I spent 17 years being the most disciplined person in the room (in the water). And I was basically sick the entire time. Let me explain

This whole thing started with a girl and a pool.

I swam competitively from the time I could remember — and by swam, I mean I lived in chlorine. Hours a day, year after year. It earned me a full scholarship to NC State University, where I became a 5-time NCAA All-American, broke school records, led my women's team, and eventually made the U.S. National Team — competing both in the pool and in Open Water.

I traveled the world racing 10km open water events (what we call Marathon Swimming), narrowly missed qualifying for the 2020 Olympic Team, and went on to win a World Championship medal in the 5k in South Korea in 2019. That race — waist-deep in foreign water, lungs burning, surrounded by the best women in the world — is still one of the proudest moments of my life.

But here's what no medal could teach me: discipline alone doesn't equal vitality.

The Hidden Cost of Athletics:

For almost all of those years, I had no menstrual cycle.

I was strong, fast, decorated. And my body was quietly starving — for rest, for nourishment, for softness. I had wicked insomnia. Anxiety that never really switched off. A nervous system permanently stuck in overdrive. Swimming had forged my inner masculine to a sharp edge: all grit, power, drive. But I had completely abandoned the feminine.

The cyclical. The earthy. The restorative. The yin.

I didn't know then what I know now — that the body keeps score, and that reclaiming my health would require me to stop fighting and start receiving.

~The Education~

I didn't stop learning just because I was competing.

While still swimming professionally for the U.S. National Team, I completed my Bachelor's in Human Nutrition and then my Master's in Human Physiology — both at NC State. I wanted to understand what was happening inside the body I was pushing so hard.

But I knew the real education wouldn't come from textbooks. We all kind of know this inherently.

So after retiring from swimming, I began my doctoral studies at the National University of Natural Medicine in Portland, Oregon — four years of deep classroom and clinical training in anatomy, physiology, herbalism, homeopathy, nutrition, and bodywork. I graduated with my Naturopathic Doctorate (ND) in June 2025.

Somewhere in those four years, a much bigger shift happened. I really started to wake up (to all the BS).

The Healing (The Yin Turn)

Portland introduced me to fermented foods. To raw milk. To slowing down. I started to realize what feminine meant towards the end of my time there.

I started drinking raw milk and felt something shift — a richness, a warmth, a sense of being genuinely for the first time in years. I began eating yin-nourishing foods: bone broths, raw eggs, animal fats, royal jelly, pearl powder. Foods that ancient traditions across every culture have used for thousands of years to restore the feminine body. Foods that modern medicine had told me to avoid.

My cycle came back. At 28 years old, for the first time in my adult life, I had a regular, natural menstrual cycle.

Not from a prescription. Not from a protocol. From food, rest, sunlight, and finally listening.

The yin principle changed everything for me. In Chinese Medicine, yin is the feminine, the cool, the fluid, the receptive, the restorative — everything I had spent 17 years depleting. When I finally started to nourish instead of push, my body began to remember what it already knew.

The Philosophy……

I believe we heal when we realign with nature.

Sunlight before screens. Real food over medications. Rest as medicine. Silence as data. The body's symptoms not as problems to suppress, but as messages worth decoding.

My toolkit is wide and alive: ancestral nutrition, circadian biology, terrain theory, herbalism, homeopathy, minerals, somatic dialogue, Chinese Medicine, Ayurveda, raw foods, home environment, light. I see the body as a vessel for spirit. I see symptoms as intelligence. And I see nature as the original physician.

I'm not here to fix you.

I'm here to help you remember.

Who I Work With

My work is especially close to my heart for women who are:

— Missing their period, or dealing with cycles that are painful, irregular, or exhausting — Running on empty — exhausted, foggy, wired, or anxious with no clear explanation — Ready to move away from pharmaceuticals and toward something more true — Curious about raw foods, ancestral nutrition, yin nourishing, or terrain theory — Pregnant, postpartum, or preparing their body for a baby — Simply tired of being told their labs are "normal" while they feel anything but

Men are absolutely welcome too. The roots of this work aren't gendered — but I speak most fluently the language of the feminine body, because I've lived it.

And reminder:

I'm still deep in it. Still learning. Still going inward.

Working with me will probably always look a little different than what you expect — because I pull from wherever the truth lives, not from a fixed protocol. Every person I see is a new unfolding. That's the only kind of medicine I know how to practice.

Come walk with me.

Follow along on instagram: @h0listichannah!