my story

Hi.  My name is Jess and I am awesome.  Yip you heard me.  I just blatantly claimed that I am awesome.  Do you know why?  Because it is true.  

I haven’t always felt this way.  In fact, I used to feel the opposite.  And even IF I had felt this way, I would NEVER have expressed it as growing up amongst New Zealand’s “tall poppy syndrome” – where self-acknowledgment is seen as arrogant and discrediting your accomplishments is seen as being humble – that would have left me waaaaay too vulnerable. 

But these days - whilst I would be lying if I said I don’t care what people think - I have made a commitment to express what I know to be true. And stating that I am awesome, is.  

It simply honors the gorgeously imperfect human being that I am. 

Over the past 10 years I have been on quite an adventurous healing journey: a journey that has led me to a place where I help women holistically, effectively and efficiently ‘treat’ their whole selves with care, so they too can realise and embody their inner awesome.

I’m sharing this journey with you here, not to stimulate pity, nor to brag about how far I have come, or to instil feelings of inadequacy about your own personal growth.  

I share to demonstrate the power that can come from 1) making conscious choices and actions, 2) taking a long term focus for growth, and 3) embracing the scary unknown, beautifully challenging AND highly interesting adventure that is life!  

If you don't need to read my story you can skip straight to my philosophy and beliefs, HERE.

ENJOY!

Love, energy and goodness your way, 

Jess xxx

And so it begins…

MY ROCK BOTTOM

As I rolled into my mid 20’s I found myself feeling lost, depressed, insecure and very angry.

I avoided looking in the mirror as I didn’t want to see my face, my body and the fat coating it. I believed doing big things was for people more special or skilled than me.  

There were many a day where I would wake up to expansive views of the mountains out my window, blue bird skies, food in the fridge, a body that could move, an incredible husband, a beautiful dog, a beautiful house, a job - with nothing society would deem wrong - except my desperate desire be dead. 

These feelings bought great shame and guilt - ‘why couldn’t I just be grateful and happy like everyone else?’ 

BLOCKING THE PAIN WAS MY SPECIALTY

It pained me to be alone with my thoughts, so naturally I did everything I could to avoid them.  I worked hard and played hard – seeking highs from ‘accomplishing’ tasks, ‘achieving’ things, alcohol, coffee, sugary food, INTENSE exercise and adventures in the backcountry.

Unfortunately, no matter how busy I kept myself, or how hard I leaned into these ‘strategies’, I only ever had temporary relief.  

Unbeknownst to me at the time – it was these very ‘strategies’ and the ‘keeping myself busy’ that were actually exacerbating my health imbalances & subsequently my depression. I was stuck in a vicious cycle. The more depressed I got, the more dependent I became upon my strategies, the more I used them… and the more depressed I got.  

MY CONSCIOUS DECISION TO CHANGE

I got to a point where the ‘suffering’ I was experiencing had reached an intensity threshold where I really didn’t want to continue living. It was change or die. Reluctantly, I chose to change.

I hired a running coach with one simple goal in mind: start “winning things”.

My weekends and after work hours went from being free to drink or do whatever I want, to now “having to train”.  I found the change exceptionally annoying, to say the least. However, despite my resistance I did whatever it took to follow my new training program to perfection like my life depended on it: because it did.

GOING ALL IN

Fresh out of the party scene, and entering my sports late relative to the other elite athletes, I felt I needed to put in a lot of effort to bring my fitness and skill set up to speed.  So I did.

One year on, whilst gaining good momentum both in my career and sporting endeavours (I was now training not just for running, but for multi-sport and adventure racing events), I found myself pretty burnt out juggling my job and training commitments.

And then, I rear ended a car at an intersection one afternoon on my way from work to do a 3hr ride up a local mountain. Everyone involved was fine but my car was written off. And once again, I was in a position where I knew something had to change. 

After a serious chat with my husband, we decided the best step forward was for me to focus my attention on racing, fulltime.  I didn’t want to live a life wondering ‘what could have been’. AND I wanted to test the old saying ‘you can do anything you put your mind to’ – was this REALLY true?

But more than anything, I wanted to learn techniques that would help me manage my depression, which had been more or less chronic since I was 16.

UPPING THE COMMITMENT

With all excuses out the window, I upped the ante and did all the things that I believed a professional athlete would do to “control the controllables”, and set myself up for success.

Day time, night time, rain, snow, gale force winds, lightening, exhaustion, sickness, and injury. I trained no matter what.  I did my boring physio exercises. I researched race nutrition. I made ‘race plans’. I created goals, affirmations and vision boards.  I read the autobiographies of successful athletes looking for tips. I spent time developing certain mindset skills that would help me remain calm and focused under pressure, and other skills that would help me keep driving the intensity whilst racing even when my body and mind screamed STOP.

Mantra was a key tool I worked with. It helped me achieve top performances I would have not deemed possible otherwise.  I remember one race where with 40km to go it felt like my quadriceps might self-combust and splatter out over the pavement: it was mantra that enabled me to keep going.

WINNING THINGS

 There’s no doubt I put in A LOT of effort and made A LOT of sacrifices. Yet still highly insecure, I was definitely very surprised when—in my first year as a pro—I won several races and broke many New Zealand records in mountain running and multi-sport (a sport that is similar to triathlon except it takes place in the backcountry and involves mountain biking, road cycling, mountain running and kayaking).

It took everything I had, but I won the World Multi-Sport Championships on my first attempt – making me the first female to have ever done this in the race’s 32-year history. I backed it up with another win the following year.  

I got on the world’s top adventure racing team (Team NZ Adventure). Throughout 2014, me and my 3 wildebeest-like team mates won the world’s most prestigious staged adventure races.

