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. I earned 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, betrayal, and stillness. It taught me how to stop earning love and start living in my own skin.
Years went by. People started showing up in my office who looked nothing like me on paper: founders, executives, lawyers, the kind of people who run rooms and get praised for their composure. And I kept hearing the same thing under what they were saying. Sleep that had been thin for years. Wins that felt hollow. A voice in their head that sounded like a parent's. A body that had started saying no in a language they didn't yet know how to read.
I recognized them because I was them. The polish was different. The trap was the same.
I started writing about what I was seeing. Then a founder I trusted read an early draft and sent back a single line: "Why should someone like me listen to you?" He wasn't being cruel. He was being honest. I'd been living in the trap the whole time I was writing about it. That question is what made the book.
Something shifted along the way. Not in one cinematic breakthrough. It was a long grind: feeling like shit, then a little less shitty, then back to shit again. What carried me through wasn't revelation. It was small, ordinary things. Saying no. Resting. Refusing to push past empty. Somewhere in there, I lost the compulsion for validation. What I wanted instead was something less obvious: to feel at home within myself.
I'm still learning how to stay there. Not every conversation has a happy ending. The performer still shows up sometimes when an old client circle gathers, and the talk drifts to kitchen remodels and college admissions. But I'm learning that coming home doesn't mean fixing every relationship. Sometimes it just means staying with myself when the people around me can't. There's a third way, it turns out. Not the doer. Something else. I'm just discovering it.
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.