- Mind/Body and Executive Coach
- Coaching and Developing Leaders since 2009
- Teaching Mindfulness since 1997
BACKGROUND
Chad Herst is a mind/body and executive coach, writer, and licensed acupuncturist (LAc) who works with founders, executives, and other high performers navigating pressure, burnout, difficult decisions, and the hidden cost of holding everything together.
His work is grounded in more than three decades of studying how the body, mind, emotions, and behavior shape one another. In his early twenties, Chad traveled to India and began studying yoga, meditation, and Eastern philosophy. Those practices trained him to notice subtle changes in breath, sensation, attention, and behavior, capacities that later became central to his work with leaders.
Chad went on to train in Traditional Chinese Medicine and build a practice in acupuncture before beginning to coach founders and executives in 2009. Years into that work, a prolonged health breakdown forced him to reconsider what embodiment actually meant. He came to see the body not as something to master, transcend, or push past, but as a relationship to cultivate and a source of information, particularly when a person is overriding what they feel, need, or know. That evolution, from control toward greater intimacy with the body, became central to his coaching approach.
Chad is the author of The Performance Trap: The Ache No Success Will Ever Fix, forthcoming October 1, 2026. The book explores the unspoken contracts we form around worth, belonging, and safety, and the work of learning to succeed without abandoning ourselves. The first chapter, recorded in Chad’s own voice, is available here:
APPROACH + PHILOSOPHY
Many of Chad’s clients arrive with problems that seem practical. They cannot stop replaying a conversation. They’re carrying too much but do not know what to put down. They’re exhausted, increasingly reactive, or unable to make a decision they know cannot be postponed. From the outside, they still appear capable. Internally, they feel pressured, disconnected, or unsure of themselves.
Chad helps clients slow the process down. Our reactions often begin before we have consciously decided anything. The chest tightens. The jaw grips. The breath shortens. We speed up, explain, laugh something off, or say we are fine while the body signals otherwise. The body doesn’t replace reason or dictate a decision. It offers an earlier point of awareness.
Chad listens for these moments and helps clients explore what the reaction may be protecting. He does not impose an interpretation. He works collaboratively, helping clients find language that feels true to their experience and creates more room to choose.
At the center of his work is the Performance Trap: the learned belief that worth, belonging, or safety must be earned through achievement, usefulness, composure, or control. Chad helps leaders remain connected to themselves under pressure, communicate more directly, set clearer boundaries, and stay in relationship without disappearing. This greater internal clarity allows them to make more deliberate decisions, address conflict earlier, and create conditions in which others can do their best work.
EDUCATION
- BA, Religious Studies, cum laude
Columbia College, Columbia University - MS, Traditional Chinese Medicine
Pacific College of Oriental Medicine
CERTIFICATIONS
- Certified Professional Co-Active Coach, Co-Active Training Institute
- Shift Positive 360® Certified
- Authorized to teach Ashtanga Yoga
- PrinciplesUs
