Louis was 14 when he had his skiing accident. Living in the German Country side, he skied every day there was snow and skateboarded every day there wasn’t. He also took drum lessons, but that was just “for the girls.” Most of all, he loved sports, being outside and active.
One cold day in February 2009, Louis decided to finish his day of skiing with a more adventurous run off the beaten path.
On the untouched side of the mountain, snow was gener-ous with deep layers of fluffy powder. It was so deep that Louis fell, losing his ski’s, which disappeared easily into the fresh snow. As he began sifting around to find them, the change in the snowpack triggered an avalanche. Louis was swept up and pummeled down the hill, past boulders that would have killed him, only stopping his momentum when his body wrapped around a tree.
He was airlifted out and induced into a coma for two weeks while undergoing many operations to repair broken bones and assess a spinal cord injury.
“When they woke me up from the coma, I didn’t even know I had a skiing accident. I couldn’t move anything below my chest and my right arm was mostly numb. I could only feel my bicep, thumb and index finger.”
Louis thought he would be walking out of the hospital in three months, but that wasn’t the case.
“I asked my doctors when I would be able to walk again. They said, ‘you’re never going to walk again. You’re para-lyzed now.’ That was the moment I realized that this was going to be really tough. I was 14; I had my whole life ahead of me! I knew it would be a lot of work, but I was not going to accept that my paralysis would never get better.”
Louis’ dad invited many experts to help with different kinds of therapies and treatments, including “thought train-ing.”
Intrigued, Louis started working with his thoughts. He’d start the day saying, “Today is a good day. I’m happy.”
“I’d say I’m happy 200 times a day. I was just lying there for hours telling myself positive thoughts, and it did help. Then I realized the power of using my thoughts, and I started researching it. I decided to get the feeling in my fingers back.”
For hours every day, Louis would look as his finger and tell himself he could move it. He started ergo therapy for his hands and was offered a piano for fifteen minutes a day.
“I could only hit one note at a time, but it felt so good. It just felt right.”
When he would play, he imagined the sound resonating through his body with healing vibrations.
“The doctors were always so negative, but I pretended that the music and sound waves would heal me.”
After two months of his imaginative piano playing and concentrating on moving his fingers for several hours each day, a finger finally started to move.
“I saw it move just a little. Maybe the first time I just imag-ined it, but it was incredibly motivating for me! I did it! The doctors told me I wouldn’t move my fingers, but I never stopped believing I could do it. I just knew I could.”
It took one and a half years to get all the feeling back in his right arm and fingers.
“I believe it was a combination between not giving up on my intentional thought therapy and my piano therapy.”
After he was released from the hospital, he moved in with his dad in Munich. He had to go back to school a few days a week. He never liked school much, but now he really didn’t want to go.
“You go from a hospital where everyone is struggling with something or are in a wheelchair like me, and then back at school, I was the only one in a wheelchair.”
His dad bought him a guitar, which is how Louis spent his time at home.
“People would say it helps to write down your thoughts, but it was so hard for me. But when I picked up my guitar and started playing chords, then I could write. “
Louis’ dad provided encouragement and resources to do a great deal of physical training and healthy eating.
“It was intense. It was too much for me as a teenager. So when a friend of mine moved to Portugal and asked if I wanted to come for a few months to learn English at an international school, I knew I wanted to go. They were really good friends with my parents and they promised they’d take care of me. The house and school were wheelchair friendly, and I needed some levity to break free from the intense daily pattern of my life.”
Louis ended up staying in Portugal two years to graduate from the international school.
“I was never very motivated to go to school, but for some reason I really wanted to learn English. Portugal was perfect. I made a lot of friends there and it was always sunny. We had a pool, and I swam every morning and got back into a more balanced healthy lifestyle.”
One evening in Portugal when he was 16, Louis played some of his original songs at a party where famed British song-writer and record producer, Mike Myers, was among the guests.
“He saw how people responded to me on stage and invit-ed me to record in his Portugal studio. Mike got me into music even more. He showed me how to use the programs and how to record properly. We only recorded one song, but I learned so much.”
Today, at 21, Louis is one of four students welcomed to attend his dream school, Zurich University of the Arts.
“It’s the best school in Europe to learn music composition for film, which is what I enjoy the most.”
Louis has his own own studio now, limitless in what he can create.
“Without music, I have no idea what I would do. My every day is infused with music. Either I’m scoring for film, playing the piano, listening to music, composing electronic music or singing with my guitar. Music makes me feel alive and repre-sents so much of who I am today.”
During our entire interview, Louis is glowing with positiv-ity and true happiness. Music is Louis’ way of expressing and sharing his true self. Music created an opportunity to be seen not as someone in a wheelchair, but for the talented musician and powerfully positive man he is.
Louis’ strength, attitude and presence is inspiring. Music has become Louis’ outlet for his true self and a conduit for the surge of inspiring energy and life itself.
I asked for Louis’ advice for anyone working on overcom-ing a challenge.
“You need to want it 100%. You need to be convinced that you will be able to do it, that you will make it, and you need to work so much with your thoughts. Physical therapy was helpful, but for me, I attribute 90% of where I’m today to how positively and intentionally I use my mind to create my thoughts.”
His advice is to never give up, but it didn’t mean he didn’t have times of doubt and discouragement.
“Of course, many times I thought ‘I’m done, I’m in this hole and I don’t want to do this anymore.’ I thought that a couple times a month. But it’s not how often you think that, it’s the thoughts that we choose after.
“I would tell myself, ‘you’re not done, you’re so happy. You’re so happy to be alive! You’re so happy that you can move your fingers! You’re so happy that you can play music! You’re so happy that you have people that care about you. You live in Munich, you have everything. Don’t mess it up.’
“It’s important to recognize how happy we are, even if we have a challenge like being in a wheelchair. It’s all in your head—everything starts in your head. Someday, you will move your fingers, or reach whatever your goal is, but it will take time and it will take effort. You need to take the risk. I still do it. I’ve been looking at my feet for four years, concen-trating on getting them to move, and I still get nothing.”
Four years without any reward for his effort? I asked how he stays so positively committed:
“I just know that it’s going to work out at some point. I just know it. I don’t know how many more years it’s going to take me, but I’m not going to give up. By thinking positively, so many great things have come into my life. It’s like a mag-net. If you think positively and you act positively, positive things will come to you. The same is true if you think nega-tively about your life, then negative stuff is more likely to follow.”
He says that, in his greatest times of struggle, music helped keep him inspired and positive.
“You need to find something you love, whether it’s cook-ing, making music, drawing, building something or collecting little trees,” he laughs playfully, making me curious if he actually collects little trees. “You have to find something you love that inspires you and focus on that.”1
Music Saved My Life: Louis Edlinger
