Hi! I’m Jen. I’m a holistic health coach who specializes in working with clients who have followed their intuition to take healing from chronic disease, autoimmune conditions, mental health imbalances, sexual and reproductive health issues, gut health problems, and trauma to an elevated state through personal and medical autonomy. Together we employ nature, nurture, nutrition, and neuroscience to dismantle the blocks standing between you and feeling really good, body, mind, and spirit.
Several years ago, facing some new and exacerbated health challenges of my own after going through an emotionally stressful divorce, I lost my health insurance. Faced with having to embark on a medical journey without the safety net of preferred provider networks and minimal copays for insurance approved medical services, I was forced to look at health care in a whole new light. It’s been a wild ride, but losing my health insurance turned out to be the best thing, by far, that ever happened to my health.
The key to healing starts with taking back your power from a system that is designed to keep you a helpless victim and repeat customer. The chemical shift that occurs in your own internal pharmacy is the first step required to tilt the balance from disease to wellness. While it may sound esoteric to say that healing is an inside job, there is simply no other way to put it. Good doctors, nutritionists, health coaches, body workers, physical therapists, and healers of many kinds are partners on your healing team, but ultimately you are at the wheel and it’s up to you to decide whether to engage the gas or the brakes. Your team is simply on board to help you identify the best tools for restoring balance to your body and mind. Reclaiming your personal and medical autonomy while making the transition from patient to executive of your own health is imperative to a successful healing journey.
The human body is exceptionally resilient when given the best resources to heal. Pain, while unpleasant, is the body’s way of communicating with you. When something feels off, that is your cue to know that something needs to change. We start with adding all things that nourish the body, while removing the components that cause disease. Allopathic medicine is designed on a symptom management model that does not address the root causes of disease. In a holistic model of care and education, the patient takes ownership of his or her own health and engages his or her healthcare team to address the diet and lifestyle factors that created the original imbalance causing disease. We dig deeper as a team to facilitate the inner work often required to discover mind-body and body-mind origins of disease that extend beyond dietary modification and basic lifestyle factors.
75-90% of all doctors office visits are for stress related conditions, yet few doctors provide prescriptions addressing the stress, and of stuck stress responses of trauma in the body. Emotions are physically stored in the connective tissues of the body. Talk therapy, while an import tool of many healing journeys, does not address that the body must be engaged in order to heal emotional origins of physical and mental disease. A holistic approach incorporates embodiment healing modalities required for re-regulation of the autonomic nervous system and releasing emotional trauma from the physical body. While moving away from the Standard American Diet (SAD) and engaging the body in a conscious, physical exercise routine is essential to creating balance in the body and mind, addressing past trauma and ongoing daily stress is often the key to creating radical wellness.
Although common, heart disease, cancer, autoimmune disease, diabetes, menstrual problems, infertility, sexual health problems, obesity, hormone imbalance, incontinence, vaginal infections, and perimenopause are NOT NORMAL. Stop settling for anything less than optimum wellness. We’ve been culturally conditioned to believe we deserve less than what Mother Nature intended for our health and human experience. Our biology has not caught up with the cultural and technological changes of the last few centuries. We are essentially inhabiting caveman bodies in the age of industrial food and information overload. Something has to give, and forcing your natural biology into submission with symptom overriding pharmaceuticals and invasive surgeries does not address the real problem and does not provide a long term solution for true wellness.
If you’re ready to experience truth and freedom inside your body and mind, an amazing adventure is about to begin. Turn on to the wisdom of your body as we connect your wellness dots by exploring whole person healing, from neuroscience and nutrition to sexual health and sleep.
Join the wellness revolution and start speaking your body’s language.
Romantic and close relationships have the ability to tip the body and mind towards feel good chemistry and energy or towards chronic and acute disease. Learning how to cultivate and maintain healthy relationships is essential to creating wellness.
