Today we’d like to introduce you to Kim Brooks.
Hi Kim, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
For eighteen years I was an elementary teacher, reading specialist, and literacy coach in Maryland, and then abroad in Morocco and Taiwan. I loved that work, but as the responsibilities kept stacking and I stepped into more leadership, I kept taking on more than I had the capacity for, and my health began to show it. I literally carried a bag of papers to grade with me everywhere I went, slung over my shoulder or tossed in the car. I could never fully leave the job behind.
Yoga had been part of my life since college, and it was the practice that kept me anchored through all of it, along with a few other tools and people I invested in along the way. Along with where to buy groceries, finding a yoga studio was one of my first tasks when moving homes and countries.
After five years abroad, I moved back to the U.S. in 2021 and went right back into a reading specialist role in my former district. Almost immediately I was ready to quit. Overseas, I had been surrounded by people who loved teaching, who were creative, who traveled, who built these big, expansive lives outside of work. Coming home, I found myself in an environment where everyone seemed to be looping, going through the motions, so deep in these patterns that they couldn’t see their way out, and I could see how that was affecting the kids too. I had experienced a different way of living and teaching, and I knew there was no amount of money or good insurance worth what it was costing my health and wellbeing to stay somewhere that no longer felt fulfilling.
So I resigned, with no plan and no blueprint. I sold my house and had some savings, so I gave myself a few months to travel and breathe before deciding what came next. Eventually I enrolled in a yoga teacher training to deepen my practice while I figured out my path, and not long after, almost by accident, I took a job as an assistant and SUP instructor at a local paddleboard company. That job opened up a whole new world: new people, new experiences, and my first real taste of what it felt like to live on my own terms. To not be bound by a school schedule, to be outside teaching SUP on the water and yoga on land, creating experiences for others to feel that same freedom and peace I was feeling.
I got my LLC shortly after finishing the yoga training, and from there I kept investing in myself, working with coaches and training in meditation, breathwork, and Reiki. There was a lot of fear to walk through along the way, but on the other side of it, every single time, was something new. It was while I was in Brazil, at my first international wellness retreat in 2024, that it finally became clear that I wanted to work with people over the long term, with real time to help them understand their patterns and their energy, and to help them build a relationship with their own body that wasn’t built on pushing through.
In a way, it’s come full circle, because the very first coach I ever worked with, over ten years ago, was the one who planted the seeds for the work I do now, seeds that I had no idea were being planted and that are only now, all these years later, fully blooming. A shoutout to Richele Henry, she’s truly a gift, and was well before her time with what she was creating back then.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Definitely not smooth. There have been many challenges and growth edges to meet along the way, but the more I do this work, the more I’m able to meet them with ease, patience, grace, and compassion. The patterns that showed up when I was teaching didn’t disappear the moment I resigned. Years of carrying stress in my body and pushing past my own emotions and needs don’t just resolve because you quit a job or start doing healing work for a living.
This is lifelong work, and the same patterns that used to show up in the classroom still show up now. They’re deeply rooted. But I know them now. I know how they feel, I know when they’re coming, almost like clockwork, and that’s the difference. I create space to breathe, to be creative, to have fun, to rest, so that when those patterns do show up, I have somewhere to put them instead of just absorbing them the way I used to.
It isn’t perfect every day. I still get derailed sometimes, and things often take longer than I hope they will. Money patterns and people-pleasing patterns are strong ones I continue to work through. I’ve had to close some doors and let some things go in order to make space for what actually wanted to come in. The work I help my clients do, I do myself, daily. It isn’t easy work, and it isn’t for everyone, but it’s work I’m genuinely passionate about and committed to.
Being a solopreneur has been one of the harder parts of the journey. Not everyone gets this life or how our non-linear brains work. Feeling like so many eyes are on me while building is hard, fielding questions from people who are curious, but don’t understand can be draining, but I just keep showing up, returning to myself, day after day, knowing that I am here for the people who are looking for this kind of support.
