I was born and raised in Brazil, and my curiosity about health and healing started early.

My grandfather was a pharmacist in a small town, and I grew up hearing stories of people knocking on his door—even in the middle of the night—looking for something that might bring them relief. I was fascinated not only by what he knew, but by the role he played in his community: he was someone people trusted and turned to for help.

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Inspired by him—and by my own childhood fascination with creating little “potions and lotions”—I decided to study pharmacy.

But while I was still in college, I was also going through a difficult period in my own life. I was struggling with my mental health, feeling lost and disconnected from myself, when I discovered yoga.

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Yoga became much more than a physical practice. It became a way of finding my way back to myself.

And as the practice began to transform my own life, something else became clear: I wanted to share it with others.

I started simply, volunteering to teach yoga to seniors. From there, I began offering classes to the wider community, and ​eventually I left my pharmacist job and dedicated my full time into teaching yoga.  What started small gradually grew into a strong and deeply connected yoga community whom I had the pleasure to teach for more than 9 years.

On my late 20s, my curiosity about health continued to expand. I was drawn to Chinese Medicine and Acupuncture because of their emphasis on energy balance and the understanding that the different systems of the body are interconnected rather than isolated parts.

 I completed my training shortly before becoming a mother. Although I didn't ultimately pursue Chinese medicine as a major part of my professional practice, its philosophy continued to influence the way I thought about health—an understanding that would later resonate with what I discovered in functional medicine and its whole-person approach.​

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Then, in 2015, my family and I moved to the United States.

I arrived in Michigan without speaking English and genuinely wondered whether I would ever teach again. After building a career and community around the work I loved, I found myself starting over in a new country and a new language.

So I began again.

Right after my second child was born, I returned to yoga training, rebuilt my teaching career, and gradually found a new community. In time, I went from wondering whether I would ever teach again to leading teacher trainings and mentoring other yoga teachers.

In 2020, we decided to relocate to North Carolina. It was also the time that I started to notice major changes in my body and some new concerns about my health. But I wasn't getting the answers that I needed on my regular medical appointments. I wanted answers and not quick fixes.  I knew that needed to put more effort in taking care of myself. 

​We can know a great deal about what supports our health and still struggle to put that knowledge into practice. Real life is complicated. We have responsibilities, habits, stress, relationships, changing bodies, and competing priorities. Knowing what to do isn't always the same as knowing how to make it part of our lives.

That curiosity ultimately led me to Functional Medicine Health Coaching.

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