Chad Herst, MS, LAc, CPCC
I didn't get into this work because I had it all figured out. I got here because life cracked me open early.
When I was eighteen, my brother took his life. I grew up in a house where performance mattered more than sensitivity, so I learned to keep going even when it was empty inside. That strategy worked for a while until it didn't.
I chased wisdom and worth across India and the Ivy League, studying yoga, meditation, and Traditional Chinese Medicine, earning degrees from Columbia and acupuncture school. I tried to heal others with needles until I realized my real gift was in how I listened.
Eventually my body gave out and the performance failed. What followed was a long unlearning through illness, therapy, betrayal, and stillness that taught me how to stop earning love and start living in my own skin.
That is where the work I do now was born. I help high achievers, performers and perfectionists, the ones who look like they have it together while quietly being run by shame, anxiety, or the fear that if they stop, everything will fall apart. I know that cycle because I've lived it.
This isn't about fixing you. It's about learning to stay with what hurts long enough for it to reveal something wiser. Through somatic awareness, mindfulness, nervous system regulation, and parts work, we build your capacity to return, again and again, to the part of you that never stopped wanting to be seen, felt, and loved.
The work is simple, but not easy: it's about remembering how to be human in your own skin.
Melissa Herst, CPCC
I work with people who feel stuck but not in a dramatic way. More like a quiet, internal dissonance. They're capable, creative, and often deeply thoughtful. But something's not clicking. A project that won't move forward. A relationship that feels off. A next chapter they can't quite step into.
That's where I come in.
Since 2009, I've helped people reconnect with their bodies, clarify what matters, and move through the blocks that are harder to name: creative paralysis, burnout that hides behind competence, old emotional patterns that show up in new relationships.
I use a mix of coaching, movement, and deep listening. I'm trained in Open Floor Movement, which brings the body into the process, not as performance, but as presence. Sometimes we talk. Sometimes we move. Sometimes we sit in the in-between and wait for the next true thing to surface.
Clients often describe me as warm, grounded, and disarmingly honest. I don't rush to fix things. I don't need you to be more productive. What I offer is a space where you can slow down enough to hear what's actually going on, then start to move from a place that feels more like you.
My background includes work around creative process, purpose discovery, relational healing, and somatic integration. I draw from values-based inquiry, mindfulness, and the kind of conversations that don't stay on the surface for long.
I believe that movement is medicine, truth has a frequency, and showing up as your whole self is always worth it, even when it's messy.