Finding my footing without a built-in team or structure, finding other entrepreneurs and creatives in the wellness space who actually understand what this work requires, has taken real effort, and also real commitment. But it’s also been one of the most fulfilling parts, because the people I’ve found along the way have been so inspirational and so supportive. We can be real with each other, no masks, no hiding, no judging, just presence.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
I’m a Self-Leadership Coach, somatic practitioner, Karuna Reiki® master, and certified yoga teacher. I created the Self-Leadership Method, a nervous system approach that helps people who give a lot of themselves for a living, educators, therapists, coaches, medical professionals, find their way back to a body they can trust.
What I’ve noticed, both in myself and in nearly every client who comes to me, is that these are people doing everything right. They’re going to yoga, eating well, regular doctor visits, and they’re still exhausted, still tense, still waking up feeling like they never really rested. The missing piece usually isn’t more information. It’s understanding the pattern their nervous system has been running, often for years, until it becomes so ingrained it’s invisible.
The work we do together is not to fix something that is broken. We’re rewriting rules they never chose to begin with, and helping their body learn it’s safe to do things differently. To go against the grain. To enjoy life. To be messy and imperfect and still be okay. The life you envisioned for yourself at 18 doesn’t have to be the one you keep making yourself fit into at 40. You’re allowed to change your mind.
People sometimes ask why somatic work instead of another kind of coach, or just figuring it out alone. I tried that route. What actually changed things for me wasn’t mindset work alone, it was being on the receiving end of practitioners, therapists, and coaches who understood the nervous system, somatic practices, and energy work combined, plus learning how to work with my own system. That’s what led me to keep deepening my training, so I could offer clients that same combination instead of just one piece of it.
I bring eighteen years of working inside schools, in service-oriented, leadership roles. I coached teachers for years and saw firsthand that what they actually needed went far beyond instructional coaching. What I’m most proud of is that this work gives people something that sticks, not one more tool to add to an already full plate, but a body they can trust again, so they can keep doing the work they love without losing themselves in it.
My signature program, Path to Freedom, is a four-month 1:1 coaching experience built around four phases: Release, Rewire, Reclaim, and Restore. I also offer shorter entry points, like ninety-minute Energy Reset sessions (a mini solo retreat with coaching support), Reiki and Restore group classes, workshops, and private events, for people who want to feel the impact of this work before committing to something deeper.
What matters most to you?
What matters most to me is that people get to actually live their life to the fullest. That sounds cliché, but I don’t think most of us are taught how to do that. We’re taught how to be responsible, get a stable job with benefits, show up for everyone else, push through. Nobody taught us how to rest, how to receive support, how to come home to ourselves.
I created the Self-Leadership Method because I followed all the rules for a long time. I was good at my job, I cared deeply, I was in leadership roles early on, bought a house, was active in my neighborhood association planning community events, and I still felt disconnected from my own body and my own life most days. What changed things for me wasn’t one practice or one insight. It was learning to work with my nervous system directly, through breath, movement, and energy work, and slowly rebuilding trust with my own body. I learned to lead myself through very challenging times with steadiness. That took time. It wasn’t a weekend workshop kind of shift.
That’s part of why I prefer to work with people over four months instead of single sessions. Real change, the kind that holds when life gets hard again, needs repetition, commitment, and clear intentions. Four months gives us a container to see the growth from beginning to end. It gives you room to release what’s been stored, rewire the patterns underneath it, reclaim the parts that have been tucked away, and restore a life around that newfound awareness and energy, not just manage symptoms for a few weeks and hope it sticks.
What matters to me personally shows up in the work as well. I love adventure (safe adventures, preferable where my feet are on the ground), being outside, the natural beauty of the earth, uplifting community, human rights, literacy, being nourished instead of depleted. I want that for myself, and I want it for the people I work with. Not someday, once they’ve worked hard enough and earned it. Now. That’s really the point. Helping someone get back to a life that has room for what actually makes them feel alive, not just a life that’s more efficiently managed and that looks good on paper.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.kimbrooksyoga-wellness.com/
- Instagram: @kimbrooksyoga.wellness
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kimberly-brooks-md/
- Youtube: @KimBrooksWellness
