WHERE IT STARTED

Long before Phoenix Functional Health, I was bartending at a tea house and got curious about massage. Curious enough, apparently, to convince a massage school to let me start the next day.

That decision opened a door I kept walking through. Massage led to shiatsu. Then yoga and meditation. Qigong and breathwork. Craniosacral work. Teaching. Retreats.

I wasn’t building a neat career ladder. I was learning, from different angles, how stress gets held, how people adapt, what helps them feel more present in their bodies, and why the same approach doesn’t work the same way for everyone.

ONE BODY OF WORK. MANY EXPRESSIONS.

Over time, the work became less about the name of the technique and more about the person in front of me.

What was her body doing? What had changed? What was she asking of herself every day? What did she already know but have trouble acting on? What happened when we changed one thing instead of ten?

That pattern-seeking is still at the center of how I work now. I care about good data. I also care about the lived context around the data.

The point isn’t to collect more information. It’s to understand what matters first.

THEN I BECAME THE PERSON I WAS TRYING TO HELP

At one point I was Director of Business Development for a wellness business, helping it grow. Ninety-hour weeks. Back-to-back meetings. Constant notifications. An anxiety spike every time my phone vibrated.

I was short with my team. Irritable with people I loved. I remember feeling so brittle that even hearing my name could feel like one more thing hitting glass that was already cracking.

And because I worked in wellness, I had plenty of ideas about what I should do. Meditate more. Take better care of myself. Use the tools I already knew.

That distinction changed the way I understood my own body — and eventually changed the way I work with other high-performing women.

WHY PHOENIX

The phoenix has long been a symbol of rebirth, renewal, and resilience. What I’ve always been drawn to is the cycle: something changes, the old way no longer works, and a different way of living has to emerge.

Health can feel like that too. You can keep functioning long after the way you’re functioning stops being sustainable.

Phoenix Functional Health isn’t about burning your life down or becoming a different person. It’s about noticing what your body has been asking for, restoring what’s been strained or depleted, and building the capacity to meet the life and work you’re already here to lead.

To help female founders restore the capacity to lead and live well — by moving beyond symptom-by-symptom management, understanding what their bodies are communicating, and making sustainable changes they can actually use.

A world where health is proactive, personal, and integrated: where people can make informed decisions about their own wellbeing; where conventional medicine, functional data, and time-tested practices coexist; where workplaces and communities make health easier to support; and where vibrant health isn’t reserved for the few.

Natural Healing. Respect the body’s capacity to adapt and repair. Support the process and reduce unnecessary barriers rather than treating the body like something to overpower.

Food. Favor whole, nutrient-dense, minimally processed food and individualized choices that support balance — without turning eating into another source of stress.

Rest. Treat sleep and recovery as essential physiology, not a reward for finishing everything else.

Movement. Use movement to support strength, flexibility, circulation, and resilience without making exercise another form of punishment.

Stress Regulation. Use practices such as breathwork, meditation, mindfulness, and qigong to change how the body meets stress and build more room between pressure and response.

Supplementation. Use high-quality supplements strategically when they’re useful, as a complement to food, recovery, and daily behavior — not as the whole plan.