Julianne Vaccaro is a holistic health and lifestyle coach, somatic sexologist, and podcaster. For over seven years, she has been helping women achieve their goals by guiding them to look inward. Her program, called Goddess Reclamation, aims to help women realize their feminine power through self-reflection, mindfulness, healthy eating practices, and pleasure.
“Every man and every woman struggles with body image and how we’re supposed to be in the world. I think women can struggle with it a bit more,” she says. https://www.hellomd.com/blogs/articles/cbd-somatic-sexology-and-holistic-health-with-julianne-vaccaro
“There are more expectations about how we should look, how we should eat, and how we should be, which makes negative self-talk even harder.”
By combining her experience in integrative nutrition, somatic sexology, and personal life experiences, Julianne helps her clients feel more comfortable in their own skin. She uses a variety of tools, including cannabidiol (CBD), to help women be the best versions of themselves, inside and out. Let’s start with the basics: Why did you get into holistic health coaching?I started my journey about seven years ago (almost eight now), and I started for many negative reasons. I really wanted to fix and repair my body because I felt very broken around my body image, my self-confidence, and my whole relationship with myself.
I started out as a holistic health coach. I went on a program for that, and I went super extreme and was a raw vegan for about three years. I ate super clean, super healthy, and I was really active. And I ended up with extremely severe adrenal fatigue.
This led me to heal from adrenal fatigue and to recognize how important it is to really do a diet that works for you and follow your own specific protocol. I reintroduced meat into my diet, and it really showed me how you can eat as healthily as you want, but if there are other parts of your life that aren’t at their best, you can end up with something like adrenal fatigue or a whole host of other symptoms.
At the time, I was in a relationship that wasn’t right for me, and even though everything seemed healthy, happy, and perfect, there were all these other things going on inside that led me down this path.
And then I got into the physical side of things and started teaching yoga and boxing. I taught for about five or six years, and with personal training throughout that time, I really focused more on the physical aspect in addition to health.
Then I discovered bodybuilding and took a difficult turn into the aesthetics world, and I really destroyed my body from the inside out. I lost many of the holistic practices I had and completely messed up my gut, my hormones, and my relationship with food. I developed even more disordered eating behaviors and habits—binge eating, emotional eating.
And when I finally decided to stop competing, I had to heal my body from the inside out. I had to heal my amenorrhea—I had lost my period for almost a year. I balanced my instincts and really worked on my relationship with food, myself, and my body.
This led me down a path of spiritual and personal development. It led me to somatic and sexological work. And it was kind of like the glue that holds it all together, I would say.* Let’s go back to the holistic health coaching program you attended. How did that influence your coaching style and philosophy?
I went to the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. I don’t know how much the program has changed, but at the time, it was very much based on food theories. Really looking at every area of who you are and adopting this holistic approach that I practice a lot now. Looking at mindset, looking at your emotional well-being, and looking at your relationships and passions and how they relate to your overall health and well-being.
In addition to that, it encouraged a lot of “bio-individuality”—so, following a food routine that really works for you specifically. It was almost as if we were given all these different dietary theories and all this education, and then it was like, OK, “now you just go for it.”
I’m definitely training myself not to teach all the food theories, but rather to really give my clients an educational system so they can strengthen their own intuition and connect with themselves and their bodies.
What types of people typically go through your coaching program?
Many of the women who go through the program want to live their purpose. I find that I attract a lot of leaders and women who want to be at the forefront, but I recognize that their self-perception and relationship with food really hold them back.
Why did you decide to go into health coaching rather than another health-related career?
My mom, at the time I enrolled in health coaching school, had just been diagnosed with celiac disease, and she had been misdiagnosed for about two years. She had really severe intestinal problems, and they couldn’t figure out why. All the celiac tests and all the food sensitivity tests came back negative. She wasn’t getting any answers; she wasn’t getting any clarity.
And I really wanted to embrace that holistic approach and look at all those other areas. Mindset, personal development, and spirituality were huge passions of mine, even back then, and I wanted to embody all of that.
Vaccaro, your coaching style seems to focus a lot on food. Can you explain why?
I think food is largely connected to why I chose the path I’ve followed, because I’ve always known it wasn’t just about food. And I’ve always recognized that while food was the controlling variable for me, it wasn’t the driving force.
Many women come in with a really negative mindset. They hate their relationship with their bodies and food. But it’s never about food.
My approach to food, and everything that happens with the students in my programs, is really about finding the root cause and empowering them.
