My life has been devoted to health and wellness for several decades, finding ways to alleviate pain and discomfort in myself and in others. This path began in the pharmaceutical industry, specifically in oncology, finding the perfect cocktail of poisonous toxic chemicals that can be used to attack the process the body undergoes while also attacking what it sees as an enemy. It brought me really close to pain. These 12+ years in the pharmaceutical industry offered me the clinical experience and intelligence which has informed much of who I am now. Eventually, I turned to alternative medicine, playing to my more empathetic self, which ultimately was more effective, than palliative care.
This curiosity brought me back to school to study massage therapy and after two years of evening classes and daytime hospital shifts, I decided to take the leap and change professions, leaving an established and reputable career in the hospital and medical field. Instead of being behind fancy analytical machines and in an antiseptic environment of clean rooms and chemical compounding vertical airflow hoods, I was pulled to a more intuitive approach to wellness, housed in dark rooms, with ambient sensory experiences. And because of my clinical background, my approach was still very much rooted in science, never fully buying into the more subtle ways.
I fell in love with the work very quickly. Perhaps it was my many years in patient care, being able to anticipate patient needs, or maybe it was my filipino, catholic up-bringng, which instilled in me compassion, faith, and discipline. My path has ultimately led me to a profession which came to me naturally and quickly I became a highly sought after massage therapist, eventually teaching, mentoring, and consulting big businesses in developing their own wellness programs. Surprisingly, my skills led me to working with real estate developers in Manhattan, elite fitness companies, global beauty brands, and even developing post graduate level education programs with the top educators in the field. I was asked to speak on wellness panels, featured in magazines, made it on TV, flown across the country to develop treatment protocols for big brands, consulted with innovative wellness companies in Manhattan, and even created an in house wellness program for the largest co-working brand in the country. And yet, it all still felt incomplete, and wellness was still out of reach.
I developed a burning desire to find ways to make wellness more available to everyone. And in doing so, I sought a better understanding of what wellness truly means as “wellness” looks different based on economic and social status. I suppose this is how I started my path on wellness advocacy, trying to understand the impact of generational and collective trauma in underserved communities and the discrepancy of healthcare depending on race, sex, income, gender.
After all, isn’t wellness meant for everyone?
This search led me to a deep undertaking of my own personal recovery from PTSD, an auto immune disease, depression, anxiety, an eating disorder, and body dysmorphia. I have tried so many modalities, wanting to be the biohacker in wellness, searching for ways to optimize one’s healing. So much has been offered in the world of healing that involved a soft approach as wellness is often seen as a relaxing, and comforting experience. I made great progress in my healing and so did my clients. I noticed too that much like everything else, I reached a plateau and as much as I was fully functioning and even perhaps “happy” in some sense, still it felt incomplete, and I felt dependent on all of the things.
Healing began to look like a place to reach. Wellness grew into a trillion dollar industry, the fastest growing industry in the world. Wellness retreats popping up in many countries, healing centers on every street in NYC, and offerings like sound healing, cacao ceremonies, Himalayan salt rooms, flotation tanks, infrared saunas, and even intravenous infusions of health supporting nutrients. Wellness can be injected, sipped on, and rubbed in! All of which reinforced the concept of wellness being outside of self and a commodity to obtain as well as only be accessible to those who can afford it.
When moving to Los Angeles, I felt as if I was to be in the Mecca of Wellness. The birthplace of adaptogenic tonics, a unique blend of old world technologies fused with new, new age methods, and yet, all I found were bottomless pits of self loathing elixirs and gathering wells of non-well empty shells of beings. Is this what wellness looks like? For three years, I operated a bi-coastal practice determined to learn more, do more, offer more. So many people seeking, yearning, to be well. I left LA, And temporarily closed my practice in NYC. My life was going through some major changes and I needed to pause.
In efforts to now heal from deep grief after my father passed away, sharply steering away from a dark depression, I found myself at the gate of a monastery. I was drawn to the seemingly peaceful environment, the lush grounds, surrounded by protective mountain ranges, and this nourishing mist of dewness in the air. There was something there for me. After several months of communication over email relationship building, I was interviewed to be a part of a three week live-in training. Several months later, I received an invite and found out that the other participants were signed up for three months and I, only three weeks. At this time, the pandemic had began and there was no clarity in sight and so I thought, why not consider a longer stay. They graciously agreed and in covid protocol, I flew to Oahu and quarantined there for the first two weeks, while training began. It was intense, the schedule and the training, and it was completely the opposite of what I had known wellness to be. No green juices here. In fact, I surrendered all that I thought I needed to be well, and it was a long list of supplements, powders, activities, and beliefs.
What I was now facing was direct, loud, fear provoking, and there was no opportunity to rest or hide. The training was purposely exposing my habits, limiting beliefs, subconscious patterning, all that which was of course impacting my health but not quite accessible through other wellness modalities. Had I only been addressing the symptoms of my health and wellness and not the cause? Had I believed to have reached a place of healing, not knowing there is a “beyond” to even approach?
Wellness started to look like a tip toeing activity, masking or disguising one’s true state of mind and health, what you could even refer to as wellness bypassing.
My functional medicine doctor recommended a very restricted diet as to not further stimulate my nervous system response, was advised to stick to soft and easy exercises, again as to not overexert and I did this for several years. And yes, I got better. But is better, optimal? I still didn’t feel like “myself”. Monastic living offered the complete opposite. I gave up my strict diet and my daily supplements which consisted of bottles and bottles of “natural” pills and drops, celery juice every morning for almost two years, and a regular schedule of yoga, light stretching, and healing sounds. My life then became loud, vigorous, intense, and so rigid. Completely against doctor’s orders, the complete “anti-wellness” approach.
But I trusted my body and I trusted in the methods. I was also feeling hopeless and wanted sovereignty over my body and my health once again, if not for the first time. I felt my body no longer belonged to me and it all depended on that other thing, something outside of me. I knew the path I was on was not sustainable and depended on so much. Well, after three months of training, I experienced a newfound brightness and clarity, and I also found great ease. Ah, this is what healing feels like. I was surprised too to have gained a training family, a sangha, a fully supportive community, one that approaches this support not through words of encouragement but by allowing you to meet your own limitations and allow you to push past them.
I thought the path to healing was on this one road of what we were shown wellness to be. I have learned that there are many paths and many more to explore.
Now on a plane back to NYC after nearly a year away at the monastery with very limited time in the “outside” world, I am curious as to how much I have changed. These changes will be reflected back to me when I see my family, friends, my clients. What I hope they see in me is the fact that healing is not only possible, complete healing, that is. But that it actually looks like nothing we think or even need. My hope as time passes is that I find the words to convey all that I have learned, and am still learning while training. I find that words are not be enough to express our limitless potential. May I have the fortitude to continue on my training path so that I may shine my light for others to learn too, what is possible.