It was challenging and stressful, but it was also pretty epic travelling to many remote places in New Zealand and around the world to train and race. I went to the tops of many mountains, across cartoon-looking deserts, along rocky coast lines, across choppy lakes and down white-water rivers.  I repelled down canyons and waterfalls, and out of ridiculously high buildings (after of course running up the 1000’s of stairs to the top of them first, usually with mind stunning cramp). I jumped off gorges, rode dodgy ziplines and participated in all sorts of other ‘mystery’ disciplines. Sometimes with sleep, and sometimes with as little as 4.5hrs sleep over 5 days.  Sometimes solo, sometimes as part of a team.

As I observed and tested the mind/body relationship, I developed the philosophy that “the body can do anything if you simply let the mind allow it”.

MY BODY DISAGREED

Whilst this time brought huge personal growth and life lessons, it also took a huge toll on my health. After 3 years of racing and training at my limit, gradually everything had become harder, and harder. I struggled to stay upbeat outside racing and training. Mood swings were more prevalent and even anxiety had creeped in.  Injury and illness—colds, tendonitis, and other niggly concerns, were plaguing me on the repeat.

Eventually I popped. In the final kilometre of the Xterra World champs in Maui on November 1st 2015 I fell unconscious, having seizures and I required hospitalisation due to severe heatstroke. Coming on top of my chronic inflammation, adrenal fatigue, overworked liver, gut imbalance, imbalanced hormones, taxed nervous system and wild blood sugar issues—this was the final straw. It turns out that even strong constitutions have a limit.

Unable to continue racing even if I had wanted to, I decided to end my race career and embark on a new journey that looked to find a better way.

IT HAD TO BE POSSIBLE

I knew there had to be a way someone could pursue their ambitious goals, without compromising their physical and mental health. It was my mission to find it.

I began by becoming a certified 200hr Yin Yoga teacher.  Completing my yoga training whilst still very sick from the Maui incident turned out to be awesome, as it enabled me – a big skeptic of holistic modalities at the time – to really put the benefits of the practice to the test.  

Turns out yoga was for far more than “just a stretch” ;)  It 100% accelerated my recovery. And partaking in the extreme relaxation offered by Yin Yoga regularly once back home, among other self-care techniques, enabled me to live my ambitious, action-packed life more sustainably, rather than oscillate between being ‘on fire’ and straight up burnt out. 

I taught personalized one-to-one yoga sessions, increasing my ability to support my clients by becoming a certified Restorative Yoga and Qigong teacher. I was impressed with the results my clients were experiencing, and I was motivated to help them more. So I decided to become a Certified Holistic Nutrition Practitioner at the Canadian School of Natural Nutrition, and a Certified Raw Food Chef.   

To be honest, having been a health-conscious professional athlete who had followed the guidance of a conventional nutritionist for years - a person who already “ate healthy” & cooked a lot of meals from scratch - I felt like I was doing these courses more for the credentials than for any new learning. I mean, FOOD how much was there to know?!

FOOD IS POWER

After regularly stumbling out of my nutrition lectures mind blown, I quickly realized that I had a lot to learn and that what I was learning was powerful stuff. I doubled down, worked hard, applied it in my own life, and was proud to become the class valedictorian, out of 111 students. 

The two biggest impacts effective nutrition had on my life were:

1) My energy and focus went through the roof. I could work several highly productive, 12hr-plus days at the computer and feel super-stoked & motivated while doing it.

2) The depression that I had experienced chronically since age 16 – something I thought I would have to manage for the rest of my life – went away!  

Repeat injuries, exercise dependence for mental health, weight management difficulties, extreme food and caffeine cravings, energy fluctuations, and mood swings... these were also all gone!  WTF!!!  

NORMAL IS NOT NORMAL

I had just assumed these things were all 'normal', and simply something I’d have to manage for life.  And while it’s true that many people live with these things as part of their normal daily lives, it turns out that experiencing them is not actually ‘normal.’ 

Having now sorted out my stress and nutrition, I was in a pretty good position when it came to health. I could happily have continued at this level of wellbeing for the rest of my life. 

But with better health came more energy for heightened self-awareness and the understanding that there was still something I needed to address. 

MY LINGERING PROBLEM

Despite ‘knowing better’, or my best intentions, I would find myself saying or doing things that were not in alignment with my values, or who I wanted to be as a person.  Rather than stand up for myself or others in the face of harsh judgments, I would find myself mute.  

It felt like something was ‘controlling me’. And I wasn’t into it.   

DON’T ASK ME WHY, BUT I KNEW I NEEDED TO MEDITATE

After a period resisting meditation given my fears around being judged ‘spiritual’ or ‘weird’, I decided to take the plunge.

I tried out various styles, but it wasn’t until I found mantra meditation that I knew I had found my jam.  I did a 200hr training purely dedicated to learning the ‘ins and outs’ of mantra meditation.

Mantra mediation changed the way I think and process information, and as a result it has essentially changed my life. It has enabled better relationship with myself and with other people. It teaches me to speak kindly of myself, tune into my real needs, which helps me better understand what I need to do in order to fulfill them. It helps me embrace the ‘real’ me, which is simply the ‘me’ free of false beliefs, limiting stories, harmful thought habits and behaviours and physical health imbalances.

The practice continues to heal me in ways I didn’t even know needed healing, and with each mantra repetition I move ever closer to realising my highest potential here on this planet.

SHARING IS CARING

Being a big believer that much of the ‘suffering’ experienced in my life was completely unnecessary had I had the right support, information and tools in place, I am highly motivated to give women like you what they need - so that they too can end their unnecessary suffering, and fully express the awesome human waiting patiently inside of them.

If you are keen to unleash your best self, work with me.

Practical. Process oriented. Somatic focused. Authentic. Trauma informed. FUN.

Learn more about my beliefs HERE.