Meet Jen Yocum

Pain is an amazing teacher…

In 2005, I was a behavioral neuroscientist, working in one of the top institutions in the world, conducting research on Alzheimer’s disease and stroke. I began to feel pain in the center of my upper abdomen every time I ate, no matter what I was eating. Over time it became bad enough that I went to the doctor and underwent lots of testing. The diagnosis came back as gall bladder dyskinesia, a condition in which the gall bladder does not pump out enough bile to effectively help digest foods.

The doctor said that the only treatment was a surgery that half the time that didn’t even help or even gave you chronic diarrhea (yikes!!). Those were not odds I wanted to take. I called my mom and told her the news, and she recommended that I try acupuncture. (Note: I was so reluctant as a scientist that she chose to pay for the first few treatments just to make me try it) After several weeks of treatment, I didn’t hurt every time I ate, just sometimes. After a year of treatment, I never hurt again.

My journey continued…

After seeing the amazing results acupuncture produced in me, I knew my path was in energy work. In 2007, I became inspired to pursue a career in acupuncture, which I have been happily licensed in since 2010, and I began to study reiki in 2008. While in acupuncture school, I learned that Chinese Medicine also included nutritional recommendations to help people feel better. I fell in love with the idea, because much of my career in science had been in labs that explored the effects of nutrition on learning and memory in diseases of aging. I already knew how diet can affect the way the body ages, and personally, I had begun to explore how limiting certain substances like sugar and wheat made me feel (answer: much better).

The terrible cleanse experience that inspired me to create my own cleanse

I have been a registered yoga teacher since 2006, and I always look for new and interesting yoga courses to take for continuing education. In the beginning of 2011, I signed up for a program to be trained in a particular style of yoga. As part of that training, I had to do the teacher’s 21 day cleanse. It was largely raw and vegan. I’d been a vegetarian for 10 years and figured the cleanse would be no big deal. WRONG. Over the course of just several days, I became a congested, zit-ridden, low-energy, shell version of who I used to be. My acupuncturist was furious with me and begged me to stop.

She gave me a treatment that helped me feel a little better, but I kept doing the cleanse (I seriously hate quitting things). I got even worse. I stopped wanting to eat. I felt kind of dead inside. When I heard that the third week of the cleanse was switching to all juices, I literally broke down into tears. I couldn’t go on.

Going through that cleanse was the inspiration and kick in the butt I needed to step it up and actually eat well, in a way that would help me thrive. Forget just making it through the day. I wanted to treat my body like the temple it was (and is). I’m not here to live life in a puny way. No sir and mam, I am here to live life BOLDLY. After declaring this to God/The Universe/Spirit inspired me to create The Chinese Medicine Cleanse, and the content just flowed through me and onto the computer. That was in 2011. Since then, I’ve led tons of people through the cleanse and watched as they’ve truly transformed their health.

Every day I am grateful to get to work with my patients and clients to help them actualize their potential and live out their dreams. I am committed to helping people achieve a state of dynamic balance in body, mind, and spirit, because I believe that when one person heals, we all begin to heal.

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