Bright Lights: Thosh Collins & Chelsey Luger Reclaim Indigenous Wellness

Husband-and-wife team Thosh Collins and Chelsey Luger are Indigenous community health educators who lead workshops and trainings in colleges and universities, public health and healthcare settings, and professional organizations across the country (including collaborations with companies like Nike and REI). As cofounders of Well For Culture and authors of The Seven Circles: Indigenous Teachings for Living Well, their goal is to support healthier lives for Native people by applying cultural teachings to everyday routines related to health, food, and care.

Before they were partners in work and in life, Luger and Collins were living on opposite coasts, developing professionally with the intention of returning to their roots in Indian Country to serve their communities.

Luger, 38, who is Anishinaabe and Lakota and grew up on reservations in North Dakota, was living in New York City while finishing her master’s degree in journalism at Columbia University. Collins, 44, who is Onk Akimel O’odham, was living in San Francisco, building a career in art and photography.

During that period, both began making changes in how they approached their health. Luger decided to stop drinking and started focusing more intentionally on food and exercise, filling her days with fitness classes wherever she could find them.

For Collins, the shift unfolded gradually. Having grown up seeing the effects of alcohol and addiction in his community, he became more attentive to his own habits. “I could see where it was going, and I knew I had to stop,” he says.

Independently, they arrived at the same decision: It was time to return home—geographically, culturally, and spiritually.

“I knew I wanted to be back in a place where my spirituality wasn’t something I practiced occasionally but something that guided how I lived every day,” Luger says. “No matter how far you go, our teachings say you can always return—and that felt true for both of us.”

Friends First

In 2013, before moving back to North Dakota, Luger went with friends to see the Indigenous electronic group A Tribe Called Red. It was there that she met Collins, whom she already knew through social media and shared Native networks. They started talking and what followed was, as Luger recalls, “a very easy friendship.”

“There was no dating or interest in that way,” she says.

“It felt like meeting someone who was already on the same journey,” Collins adds.

When Collins returned to New York on later trips, they met up again. Their conversations centered on the lives they were trying to build and the work each hoped to do. Collins was focused on photography. Luger, newly graduated from Columbia University, was searching for journalism work aligned with Indigenous storytelling.

After a year at NowThis News and an unsuccessful attempt to become a producer at CNN, she began working as a part-time editor and staff writer for Indian Country Today and freelanced for other publications. That work overlapped with her transition out of New York and her move back to North Dakota to reconnect with family and community.

During that time, she and Collins began talking more seriously about working together. The idea was simple: a blog that combined her writing with his photography, focused on Indigenous approaches to health and wellness.

The blog, titled Well For Culture, quickly took on a life of its own. Luger and Collins began hearing from tribal programs, schools, and community organizations soon after it launched.

“We were just putting things out there,” Luger says. “And then all of a sudden people started emailing us and calling us.”

They were hearing primarily from Native communities responding to what Luger and Collins were sharing online. Those who reached out did so because they saw Indigenous people talking plainly about fitness, food, sobriety, and daily routines in ways that reflected their own lives. Those inquiries led to invitations to speak with youth and staff.

The response surprised Luger. “That it could lead to invitations and paid work didn’t even occur to me. For Thosh, it did. He always saw it as part of his career path,” she says, noting that he had already spent several years working as a trainer with the Native Wellness Institute.

Building Well For Culture

In practice, Well For Culture grew into an Indigenous wellness education and consulting initiative. Their work is organized around the Seven Circles, the model Luger and Collins developed to approach well-being across seven areas of life: foodways, movement, sleep, ceremony, sacred space, connection to land, and connection to community.

“It’s a method anybody can adapt, no matter who they are or where they come from—and it really works,” Luger says. The framework is intentionally simple and meant to be lived, not perfected, she adds. “It’s about balance and choosing things you can actually maintain.”

As they shared the Seven Circles in communities and refined it over time, it became the foundation for their book, The Seven Circles: Indigenous Teachings for Living Well (published by HarperOne in 2022), which grew directly out of what people were asking for in those settings.

Life Together

In 2015, two years into their friendship and work together, Luger and Collins began dating. Luger took what she has described as “a leap of faith” and moved to Arizona to live with Collins near the reservation where he grew up. They married in 2019 and now have two daughters, ages 8 and 5, and an infant son born in February 2026.

Friendship, Luger says, remains central. “That’s still the foundation of our relationship to this day,” she says.

When Collins talks about his wife, he describes the way she relates to people. “She listens,” he says. “No matter who it is, she always gives people respect and assumes everyone has something to teach.” It’s a quality he sees reflected in their work together and in how they make decisions as a family.

Parenting has become an extension of the values they share publicly. For Collins, being a father means teaching his children who they are. “What’s important to me as a dad is being present,” he says. He talks about sharing songs, spending time on the land, and helping his children understand their identity early, as part of everyday routines.

Luger describes parenting in terms of what she hopes her children will carry forward. “We want them to be able to arrive at a similar level of confidence and preparedness for the world,” she says, “without necessarily having to go through quite as many stumbles or highs and lows as we had to.” She also emphasizes the importance of letting them follow their own interests and paths.

That attention to daily routines and responsibilities is also reflected in Luger’s next book, Native Home, which HarperOne will publish this fall. While The Seven Circles grew directly out of conversations with Native communities about balance, nourishment, movement, and ceremony, Native Home focuses on the household itself. Drawing on Indigenous teachings, the book looks at how everyday domestic spaces and practices can support health and well-being.

For Collins, the work the couple is doing and the family they are raising are part of the same commitment. “For me, the dream has always been about being of service,” he says. “We’re living our dream.”

This article appeared in the July/August 2026 issue of Spirituality & Health: A Unity Publication^®. Subscribe now.