About me

My name is Barbara Alpert, and most people call me Barb.  I am a functional nutrition health coach, a clinical herbalist, a yoga instructor, and a long time massage therapist.  My business is Shabda Wellness, and this is the umbrella for all I do.  My passion is to help people to feel better, more in alignment with themselves, and full of energy to follow their purpose in life as they see it.  I see feeling better physically as an important step to having the energy to manifest dreams and live passionately.

This all began long ago.  My mother was a wonderful mother (in fact, she taught me to love plants, gardening, and camping!), but a thing that stood out for me was her monthly migraine headaches that left her shut in a dark room and us tiptoeing around trying to be quiet so the noise would not hurt her head.  By second grade, I also had headaches.

I remember so clearly going swimming and just floating in the water in an attempt to make them better.  At the time I do not think I asked why, but as I grew older, I certainly began to ask why when people got sick.

As a child I wanted to be either a teacher or a nurse. My parents both put a great value on education, which I have continued through lifelong learning. I began my passion for nutrition the year before I left home, when my mother let me have the job of planning the family meals and shopping lists.  When I left home, I had two vegetarian room-mates in a row, which helped me to decide to become a vegetarian.

That was a long learning curve as I figured out how to feed myself in a way that kept me healthy, energetic, headache free, and without too many erratic cravings.  It seems that every time I got sick, it was so that I could learn more healing modalities, both to help myself, and now it ends up, to help other people.

Today I think my job is the best of both worlds of teacher and nurse.  I taught school for kids for quite a few years, but now I get to teach people about nutrition, herbs, growing and cooking their own food, making choices that help their bodies, going out into nature to find and appreciate the wild, healing plants.

By my studying and teaching nutrition and human physiology that is person specific, I help people to understand what would be the best choices to help them feel great.  By using coaching techniques, I help them to experience first- hand what really makes a difference when it comes to life-style habit changes.

My other modalities are perfect extras to help people who need more immediate (ie. herbs and massage) or more experiential help (ie. with yoga, meditation and breath work).

I would be lying to say that I have it all together.  I am definitely a work in progress, but it is good work, and I continue to make progress.  I keep learning to love myself better even through all my setbacks and imperfections (as a first child, there is some sort of perfection principle at work!). It is because of this journey that I know it is worth doing!

And so it is from this place I meet you:  a place of open-ness, compassion, and striving; a place of questioning and digging to find answers; a place of intuition and connection.  It is from this place that we can really create some healthy choices.   I love when someone just wants to make changes to make themselves better in some sort of way.

And I love when that way includes making themselves healthier so they can energetically follow their passions!