Today we’d like to introduce you to Jessica.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I was born and raised in Austin, and although my career has taken me in directions I never could have predicted, the thread running through it has always been a curiosity about what helps people truly heal, change, and come back to themselves.
My path into health and wellness began in 2009, when I trained in massage therapy and Asian bodywork. I went on to practice Shiatsu, craniosacral therapy, polarity therapy, Thai massage, and other healing modalities, while also helping to develop a 500-hour HeartMind Shiatsu curriculum and teaching for more than a decade. During that time, I was introduced to qigong—an ancient practice involving movement, breath, and meditation—which became one of the most formative influences in both my personal life and professional work.
In 2012, I experienced an acute panic attack that brought my life to a halt. Sheng Zhen Gong, a form known as the Qigong of Unconditional Love, became an important part of my recovery. It gave me an embodied understanding of something I had previously understood mostly in theory: healing is not simply about suppressing symptoms. It is about creating the conditions in which the body, mind, and nervous system can begin to reorganize and restore themselves.
My work continued evolving. In 2017, I became the owner of Integral Travel, a wellness travel company that began with Thai massage training trips and expanded into international retreats designed to bring together movement, bodywork, mindfulness, culture, and personal transformation. The pandemic brought that chapter to an unexpected end, and I officially closed the business in early 2023.
That ending ultimately created space for the work I had wanted to pursue for years. I had long been fascinated by functional medicine, but I had assumed it required a more traditional licensed medical path. Then, in early 2024, a chance LinkedIn connection introduced me to functional diagnostic nutrition, and I realized there was a way to combine advanced functional lab testing with the nearly two decades of experience I already had in bodywork, qigong, nervous system regulation, and behavior change.
Today, through Phoenix Functional Health and The Phoenix Method, I help high-performing female founders and business owners understand why they no longer feel as sharp, energized, or resilient as they once did—even when they are still getting everything done. Using functional lab testing, personalized health strategies, and practices that restore greater alignment between the body and mind, I help them rebuild the capacity required to live and lead fully.
In many ways, this work is the culmination of everything I have spent my career learning. The tools have expanded, but the purpose has remained the same: helping people come back to themselves and creating the conditions for meaningful, lasting transformation.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
It has definitely not been a smooth or linear road.
One of the earliest challenges was my own experience with anxiety and a debilitating panic attack in 2012. At the time, it felt as though my body and nervous system had suddenly stopped cooperating with the life I was trying to live. That experience was frightening, but it also profoundly changed the way I understood health. It taught me that a person can appear functional on the outside while struggling tremendously internally—and that meaningful healing often requires looking beneath the surface rather than simply managing symptoms.
Another major turning point came during the pandemic. I had spent years building Integral Travel, a business that brought people together for international wellness retreats and training experiences. When global travel stopped, the foundation of the business disappeared almost overnight. I tried to adapt, but ultimately had to accept that the company I had invested so much time, energy, and identity into was no longer sustainable. Closing it in 2023 was both a practical decision and a deeply personal loss.
Starting over in my forties has required a different kind of courage. Building Phoenix Functional Health has meant learning an entirely new side of entrepreneurship—marketing, sales, technology, systems, and business development—while continuing to deepen my clinical knowledge and serve clients well. There is a common assumption that once you find the work you are meant to do, everything begins falling into place. My experience has been that clarity of purpose does not eliminate uncertainty, financial pressure, self-doubt, or the need to keep adapting.
I have also had to resist the pressure to reduce my work to something easily categorized. My background spans bodywork, qigong, nervous system regulation, behavior change, functional lab testing, and entrepreneurship. For a long time, I treated those as separate chapters of my career. One of my greatest challenges—and ultimately one of my greatest opportunities—has been learning to trust that the value lies in integrating them.
Each difficult chapter has asked me to let go of an earlier version of my life or work. But each has also brought me closer to the work I am doing today. The road has not been smooth, but it has given me a much deeper understanding of resilience: not as pushing through at any cost, but as learning how to listen, recalibrate, and rebuild in greater alignment with who I have become.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
Phoenix Functional Health helps high-performing female founders and business owners restore the energy, focus, resilience, and physical capacity their work depends on.
Many of the women I work with are still successful and highly capable, but everything has begun to require more effort. They may be experiencing inconsistent energy, disrupted sleep, slower thinking, irritability, difficulty concentrating, or the sense that they are no longer operating at the level they once did. Because they’re accustomed to pushing through, these changes are often dismissed as stress, aging, or simply the price of running a business.
My work is based on the belief that a business is only as strong as the biology of the person leading it. When a founder’s body is depleted, inflamed, under-recovered, or struggling to regulate stress effectively, it eventually affects decision-making, creativity, leadership, relationships, and the ability to sustain growth.
My primary offering, The Phoenix Method, is a personalized six-month program that uses advanced functional lab testing to identify the underlying patterns that may be contributing to a client’s symptoms. Rather than guessing or offering a generic wellness plan, we look at areas such as hormone metabolism, digestive health, mineral balance, immune activation, food sensitivities, stress physiology, and recovery capacity. From there, I create a customized strategy that may include nutrition, supplementation, movement, sleep support, stress regulation, and sustainable habit change.
What sets Phoenix Functional Health apart is the integration of science with nearly two decades of experience in bodywork, qigong, nervous system regulation, teaching, and transformational wellness. I don’t see the body as a collection of isolated systems, and I do not believe that information alone creates change. Lab results can help us understand what is happening, but lasting transformation also requires helping a person feel safe enough, supported enough, and resourced enough to implement what their body needs.
I am especially proud that the brand has evolved to reflect the full body of work I have spent my career developing. Phoenix Functional Health isn’t simply about improving lab values or eliminating symptoms. It’s about helping people come back to themselves—helping them rebuild the physical, mental, and emotional capacity that allows them to live and lead fully.
I want readers to know that they don’t have to wait until they are completely burned out or unable to function before asking for help. Feeling less sharp, less resilient, or less like yourself is meaningful information. My work is about listening to those signals early, understanding what’s driving them, and creating the conditions for the body and mind to function well again.
If we knew you growing up, how would we have described you?
Growing up, I was curious, energetic, competitive, and interested in almost everything. I was also a classic high achiever, although I never fit neatly into a single category.
I was involved in everything. Athletically, I was a competitive swimmer, volleyball and basketball player. At the same time, I was involved in student council and the National Honor Society, performed in theater for a year, and played alto saxophone from sixth grade into college. My saxophone quartet medaled at the state competition multiple times.
Academically, I loved learning for its own sake. I read voraciously, was always eager to understand something new, and competed in science fairs throughout school. During both my junior and senior years of high school, I placed fourth at the International Science Fair, and I ultimately graduated fifth in my class.
Looking back, I think one of the defining things about me was that I was difficult to put into a box. I wasn’t simply the athlete, the band kid, or the academic. I moved easily among all of those worlds and genuinely enjoyed them. I loved challenging myself, developing new skills, and discovering what I was capable of.
For much of my childhood, I was also incredibly joyous and unabashed. I loved life openly and enthusiastically. I was expressive, playful, ambitious, and unafraid to care deeply about the things that interested me. Some of that changed during the latter half of high school (as it often does when we become more self-conscious and aware of how others perceive us). But that early sense of wonder, curiosity, and wholehearted engagement with life has never entirely left me.
In many ways, the work I do today reflects the same person I was then. I’m still fascinated by many different disciplines, still unwilling to see people through a single lens, and still most alive when I’m learning, integrating ideas, and helping someone discover more of what’s possible for them.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://phoenixfunctionalhealth.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/phoenixfunctionalhealth/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessica-van-antoine-fdnp/
