When Corrina Crade follows her intuition, good things happen.
It’s led her to her business, her family and a recent career pivot, which has opened the door to incredible new opportunities.
Corrina was born in India and adopted by a Madison couple who raised her in a home where meditation, yoga and vegetarianism were the norm. After college, she moved to Chicago to work in entertainment but began to feel stuck.
“It was a time of dead-end jobs, bad dates …” she says. “I felt it in my body and mind. It got to the point where I really needed to fix my life.”
She began experimenting with mindfulness and a gratitude practice. With the help of library books and free online courses, she added in meditation. These steps were life-changing in giving Corrina a clear vision, positive outlook and deep sense of love. “You have so much control over your thoughts,” she says. “And positive thoughts have so much weight.”
Corrina soon launched MogaMind, a company combining elements of gratitude, meditation, visualization and more. And then came more positive changes: She got better jobs, produced a film and met Patrick Cunningham, who would become her husband.
“My life just blossomed,” she says.
Patrick, who grew up in Oklahoma, quickly aligned with Corrina’s passions. In addition to working as a business developer and website designer, he became part of MogaMind.
The two have continued to integrate life and work, getting married, moving to Madison and having kids — Julian is four, Penelope is two and their third child is due September 1 — and continuing to expand their expertise, Corrina as a certified Pranic healer and Patrick as a yoga instructor who leads corporate mindfulness sessions.
But this past year, as their family was at home during quarantine, Corrina realized the MogaMind wasn’t sitting right with her. “I was almost ready to throw it out,” she says. “I didn’t feel like this was me anymore.”
Fortunately, she didn’t — but she did make a realization that her partner was the true embodiment of the business. “It was Patrick, in a really beautiful way,” she says.
In a creative burst, Corrina envisioned forming a new company, under which MogaMind would be a product. She would run the new Mindfluencers — with a focus on video and more public-minded collaborations — and Patrick would helm MogaMind.
Once again, a purposeful change gave way to unexpected opportunities and abundance.
“I had been gripping it with all my might,” Corrina says. “But the minute the shift happened, doors opened and people came to us.”
A highlight so far is producing a new television show in which they highlight sustainable living for families and showcase green products and businesses in the state.
“There’s so much amazing stuff happening in Wisconsin,” Patrick says. “We want to make that information available to people.”
There’s tremendous power in households making shifts toward being more environmentally conscious. Every little change adds up to a huge impact, and it’s not about being perfect.
“The whole point was to make it accessible,” Patrick says. “We want to learn and we want to do good. And we want to take that journey with others.”
The show is slated to launch in late October — follow Mindfluencers on social media for the details as they become public — and in the meantime, the couple is working on other projects.
One is Pogie the Yogie, a kid-focused yoga series starring Patrick. Corrina describes the character of Pogie as “a combination of Mr. Rogers and Blippi, if that person were a yogi.” The series is mostly live action with some animation and will debut on YouTube later this month.
Patrick is excited to use the platform to bring yoga, mindfulness and a space to discuss feelings to a young audience. His approach is to introduce yoga in a way that’s fun and engaging, treat kids with respect and help them understand that every feeling is okay.
“It just gives me chills thinking about how to help kids navigate an uncertain world,” he says.
Patrick and Corrina also appreciate having the opportunity to show their own kids what it looks like to approach life and work with kindness and mindfulness and how to care for themselves, others and the earth.
And in their most recent business change, they’re modeling the potential and power that can be found in welcoming change.
“The shift for me of letting go, which I feared was a loss,” Corrina says, “became the biggest gain.”
– Katie Vaughn
Katie Vaughn is the editor and co-founder of Northerly. She is a University of Wisconsin-Madison and Stanford University-trained journalist with experience as a writer, reporter, editor, blogger and author. She lives in Madison with her husband, daughter and son, and is always up for an adventure.
GOING GREENER
Corrina shares a few changes her family has made to be more environmentally friendly.
• Switching to Dropps was an early one! It is a biodegradable laundry detergent pod that eliminates toxic pollution, plastic waste and animal cruelty. Plus, it is a lot easier to use.
• Sustain Dane was awesome in teaching us all sorts of useful information about how to recycle better! For example, juice boxes and cartons like that are fully recyclable! Just push in the straw and put it in the bin. Another one is that aluminum foil can be recycled — just wash it and ball it up! Similarly, you can recycle literally ALL of the junk mail you get, including the envelopes with plastic windows. I previously recycled some but wasn’t sure on others. Now, in a weird way, I get excited about junk mail because I know it can all be recycled.
• Metcalfe’s was great to help us learn about food miles and take into account how far away food travels to get to the store so we can make informed choices to buy more locally and save transportation costs along with fossil fuel pollution as a result. Produce from across the U.S. travels much further and causes more greenhouse gasses than if it comes from just outside Madison.
Also from our interview with owner Tim Metcalf, we learned about MG&E’s Green Power Tomorrow program, which, if you’re a customer, you can go online and literally in a few clicks switch to one-hundred percent renewable energy! I did it while waiting for a meeting to start (less than three minutes) and it costs about $12 more per month for our house! Everyone will have a different cost based on their own usage and electricity needs, but I was blown away by how inexpensive it is. I had thought going renewable would be a big expense and mean solar panels on the roof or all sorts of other stuff to do.
• At the Habitat for Humanity ReStore, it was awesome to see that they have recycled paint (which we bought) and also a lot of nails and screws for increidlby cheap (which Patrick will buy next time).
• The Dane County Department of Waste and Renewables has an awesome reclaim room where you can go and pick up all sorts of household and project chemicals for free! Things like Shellac, wood stain, et cetera. The materials are not all that environmentally friendly, but the notion that you can save something from landfill and avoid buying a new can of stain, for instance, means it is a very practical step that helps in multiple ways.