Meet Dr. Laura Griffith Garland

Laura Griffith Garland is a certified Reiki Master/Teacher, Shamanic Reiki Master, and tarot practitioner and teacher with over 25 years experience with the tarot and 15 years experience with Reiki.  She has studied a broad range of spiritual disciplines including, Tai Chi, Chi Gung, Uechi Rui, Core Shamanism, ancient Celtic mysticism, and the art of the katana.  She completed a traditional year-and-a-day study of Wicca and trained for three years with a Lakota Medicine Man.  She is also a veteran and teacher.

Laura holds a bachelor’s degree in engineering physics from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, which she completed before her twenty-first birthday.  In addition, she holds a Master’s of Arts in Teaching from Washington University, where she became a licensed teacher of mathematics, general science, and physics.  Laura earned her Doctorate of Philosophy in Earth and Planetary Sciences from Washington University, studying the interactions of water and the crust of Mars with implications for the beginnings of life.  Her research is now considered the underpinnings for all current research concerning hydrothermal systems and their implications for life on Mars, which were finally proven 20 years after her groundbreaking work.

Laura currently works both as a healer and as a tutor.  She tutors physics, chemistry, and calculus, along with many other topics in mathematics and sciences.  Her love of teaching and her commitment to helping has led her to her dual life.  Many find it odd to have a hard-science researcher also working in the “New Age” field, but Laura does not find the dichotomy to be a problem.  She understands much of the workings of the universe from the scientific perspective, but at the same time understands that science still does not know all there is to know about those workings.  New research continually uncovers the energetic connections between and around all living things and even among inanimate objects.   Having a number of unexplainable experiences when she was young, Laura found a better explanation in Celtic mysticism and shamanism than in science, but does not reject science just because “they haven’t gotten there yet.”

Laura is also a veteran, having served her country for six years as a United States Naval Officer.  As a Naval Officer, among other duties, she taught advanced mathematics and nuclear physics.  She was also in charge of training new staff, security officer for her wing, the director of her division, and was one of the fastest ever at her command to receive the commendation of Master Training Specialist.  Additionally, she served as special liaison to the local chaplains for those of alternative spiritual pathways.  Laura worked for four years as a lay chaplain at the Naval Consolidated Brig.  Laura says that her time in the Navy provided her with a unique perspective that few in her field ever experience.  She says that she got most of her “white knight” persona taken care of by serving her county, but the need to help and to serve now plays out as a teacher and in practicing and teaching Reiki and tarot and as a Shaman and Life Coach.