My Personal Journey to Creating Stark Wellness

Hi there! Welcome to Stark Wellness.

Whether you are embarking on a path of self-development, relationship recovery, or improved health, or…..just feeding your curiosity about me, I hope you’ll enjoy reading about my journey to creating a holistic life, love and wellness coaching business.

Stark Wellness began over 6 years ago when I was living a busy professional life in Texas. I worked for over 20 years in various corporate counseling settings and running personal training programs and group fitness and wellness classes in gyms.

I was super passionate about everything I was doing, and along with learning all I could about mental health and physical fitness, I studied how to prevent burnout and exhaustion. From time to time these experiences crept up on me, and I was thankful to know how to recognize symptoms and alleviate them….

….until I started a family.

Oh, I still recognized the symptoms, but alleviating them became more of a challenge. Life–working 50+ hours per week, housekeeping, wife-ing, mothering and self-caring–became much more difficult to navigate. My mental and physical health starting declining, I didn’t feel like my relationships with my husband and son (or anyone else) were as enriched as I wanted them to be, and I felt neglectful at work–all adding to my mental strain.

I finally realized it wasn’t that I lacked the ability to juggle. I could shuffle all the balls in front of my face, but just well enough to keep them in circular patterns; not well enough to feel like I was fulfilling any role with much impact–which is extremely important to me.

Logistics could be managed, but not my heart, nor my longing to live a life more fulfilled AND fulfilling and significantly helpful to those I love and those I want to help and serve.

I saw clearly how important a holistic perspective is to having a healthy life.

I also saw that many adults struggle with navigating a whole life just as I did. Do you?

And I noticed that often people resort to unhealthy habits to either get through the stress, exhaustion and mental drain or to attempt to manage it all. Unhealthy practices such as depending on quick, processed foods; becoming addicted to sugar, caffeine, or worse; pushing themselves to exhaustion; suppressing emotions, thoughts, feelings, things they want to say; neglecting themselves altogether. Do you do any of those?

Stress, burnout, anxiety, depression, obesity, chronic fatigue, chronic illness, divorce, parenting struggles…. These are all rampant in our society.

The thing is, almost always a couple or a few of these experiences exist in tandem. I have never had a client with one presenting problem that didn’t include an issue in another area of their life, either as a co-morbid experience, a causal one, or another affected area.

My personal training clients would come to me for help with nutrition and exercise, but I saw how these were not the only aspects of their life that needed support. Just like my own personal story, my clients’ health and lives were impacted by more than just food and exercise. They often also struggled with stress, anxiety, emotional blocks, mindset issues, or relationship problems.

Some clients in counseling suffering from grief and depression suffered also from severe weight loss or excessive overeating, engaged in substance abuse, experienced set-backs in their relationships, disengaged from work or career ambitions, or lost hope in their spiritual base.

Clients determined to make just one change in their lives realized how important it is to consider all aspects of their lives in order to support that one change, or to prevent that one change from derailing an area seeming to be without issues–think of a woman happy to lose weight and fit into her husband’s favorite dress again, thinking he will be impressed only to discover that he becomes surprisingly enraged with jealousy (true story of a past client, by the way).

Witnessing for so many years how combinations of struggles and experiences, both positive and negative, exist in our lives led me to an undeniable holistic perspective in health and well-being.

Taking your whole life into account can open more doors for change, recovery or achieving goals as well as help you see blocks, incongruences and misalignment keeping you stuck.

Sooo….back to my story.

Stark Wellness Comes to Life

After two years of that rote juggle I described above, I was determined to find a better way to live the holistic, healthy life I desired and to somehow combine all of my training and experience to help others do the SAME. I resigned from my full-time job, pulled my son out of day-care, and began creating Stark Wellness.

I re-immersed myself in holistic health studies and completed two certifications, Life Strategies Coaching through Spencer Institute and Holistic Health and Wellness Coaching through International Association of Wellness Practitioners. I also renewed my certifications in Personal Training, Yoga, Pilates, Cardio-Kickboxing, and Fitness Instruction. Yep, all of those.

Coincidentally, my son started sleeping through the night, which I believe was partly a result of us spending more of our day together, and I had a blessed couple of hours in the wee morning to study and plan my business. A local Mother’s Day Out program and a wonderful mom’s group I joined provided some separation for us so he could play and learn with kids while I started working with clients.

Upon graduating, I began incorporating holistic health and wellness coaching with counseling, even when working with couples. Stark Wellness became a holistic philosophy as I helped others take into account all areas of their well-being and understand the interconnection between them. It was amazing to see the results that people had and how they changed their lives.

Fast forward about six years later, I’ve now helped hundreds of people across the globe (wellll…in four different countries) to radically improve their mental, physical, relational health and lifestyles.

Stark Wellness is a holistic philosophy, a total mind-body approach to wellness, and my commitment to serve you by supporting the integration of all areas of well-being and you as a whole person, whether you are my client, visiting my blog, or just following me on social media or Pinterest.

Making Stark Wellness Work for You

Depending on your own personal journey, you will be drawn to various topics of my blog posts; and if you wish to work with me, you may decide to trickle through different layers of your life, or you may decide to dive into all elements simultaneously. It’s a personal journey that will evolve with you.

What I want you to take away right now is the assurance that you have found a space where you can access tools, resources and support you need to start transforming your life in small or big ways.

I will continue to pour my knowledge into my blog posts, e-guides, courses and coaching sessions. I try to translate cutting edge health and wellness science into lay terms so that you don’t get bogged down in data and can easily understand it and apply it.

You can learn more about my free and paid resources and workshops at this link and coaching at this link.

If you would like to contact me, I always look forward to meeting someone new and hearing about wellness journeys and goals! Just send me an email to get in touch.

For now, take some time to think about (or I highly recommend to write down) your answers to these three questions:

• What makes you feel alive and healthy?
• What areas of your life might need more balance or alignment?
• What is your personal vision statement for your life, or for one area you are focusing on lately?

If you are beginning a wellness journey, this introspective work will lay a new foundation for you.

Thank you so much for visiting and checking out what Stark Wellness is all about.

Live, love and be well.

Jennifer Stark, Founder of Stark Wellness