Meet Valerie

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Valerie a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Valerie , we’re thrilled to have you sharing your thoughts and lessons with our community. So, for folks who are at a stage in their life or career where they are trying to be more resilient, can you share where you get your resilience from?

My resilience comes from learning to bridge two worlds — the structured, strategic world of leadership and entrepreneurship, and the fluid, intuitive world of healing. As both a business owner and a practitioner of acupuncture and somatic coaching, I’ve learned that growth rarely happens in straight lines. It unfolds through cycles of expansion and contraction, action and stillness, clarity and uncertainty.

In the early years of running my practice, I thought resilience meant working harder — pushing through fatigue, staying busy, proving my worth. But over time, I realized that kind of endurance eventually drains the very life force that sustains creative and compassionate work. Real resilience, I’ve discovered, is rooted in coherence — in the ability to stay connected to my center even when the outer world is shifting.

I build that connection daily through embodied rituals: breathwork before client sessions, mindful transitions between roles, and time in nature to recalibrate. These small moments keep me attuned to my nervous system and remind me that calm, not urgency, is where clarity arises.

Now, when challenges come — as they inevitably do — I focus less on bouncing back and more on returning to alignment. Resilience isn’t about being unshakable; it’s about remembering how to soften, realign, and allow life to move through me with grace and purpose.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

I’m the founder of Valerie Christina Acupuncture & Holistic Wellness — a practice devoted to helping people remember their innate capacity to heal and self-regulate through the body. My work integrates Traditional Chinese Medicine, sound therapy, breathwork, and somatic coaching to support individuals in moving from states of stress, depletion, or disconnection back into coherence — where the mind, body, and spirit are aligned.

What I find most exciting about this work is watching people rediscover their agency. Healing isn’t something I “do” to someone; it’s a process we enter together. Each treatment, each breath, each subtle shift in awareness is an act of remembering — that the body is wise, that emotions are messengers, and that change happens from the inside out.

Over the past year, my work has expanded into The Emergence Process™, a somatic coaching framework designed to help individuals and teams cultivate resilience, hope, and embodied leadership. It blends the latest research in neuroscience and positive psychology with ancient principles of energetic balance. I’m especially passionate about supporting women in transition — those redefining their purpose, reclaiming their power, and learning to lead from coherence rather than burnout.

This season, I’m focusing on expanding The Emergence Process™ into a broader platform: online courses, coaching immersions, and talks for organizations seeking a more human, heart-centered approach to leadership. At its core, my brand is about one thing — helping people return home to themselves so that whatever they build in the world is rooted in authenticity, balance, and aliveness.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

Looking back, the three qualities that have shaped my journey most are attunement, adaptability, and embodied leadership.

Attunement has been foundational. As an acupuncturist and somatic coach, I’ve learned that presence is the real medicine — the ability to listen deeply, not just to words, but to tone, tension, and energy. Whether I’m with a client, leading a workshop, or writing curriculum, that same skill of attunement helps me sense what’s needed beneath the surface. For anyone early in their journey, cultivating attunement starts with slowing down. Practice listening without rushing to fix or interpret — just notice what’s alive in the moment.

Adaptability has also been essential. Entrepreneurship, like healing, is cyclical. What worked one season may not in the next. Learning to pivot without losing your essence is an art form. My advice: stay curious. Let experimentation replace perfectionism. The willingness to evolve keeps your work — and your spirit — alive.

Finally, embodied leadership — leading from coherence rather than control. The nervous system sets the tone for everything we create and communicate. I’ve found that when I lead from grounded presence, my team, clients, and projects naturally follow that rhythm. For those beginning their path, invest as much in regulating your own energy as you do in building your brand. The more you embody what you teach or create, the more effortlessly others will resonate with your work.

Who is your ideal client or what sort of characteristics would make someone an ideal client for you?

My ideal client is someone standing at a threshold — someone who knows there’s more to life than the patterns they’ve been repeating, but isn’t quite sure how to step into the next chapter. They may be navigating burnout, major life transition, creative stagnation, or simply a quiet sense that something deeper is asking to emerge.

What makes a person ideal for this work isn’t how much they’ve already “healed,” but their willingness to be present with what’s real. My most transformative clients are curious, self-aware, and open to exploring the intelligence of their own body. They recognize that healing and growth aren’t linear, and they’re ready to shift from pushing and performing to listening and aligning.

In both acupuncture and coaching, I work best with individuals who value depth over quick fixes. They’re drawn to evidence-based holistic care and also to the unseen — the subtle energy, the emotional undercurrents, the mystery that lives beneath logic.

Ultimately, my ideal client is someone ready to remember their own resilience — to move from survival into creation, from fragmentation into coherence. Whether we begin with a single breath, a needle, or a conversation, our work together is about cultivating the inner alignment that allows life to flow again.

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