Food can be the catalyst and may be what you’re craving, but there’s usually other stuff going on beneath the surface. If it’s extreme cravings, there are multiple layers. What’s your gut health like? What are your hormones like? If your gut health seems to be really suffering, then your cravings are going to be very strong. And if your hormones are out of balance, you might be hungry. So it’s all these pieces in motion.
Why do you think food is such a major sticking point for so many of your clients?
I think it’s the easiest thing to control—or perceived as being controlled. And so we try to control food, but food ends up controlling us. And then we get into this horrible cycle of restricting and bingeing and overeating, and then that creates this negative self-talk.
And I don’t think it’s just women. Every man, every woman struggles with body image and how we’re supposed to be in the world. I think women can struggle with this a bit more. There are more expectations about how we should look, how we should eat, and how we should be, which makes negative self-talk even harder.
On top of that, I think the sexological component is really important. Another common theme is a disconnect from our bodies and a lack of security in our bodies. This stems from whatever stories and traumas we experienced growing up, but also from societal pressures. This creates this disconnect in our bodies, this lack of security. And so, we turn to food because we also lack pleasure and sensuality.
Let’s talk about your work in somatic sexology. Can you explain what it is and why you went into it?
I’m currently in a program to become a somatic sex work practitioner. And I stumbled upon the work of my own journey, because I felt like I had done so much personal and spiritual development, but I still didn’t feel like I was where I could (should!) be.
I felt like my body was holding onto a lot of trauma, hurt, and history. It was like I was there, but my body was somehow in the background, holding on and anchored to the past.
And so this led me on a somatic healing journey for myself to really release a lot of my own trauma and abuse. I’ve also been involved in abusive relationships that have been traumatic for me and my experience.
My journey has always been very connected to the physical, to my physical body. And so, it made sense that I needed bodywork to clear that.
Somatic sex therapy is a combination of somatic techniques, channeling emotion and energy through the body. Then, it incorporates the sex therapy component, where you experience pleasure and truly heal the wounds you’ve just opened through the somatic process. Connecting spirituality to this process and bringing it into your body is also important.
And what does somatic sex therapy look like in practice?
I would say it’s very unique to each individual, as everyone’s body reacts differently. A typical session lasts three hours. You’re on a table, and there are two practitioners working with you throughout.
Generally, it will be a man and a woman, as they represent the masculine and feminine energies. There will be moments throughout the session where you will need to use both energies, and both energies are super important for completing this memory, whether it’s the male practitioner coming in and holding space or acting like your father or a former partner. But also the feminine who comes in and does the same or nurtures you and holds that space. There’s real pressure on the body, searching for the trigger points where the memory and energy are stored. Using breath, sound, and movement, you can move through these memories and work through these traumas.
What have you personally noticed after experiencing somatic sex therapy sessions?
It has changed how I see and operate in all areas of my life. I feel like I was brought to this work, and this is where I’m meant to be. It sparked my own awakening and my deeper purpose. It truly shook every part of me.
It dissolved all the noise in my head, the blocks that were really holding me back from being fully myself. I feel incredibly expressed and authentic within myself.
Do you see yourself incorporating what you’ve learned into your current health coaching practice?
I think it’s already a big part of the program I have now. Again, the pleasure component is so important, even when it comes to food and these challenges we have in our bodies as women, so I find it hard to separate them.
I have a few different programs that I run now, and I will be doing the somatic sex work in person. I also teach many of my clients in my current program how to go through the process on their own and learn how to release somatically as things arise and how to truly use their bodies.
Because that is the power of the feminine.
One of the programs you offer is called Goddess Reclamation. Can you walk me through this program? What can a client expect?
Goddess Reclamation is an extreme approach to mind, body, and soul. Because to make these big, transformative changes, you have to look at all levels of who you are: mental, spiritual, emotional, physical, social—you all matter. And you all invent how you present yourself to the world every single day.
We start with the first phase, which is called Foundations. And within Foundations, we really get a clear picture of what limiting beliefs are present: the old stories, the subconscious programming that keeps you stuck in your current situation, whether it’s negative self-talk or the feeling that you’re not enough. And we dissolve these stories to truly allow you to step into your authentic self, find your voice, and move toward your full potential.
You also learn to understand how your body works, which leads to phase two, called Body Blueprint. Just as we did in phase one, which brought to light all the old patterns to dissolve them and create the new, we do the same thing on a physical level.
And that’s thanks to gut health education. So, you learn which foods work for you, which foods don’t, which supplements might be beneficial, and which don’t.
