full circle. I was looking for a way to share my cooking and decades of food knowledge with others. I wanted to spread gentle reiki energy (with a side of essential oils! and crystals!). I desired to talk about chakras without all the puzzled looks. I was longing for community and connection. I was curious, confused, eager, hungry…
And finally, out of all that, Chakra Kitchen + Wellness was born.
My mission is educate + nourish whole body health through a variety of modalities, including cooking for your body’s energy systems (chakras), culinary and health coaching, reiki techniques, and other holistic wellness practices.
Services & Offerings
I offer a variety of resources + services to help you nourish yourself from the inside out, including:
Chakra Bowls To-Go brimming with high-vibe, plant-forward ingredients that will leave you feeling nourished and balanced
Culinary Coaching to help you become confident in the kitchen and ready to tackle any task at hand, whether it’s cooking for your family or following a doctor-prescribed diet
1:1 Health & Wellness Coaching where we focus on healthy eating, holistic living, and making sustainable shifts in a custom 90-day program
Reiki Sessions to open the flow of energy in your body’s seven main chakras that promotes relaxation, balance and healing
Private or Group Cooking Classes at Laurel Run for a fun and delicious event with your significant other, friends, or colleagues tailored to your liking
I'm also a firm believer in the power of community, which is why I offer a variety of limited in-person and online events to connect with other like-minded people.
Seasonal wellness retreats in the countryside at Laurel Run Cooking School & Culinary Farm
Group cooking classes to learn and connect through food and community
Reiki & meditation circles to share healing energies and wisdom
Essential oil workshops to learn about the power of plants
If you're ready to take your holistic wellness to the next level, I would love to help! Get in touch here!
My Story
Looking back, I was fortunate to grow up with amazing cooks in the family – though as a young kid, I didn’t fully realize how lucky I was! My mom – who owned and operated Laurel Run Cooking School in Vermilion, Ohio for over 20 years – made every meal from scratch, including the best homemade bread (those freshly-baked, still-warm baguettes she would deliver straight to my 4th-period French class in high school? Yeah, she was kinda famous!). My grandma taught me down-home recipes from her childhood in West Virginia. And I still remember the first recipe I ever accomplished on my own: the “Big Bad Wolf’s Chocolate Brownies” from the Walt Disney Cookbook that I would check out every. single. week. from our elementary school’s library.
It wasn’t until after graduating from Miami University that I realized just how deep the cooking gene ran, and how I yearned to pursue it further. Before I knew it, I was packing up life in Ohio and off to New York City, where I lived from 2006 to 2014. I attended NYU and earned my Master of Arts graduate degree in Food Studies in 2008. Hungry for more, I enrolled at NYC’s Institute of Culinary Education (ICE), where I received my diploma in Classic Culinary Arts just a short time later.
Over the span of almost a decade there, I worked in the food editorial arena as an editor at Bon Appetit, Food & Wine and Every Day with Rachael Ray magazines, simultaneously was a private chef for a family on Manhattan’s Upper West Side for more than five years, and did countless side gigs for private events, supper clubs, and as a chef-instructor. (My most memorable one was an event in Southampton working elbow-to-elbow with Top Chef judge Tom Collichio while Lionel Ritchie serenaded the crowd.)
After a move to Chicago (with my, at the time, all-new husband), I landed a PR & Marketing role at one of the country’s largest privately owned restaurant groups, Lettuce Entertain You. I worked closely with our executive chef team and oversaw marketing for nearly two dozen different restaurants and bars. Six years later, and in the midst of raising a toddler during a global pandemic, I hung up my corporate hat for something more personal, more entrepreneurial. I enrolled in the Institute of Integrative Nutrition (IIN) health coach training program and became a certified health coach in early 2023.
Throughout my education and cooking tenure, I continued to learn about and practice reiki after falling in love with it back in 2005. This evolved into learning more about the chakras, attending more reiki workshops, and dabbling in qigong and Eden Energy Medicine. Today, I am working toward the final level of training to become a Reiki Master later this year! With all that cumulative knowledge and passion, Chakra Kitchen + Wellness was born in mid-2023. And since I didn’t want to stop there, come January 2024, Laurel Run Cooking School will officially reopen!
Through it all, however, my proudest accomplishment is the life I’ve built with my husband, Damien, our beautiful son, Ronan, and our Wheaten pup, Ollie.