Hi, I'm Justine Hayes.

Our family spent 13 years living in Kenya and Malawi before moving back to the United States in 2022. Those years shaped so much of who I am and how I see the world. They were beautiful years filled with people and places we still love deeply, and they gave me a growing appreciation for the land and for the ways people have learned to live in relationship with what grows around them.

I became especially interested in plants and the ways they could be used for our benefit, particularly through nutrition and herbal medicine. I loved learning what grew around us, how different plants had traditionally been used, and how the natural world could become part of caring for ourselves and our families.

At the same time, this wasn't simply an intellectual interest for me. Our own family had health issues that needed support, and over the years we were fortunate to work with some wonderful practitioners who helped us understand our bodies in new ways. Each one added something to the picture, and I am deeply grateful for the wisdom and care we received along the way.

One of the most important things I began to understand through that process was just how much the nervous system matters. We could focus on nutrition, supplements, environmental factors, or any number of other things, but if the body was continually living in a state of stress or survival, that needed our attention too. Learning how to support greater regulation and create rhythms of safety, rest, and connection became a crucial part of our family's own wellness journey.

All of this also taught me that the body rarely fits neatly into one category. Nutrition matters. Our environment matters. Our nervous system matters. Our emotions and experiences matter. The ways we move, sleep, eat, rest, and live our ordinary days matter. And often these things are interacting with one another in ways that aren't immediately obvious.

As I learned more, however, I ran into another problem: there was an almost endless amount of information about what we could do.

There were herbs, supplements, foods, remedies, nervous-system practices, lifestyle changes, environmental changes, and countless different explanations for why someone might not be feeling well. Many of them could be genuinely helpful. The problem wasn't necessarily finding another thing to try.

The question I kept coming back to was: How do I know what this particular person needs right now?

I didn't want to discard everything we had learned or replace the practitioners and approaches that had already helped us. I wanted a way to make better sense of the whole picture. I wanted something that could help me narrow the field and ask, Of all the things we could pay attention to, where might it make sense to begin?

That curiosity eventually led me to bioenergetic testing.

What fascinated me when I began learning about bioenergetics wasn't simply the amount of information an assessment could provide. It was the possibility of seeing which layer seemed to be asking for attention at that particular time.

Like many people who spend enough time in the wellness world, I had become familiar with the idea of finding the “root cause.” And there is certainly value in asking what might be underneath what we're experiencing. But I began to wonder whether we always needed to get all the way to the root before we could offer meaningful support.

Bioenergetics gave me another way to think about that. What if I didn't need to know the whole story at once? What if the layer showing itself now was enough information for now?

Perhaps the nervous system needed support first. Perhaps nourishment or daily rhythms needed attention. Perhaps an emotional or environmental pattern was worth exploring. And perhaps, after supporting what appeared most relevant, the picture would change and something deeper would become apparent.

That made intuitive sense to me because it didn't require me to force the body into my idea of what it should need. I could pay attention to what was presenting, offer support, give it some time, and then listen again.

Sometimes another layer emerges. Sometimes something that previously seemed important becomes less relevant. And sometimes, over time, the process naturally takes us toward something deeper.

I began to think differently about the idea of a root cause. Perhaps we don't always need to go looking for it first. Perhaps we can allow the process to unfold layer by layer, without rushing ahead of what the body seems ready for.

That became one of the ideas at the heart of Next Step Wellness: We don't have to chase everything. We can begin with what matters now.