The lymphatic system is among the most overlooked systems of the body. It’s role in removing cellular waste and regulating the immune system is imperative to building a healthy, balanced body. Stagnant lymphatic fluid leads to build up of toxins and weakened immunity.
Pelvic floor health extends far beyond sex, pregnancy, and bladder control. The pelvic floor is the seat of health for so many bodily functions for both women and men. In many Eastern medical traditions, the pelvic floor is the “root” of our energy flow. Leaving the pelvic floor out of any holistic health regimen is akin to expecting a tree to flourish with damaged roots.
In our busy world filled with family and work responsibilities, many of us find ourselves to be the lowest priority on our lengthy to-do lists. When we recognize that putting our own needs at the top of the list improves our availability to show up and genuinely help others, the dynamics of our world begin to shift. The rewards extend beyond just how we feel and manifest in all aspects of our relationships, work life, and finances.
The caloric model of weight management is dead. Exercising in the wrong way can often add to hormone imbalances that perpetuate unhealthy weight and chronic disease. Learn to exercise smarter, not harder, and exercise your mind in a deliberate way at the same time.
Digestion is the cornerstone of good health. You aren’t what you eat, you are what you digest. If your digestive system is in a state of imbalance, which is true for most Americans, you will not be able to sustain health in other systems of the body. The gut is considered the second brain and its health is imperative to the production of hormones and neurotransmitters. Learn to love your gut and balance your body and mind.
Any efforts to add elements that nourish our bodies and minds can be futile as long as we are exposed to toxins that continue to cripple our bodies ability to assimilate healthy food, clean water, mindful exercise, and healthy relationships. Removing those forces that impair our bodies is critical to allowing nourishing factors to rebuild and maintain health.
Although insurance companies have deemed the oral cavity to be something completely separate from the rest of the body, the beginning of the digestive tract is one of the most important locations in the body to creating optimal health. Poor diets that create dental caries, toxic materials that poison the body and block energetic flow, and procedures that allow decaying tissue to remain in the body heavily contribute to imbalance and chronic disease. Employing biologic and holistic dental strategies can be the missing link for many people’s quest for wellness.
Hormones are the messengers that help our bodies’ systems run smoothly and communicate with one another. When hormone production or balance is off due to many lifestyle factors, stress, trauma, nutrition, and relationship factors, the result is often disease. Understanding how this magnificent symphony works can be the key to creating beautiful music in your body.
Healthy sexuality is a largely overlooked aspect to maintaining optimal health, so much so that it, perhaps, should be at the top of the feel-good list. The hormones, endorphins, and neurotransmitters manufactured with sexual expression inside of healthy, connected relationships is not a bonus feature of our biology but an imperative that extends beyond just reproduction. Cultivating sexual health reaps benefits that extend well beyond the bedroom.
The way we breathe is very often neglected in modern models. Yoga and breathwork use the power of breath to facilitate true healing in the body without pharmaceuticals and surgery. Breath goes beyond just the exchange rates of oxygen and carbon dioxide; it also serves as a modality to move energy and even shape the body.
Good sleep hygiene and alignment with the natural circadian rhythms of day and night is imperative to achieving good health. Getting enough quality sleep during the hours of the night that works best with our bodies’ natural chemistry sets the stage for our bodies to maintain homeostasis. Likewise, the emerging field of sleep medicine has shed light on the impact mouth breathing, snoring, and sleep apnea have in maintaining healthy balance of hormones and neurotransmitters in the body. Breathing well and sleeping well are game changers when it comes to feeling good.
Stress and trauma are responsible for 75-90% of all doctor’s office visits, but very few people really understand what stress and trauma are or how they shift the body into chronic stress response perpetuating energy and hormone imbalances that keep people unwell. Learn strategies to take your body out of fight or flight and into rest and digest.
Clean eating and healthy nutritional habits are usually the entry point into feel good living, holistic wellness, and addressing root causes of chronic disease. Start by crowding out industrial foods, additives, and agrochemicals with organic whole foods and pasture raised meat, eggs, and dairy.