When the Body Changes Everything: Supporting Clients with Long COVID and POTS Through Safety, Grief, and Adaptation
Living with long COVID, POTS, and other chronic illnesses often brings not only physical challenges but also grief, identity shifts, and a loss of trust in the body. This session introduces a compassionate, nervous-system–informed approach to supporting clients through these life-changing transitions. Drawing on The Becoming Cycle methodology, participants will learn how mindfulness, pacing, and mental health–informed coaching strategies can help individuals rebuild safety, regulate the nervous system, and create a sustainable and meaningful way of living within new limits.
Stephanie Pack, NBC-HWC
Stephanie Pack is a National Board Certified Health and Wellness Coach (NBC-HWC) with a Certificate in Lifestyle Medicine, currently working in mental health coaching. She is trained in cognitive-behavioral (CBT), Somatic, Acceptance and Commitment (ACT), and Mindfulness-based coaching approaches, and her work integrates evidence-informed practice with a safety-first, autonomy-centered philosophy.
She is the creator of The Becoming Cycle, a methodology that guides individuals through the phases of Stabilization, Exploration, and Integration during times of life transition, and the host of the podcast A Year of Becoming, where she explores midlife reorientation, identity shifts, and the process of becoming with honesty and depth.
Her work focuses on helping people navigate change in ways that are sustainable, self-trusting, and grounded in nervous-system awareness.
Beyond Strategies: Why ADHD Clients Struggle to Implement What They Know — and How Professionals Can Help
Knowing what to do doesn’t always translate into doing it, especially for clients with ADHD. Many know that habits and routines support their health and daily functioning, yet struggle with consistent follow-through. This engaging session explores how executive function affects behavior change and reveals the hidden barriers that often hinder implementation. Attendees will gain practical, research-informed, brain-aligned strategies they can use immediately to reduce overwhelm, increase engagement, and support sustainable outcomes. Walk away better equipped to help neurodivergent clients bridge the gap between knowing and doing and unlock greater success in their everyday lives.
Christine Kotik, PCC, NBC-HWC
Christine Kotik, PCC, NBC-HWC, is an executive function and health behavior expert specializing in ADHD. She helps professionals understand why capable clients struggle with consistency and teaches practical, strengths-based approaches that support sustainable behavior change.
A former educator and nationally recognized ADHD coach, Christine is known for translating brain science into immediately usable strategies that improve client outcomes. She partners with organizations, healthcare providers, and educational institutions to foster more effective, neurodiversity-informed approaches to care.
Becoming a Wise Self-Healer
In this workshop, we will review the Self as Patient, becoming a detective for our own health challenges, the role and limitations of lifestyle change and SNPs, and the need for a curious and open-hearted approach. We have so much inner wisdom and lived experience that can help us heal from chronic, ineffable conditions.
Professionals and lay people alot will learn a lot about how to become wise self healer, working with doctors, health coaches, therapists, and our own sweet selves. I have studied for so long, experimented so much, been a curious detective about the interface of so many internal systems, with my own health. I have tangible successes that I am proud of.
I help friends and peers by sharing my accumulated knowledge and direct them to multiple resources. As a health coach and lifelong student of functional medicine and holistic health, I often can meet doctors at their level of knowledge, and can extract key takeaways to help myself heal.
Come join me on the journey! I will share hacks, resources, approaches and challenges! Our health journeys are our lives! Become a wise self healer! Help your patients become self healers!
Rhyena Halpern, NBC-HWC
As a holistic health and wellness coach, a third act retirement coach, an end of life doula, and conscious dying educator, Rhyena works with people in the last act of their lives, optimizing health, crafting a design for their third act, developing end of life plans, and facilitating groups of people who are interested in normalizing conversations about death and approaching they mystery of death with delight and wonder.
She lives in Berkeley, worked as a documentary filmmaker and arts manager, and has an MFA from California Institute of the Arts. She is a JewBu (Jewish Buddhist), progressive activist, lifelong student in the healing arts, and a long time arts lover.
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