Coming Home: Brisa Hennessy on Healing, High Performance, and the Power of the Five Elements

“This journey has brought me back to baby Brisa… the one who used to listen to the ocean.”

Professional surfer and Olympic athlete Brisa Hennessy joins me for an intimate conversation on healing, sensitivity, and what it means to truly come home to yourself.

While Brisa has trained with some of the world’s top performance experts, it was her deeper healing journey—through the lens of Chinese Medicine and the Five Elements—that gave her the missing piece: understanding who she really is beneath it all.

The Athlete and the Oracle

Brisa and I first began working together more than three years ago. Like many of the high-performing women I work with, she came in with a quiet sense that something wasn’t quite right. Though she was succeeding outwardly, her internal world told a different story: hormonal imbalance, emotional depletion, and a deep sensitivity that she hadn’t yet learned how to honor.

We started with 1:1 work, then she moved into The Balanced Woman, and now she’s part of this year’s cohort of The Balanced Healer Apprenticeship. In her words:

“Learning about my Water element helped me understand why I’ve always felt things so deeply—and how to move through fear instead of being ruled by it.”

High Sensitivity Is High Intelligence

As we reflect on her journey, Brisa shares how she spent much of her life feeling like a black sheep—someone who didn’t quite fit the mold of typical athlete culture:

“I used to think my sensitivity was a weakness. Now I understand it’s a gift. It’s part of what makes me who I am—not just as a surfer, but as a woman and a leader.”

She opens up about past struggles with eating disorders, body image, and the emotional toll of constantly striving to meet expectations. She’s candid about the burnout she experienced after hosting her first retreat in Fiji—and how that became the catalyst for deeper change.

Returning to What’s Real

This wasn’t just about learning better tools—it was about redefining what performance meant in the first place:

“For the first time in my life, I’m not running. I’m softening. I’m learning how to stay with myself, and how to lead from that place.”

The Five Elements became a map—not just for healing her body, but for understanding her emotions, her rhythms, and her purpose. Water gave her permission to feel deeply. Wood gave her direction. Fire reawakened her joy. Earth helped her receive. And Metal reminded her that she can let go and trust the process:

“This journey brought me back to baby Brisa… the one who was born in Costa Rica, who learned to surf with her parents, who listened to the jungle and the waves and didn’t need to prove anything.”

A New Way Forward—for All of Us

Brisa’s story is deeply personal, but it echoes what so many high-capacity women experience: the quiet burnout, the pressure to perform, the disconnection from intuition.

Our hope in sharing this conversation is that it reaches the women who need to hear it. The ones who’ve been doing everything “right,” and are still wondering why it feels so hard. The ones who are ready for something deeper:

“If this speaks to you… reach out to Hana. She sees things most people can’t—and I honestly don’t think I’d be who I am now without her.”

Ready to Begin Your Own Elemental Journey?

If Brisa’s story resonates with you—if you’ve been craving a deeper path to healing, leadership, and embodied power—then I invite you to join us.

🔮 The Balanced Healer Apprenticeship is open now!

This 6-month journey weaves Chinese Medicine, Five Element wisdom, emotional mastery, and spiritual mentorship into a deeply transformative experience for women ready to lead from within.

 Whether you’re holding space for others, moving through a personal crossroads, or quietly burning out behind the scenes—this is your invitation to return to your essence. Come home to yourself. Claim your path. The next round is enrolling now.