Member stories

I have no idea where I'd be without Jess, but I'm pretty sure I'd be miserable and sick, probably feeling pretty hopeless and helpless.

One thing I've learned from working with Jess is that not all Ayurveda is created equal. My brain has started tracking some internal spectrum of Ayurvedic skill that runs from the low end of "Turmeric Blogger" up to "Well-Meaning Vibe Herbalist" and "Competent Practitioner" all the way to "Dynamic Systems Wizard."

Jess is, so far, the only Dynamic Systems Wizard I've found or heard about in the Ayurveda space. There's a huge glut of folks in the Turmeric Blogger and Well-Meaning Vibe Herbalist part of the spectrum, a handful of competent practitioners, but only one Jess that I've found.

It's a small thing, but I remember one of the first things that blew me away was that Jess actually listens. Like, she actually listens. And she's not just listening to me and my words, she's listening through me and my words, hearing my tone, my body systems, my emotional arc, personal history, etc.

The other doctors would listen to my symptoms, shrug, and send me off to another three specialists. "I'm an endocrinologist, this sounds like you have a liver issue and an ENT issue, so go see those guys — but honestly, probably just accept that this is what your body is like now, get used to it."

Jess, on the other hand, would listen to my symptoms, get a lightbulb across her face, and say something like "ah, you've got a lot of deranged vata moving through your sensory system, we're going to have to stabilize that before we can work with the layer under it."

For many years my health was relatively steady — I'd never had drastic swings, but over time I'd slowly been gaining weight. In the last year, with a lot of stress, I fell back into old patterns of going for sweets when times were stressful, exercising less, sleeping worse. My belly felt big, I felt bloated a lot, and my A1C had crept up to 5.6 or 5.7 — getting into pre-diabetes range. My energy was up and down. I'd sometimes need to lie down in the afternoon, and it was hard to differentiate how much of that was situational, how much was emotional and psychosomatic, and how much was based on what I was eating.

Coming into the program, I was already deep in meditation practice, but I realized I didn't even know what hunger really felt like, or what full felt like. There's so much information out there — workout programs, food stuff, Huberman protocols — it's overwhelming. I wanted something that blended somatic experience and awareness with best practices and protocols, and this was basically the right blend of both.

Working with Jess, the stuff I'd been struggling with seemed pretty straightforward from her point of view. I just decided I'd listen to whatever she said, and I've basically been doing it for the most part. I'm going to bed way earlier and more regularly than I ever used to, waking up earlier more consistently. For the first time ever, I'm noticing that when I eat regularly, I feel better.

What's been really powerful is the connecting-the-dots aspect. All these things — sleep problems, digestive issues, energy crashes — we know about them in isolation, but it's hard to know which dots to connect. Either you get into a conspiratorial mindset with too many dots, or you give up and say "that's just how life is." Having a system that gives you steps and shows you results — you take this, you get the result — is so valuable.

My energy levels have been better than ever before. Not in a "crazy, on coffee all the time" way, but very clear. Each day has more clarity, less heaviness. I can go through my day in a peaceful, contented kind of way. I went to a Super Bowl party and ate a bunch of junk food, and it was fine — because the foundation was already set. It's not that I can never eat unhealthy again. The foundation just allows everything else to happen.