Janis Underwood
Austin, Texas/Girona, Spain
Unified Mindfulness L2 Coach
I’ve never been one to shy away from hard stuff. When I was a young adult, my grandmother Aurora told me I could be and do anything I desired. I believed her. Moving fast and pushing myself beyond my limits became my way of life.
My engineering career reflected my natural draw towards pushing myself to do all things challenging, unfamiliar and uncertain. No matter where I started at an organization, I always found myself working on the “we’ve never done this before” cross-functional projects. It was an amazing career filled with lots of tension, conflict, and project planning. So much fun – until I burned out.
Debilitating fear and anxiety, chronic pain, and the overall feeling of dissatisfaction with a perfectly lovely life forced me to go within. For me, there was no suffering worse than being unhappy despite having everything, (I said), I wanted. It had to change.
Here’s where I could write a book about all my adventures in alternative healing modalities, but I’ll spare you the details. Let’s just say that after many years of seeking relief from all that ailed me, I became fascinated with the human experience and developed an interest in meditation, neuroscience, and the nervous system.
But what I remember most about that time was receiving the absolute honor to witness clients from all walks of life work so hard to understand themselves and heal from the past because they wanted to do better professionally, personally, or both.
And through time a clearer path to help me also do better revealed itself unexpectedly in 2013. That’s when I started meditating more regularly using the Science of Enlightenment audio program. I liked the more scientific approach presented in the material. As I practiced more often, my life and my client sessions worked better. I knew I needed even more consistency, though, to achieve what I set out to do. I was delighted to find Unified Mindfulness (UM) in 2020.
My mindfulness practice supports me in a variety of ways now. Professionally, it helps me provide a good learning environment for those interested in doing conflict and intercultural communication better. Personally, I relate to my kids, my family, and business goals more clearly. Oh, and living cross-culturally is much easier on me, (and my nervous system), too!
I’m so grateful to be part of this community as both coach and student. It’s funny, all this work has brought me back to the first professional field I ever worked in – customer service. So, with that, I’ll just say, “How can I help?”