Karen Kipp

My wellness journey began with a slightly different twist. It didn’t begin with my own health challenge. I lost my mother to breast cancer when I was 17 years old. That instilled in me a heartfelt commitment to seek a different wellness journey rooted in holistic, natural principles.

As a young adult in my twenties, quite frankly, all I really wanted to do was live a full life. My mother was a wonderful, nurturing, loving mother to her five boys and me. What happened? She played by the rules, did everything for her family, friends, and community, lived the dream life, it seemed. It went terribly wrong with her health in the end, though. After a brutal, six-year struggle with cancer, she finally found her peace with the disease in dying at only 49.

I was determined to live my life with a very different outcome. But I really had no idea where to begin. I knew it had something to do with seeking balance and wellness in a natural way, but I really had no knowledge of a way different than the mainstream way of living and traditional Western medicine. None of it made sense to me.

I married young while I was in college, and had my beautiful daughter, Talia, a couple of years later. Her birth was my first experience with natural health. As I was pregnant, I read many books, but one struck me in particular. It was about natural childbirth and how that method had worked pretty well for thousands of years prior to modern medicine and how some aspects of child birthing actually got worse with the intervention of pharmaceuticals and medical procedures.

It started me on my path to thinking deeply about returning to many wellness practices that have worked naturally for generations. I chose to birth my daughter naturally, without interventions if possible. I realize that this is not possible for everyone, but it was a blessing for me to experience delivering her without medications or interventions in 90 minutes! It was my first conscious effort towards a new way of living natural, holistic wellness.

As I began raising her in the best way I knew possible, I began to realize that I really needed to figure out how to achieve optimal wellness, not just for myself, but for her also. It involved making my own baby food, preparing all of our meals, using natural healing methods for things like earaches, and learning, learning, learning along the way. I began to realize that my new journey to my own wellness was emerging through teaching myself how to care for my daughter. 

Early in my career, I circled the globe developing and managing health and social programs in developing nations for an international non-profit organization. On business trips to India and the Philippines to examine health care practices, it became apparent to me that there were many legitimate paths to wellness including homeopathy and herbal/natural healing practices. I realized that half of the world embraces a completely different method than the US standard of allopathic medicine. I studied everything I could which benefits a healthy, holistic life and I refined my perspective on what it means to be a healthy person.

Within a few years, I chose to become a full-time reflexologist and holistic practitioner with the hope of empowering others to discover their own optimal well-being. As a single mother raising my daughter completely on my own, I came to understand the true challenge of seeking balance in my own life. Now my quest was to discover a new way of living a balanced life of caring for my daughter, nurturing others, building my own thriving business, and at the same time nurturing myself.

I feel like that is the balance that so many of us strive for in our lives but it often eludes us, much like I believe it did for my mother, ultimately impacting our wellness profoundly. We feel as if we must be everything for all people, but rarely are we taught to truly love and nurture ourselves. I dedicated my life to seeking and learning that balance and empowering others to discover the same in their lives. 

In contrast to my mother’s experience, my father is now 81 and amazingly healthy and vibrant. He became more intrigued by preventative health as he entered his early 50’s. He has been an amazing wellness role model on my path, but I didn’t actually completely realize that until I was older. As a former Brooklyn & LA Dodger baseball player, he wanted to care for his body in a different way and maintain his physical vigor. My dad has always been an incredibly practical, grounded man. He lives by example. He just inherently understood keeping life simple and balanced. He never missed a nap a day in his life, even raising 6 kids!!

He discovered juicing about 25 years ago, just as I was raising my daughter, and he was passionate about it! He even grew his own wheat grass! It just made sense to me what he said about juicing providing concentrated forms of nutrition easily absorbed into the body. Because I expressed an interest in it, he bought me my first Champion Juicer at an auction for $5 before I even knew what to do with it about 20 years ago. I learned everything I could about it. I began juicing and experimenting with juice fasting. I loved it!

Ten years later, in my own full-time holistic practice as a reflexologist, my clients began requesting that I teach them how to juice and how to fast. First it began as private classes; one or two people at a time. It eventually grew to juicing classes at health food stores, my office and 3-day juice fasting retreats. I still use that juicer he gifted me. Little did he know that I would turn it into an important part of spreading wellness to thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands online!

Over the last decade, I have facilitated about one hundred 3-day juice fast retreat experiences that have hopefully inspired at least a thousand participants to deepen their wellness journey. We go away together to a serene environment with no cell phones and TV, where we juice, do yoga, meditate, laugh, and share our fasting experience. It is incredibly bonding as we all support each other on our next step towards wellness together, no matter where we are starting.

I am deeply honored to hold that space for others and be a witness to their dramatic transformations in such a short time! Many have healed from long-term conditions, eliminated their migraines, found a new way of nourishing themselves, finally found the inner strength to leave a toxic career or relationship, or maybe just had a nice healthy reprieve from a stressful life.

I have also had the honor of utilizing my holistic and non-profit management experiences to give back to my community. Of course, I naturally have a passion for working with oncology patients. Many of my clients are at all stages of the oncology experience, and I strive to offer them a little reprieve from their challenges and help them back to health with reflexology, juicing and nutrition coaching.

As a board member on a local foundation, I am privileged to help develop programs to provide affordable holistic services to oncology patients. I would love to have another opportunity to use my skills to help more oncology patients both domestically and internationally. I plan to lead a group of volunteers to one of my most loved places in Guatemala the summer of 2014.    

I am now older than my mother was when she was diagnosed with cancer. I am full of energy and enthusiasm, feeling wonderful every day of my life because is a gift for me! My daughter is now 24, and living her passion teaching high school, serving under-privileged kids in the inner city. I have a thriving practice helping others in achieving their own wellness vision. I embrace optimal health through deliberately choosing a natural lifestyle and work with others to help them do the same. Sure it is still a challenge every day to find that balance. I certainly am not perfect, and have my challenges like anyone. But every day I choose to do the best that I can for that moment. Working together, we can be the change we want to see in the world!

Tess, thank you for all that you do to serve the growing community of those of us seeking optimal wellness. You provide so much encouragement and inspiration in a VERY down-to-earth and real, practical way. I look forward to hosting our free juice fast available to everyone together. You are a true inspiration for me personally.

I look forward to leading the 3 DAY Winter Juice Fast January 18th-20th. I hope to have you all join us.