Chad Herst, MS, LAc, CPCC
I work with high achievers caught in the trap of performance. Some are founders, executives, or attorneys. What they share isn’t a profession. It’s a drive that has carried them far, often at a cost. Their competence is not in question. They arrive anxious, stuck, or with everything working and something wrong they can’t name.
My work begins in the body, because the pattern is older and faster than thought. I know from the inside that achievement can't create belonging.
My health broke in the years my practice was thriving. After COVID, everything went online, and my work exploded. I stopped sleeping. Problems I had managed my whole life stopped being manageable. I had everything I had always wanted, and I was worse off than I had ever been.
I grew up in a wealthy suburb of San Francisco. My grandfather survived the Depression, and in our family money was always the thing. Be an earner. Don't be a mooch. I was a trust fund kid hearing both messages at once. So I performed. School, career, even my spiritual life. All of it could be done well, and I did it well, and the doing well was the problem. There is an ache underneath performance that no success will ever fix. I know because I kept succeeding and it kept not being fixed.
I've worked in the healing professions since 1997 as a massage therapist, yoga teacher, and, for seventeen years, an acupuncturist and herbalist with my hands on people's actual bodies. I've coached founders, executives, attorneys, and other driven people since 2008.
The work brings mind and body together. You bring the real decision where you feel stuck, whether it is the job, the marriage, the move, or the next chapter. We get curious not only about the story, but about what happens in your body as you tell it. Together, we meet the parts of you that are afraid, hopeful, defensive, or simply done.
I help you put clear language to what you've been circling and stay with it a little longer than you usually do. Long enough to hear what it's asking of you and sense what a truer next move might be. The aim isn't to force resolution. It's to stay connected to yourself when life is unresolved.
Over time, something quieter than a breakthrough becomes possible. The churn settles. Decisions stop taking weeks. You trust your own perception enough to act on it, even when nobody else is confirming it. The pressure doesn't vanish. It just stops driving.
My book, The Performance Trap: The Ache No Success Will Ever Fix, comes out October 1. If you're not ready to talk to anyone yet, start with the first chapter of the book, read in my voice. Twenty-eight minutes.
If you want to know what working together looks like, the coaching page describes it. The client stories show what it’s meant for other people.
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.
If any of this sounds familiar, Chapter One of the book is free. Start there.