
The Natural Wellness Academy provides personal mentorship to nurture students into knowledgeable, marketable life coach specializations, designed around holism (Mind-Body-Spirit Integration). Our coaches are trained to improve people’s holistic health and lifestyle outcomes. Founded by Dr. LJ Rose, a pioneering natural wellness expert, therapist and International Trainer in Subconscious Dynamics, the Natural Wellness Academy began training coaches in 2013. Following that initial cohort, we have enrolled and graduated numerous students representing over 30 nations, grown our course offerings, expanded our faculty, and gained named recognition with various leading holistic health communities. Our school has been featured in Reader’s Digest, Yahoo, HuffPost, eHow, In-Style, Thrive, Tampa Bay Wellness, Herb, Mercola, Glowell, Daytime TV, Bloom TV, and more! Read on to meet our mentors and to learn more about our school.

Dr. LindaJoy Rose, a.k.a. Dr. LJ
Academy Founder and Natural Wellness Expert
About Me
LindaJoy Rose, PhD is a therapist, author, professional speaker, international trainer, and Academy founder with over 30 years of experience. The author of eight books, she contributes regularly to The Huffington Post and has frequently starred as a Healthy Living Expert on eHow.com and Tampa NBC affiliate Daytime TV and Bloom TV. As a former director for the American Board of Hypnotherapy, she is a pioneer in subconscious dynamics and clinical hypnotherapy, training thousands of therapists worldwide. She also spearheaded a healthy lifestyle retraining program with an Astra-Zeneca Foundation grant at one of the nation’s largest clinics.
Dr. Rose developed her practical and delicious eating philosophy to overcome a debilitating auto-immune disorder, which she combined with her background in psychology to launch the Academy’s coaching program. “From training therapists internationally in the fields of psychology and hypnotherapy to being an online mentor for two West Coast Universities, to founding the Natural Wellness Academy, teaching has always been my passion. I enjoy nothing more than informing and inspiring prospective coaches and therapists.”

Cortney Cameron
Faculty, Nature Therapy (& Techie)
About Me
Cortney Cameron is a nature therapy practitioner and geoscientist specializing in hydrogeology, environmental flows, and data analysis. She holds a bachelor’s degree in from Duke University and a master’s degree from North Carolina Central University, where she was an NSF Graduate Research Fellow in Geoscience. She also earned an MBA from the Quantic School of Business and Technology and an associates (focused on health studies) from Wilkes Community College.
An advocate for nature therapy, she is the co-author of the best-selling nature therapy deck Nature Therapy Walks: 22 Sensory Activities to Enjoy in Nature for Wellbeing. She developed and heads the Academy’s Nature Therapy Center and nature therapy guide certification program, which helps students develop practical skills for cultivating bidirectional healing experiences between nature and diverse audiences.
In addition, Cortney is a writer for the Catians comic book, the nature-themed illustrated children’s book Atlas and the Lucky Flower, and various other technical and creative works.
Cortney brings a passion for science, nature, and spirituality to the Academy. She also brings an extensive background in website development and serves as the main point of contact for website maintenance, upgrades, and technical issues.

Denise M. Montgomery
Faculty, Spiritual Wellness, Neurodivergence Life Coach
About Me
Denise started her journey with astrology, tarot, guided meditation, lucid dreaming, meditation, channeled material and “new age” emerging wisdom in 1987, when she began casting charts for friends by hand. Additionally, Denise earned an honors BA in psychology and communication arts and an MA in English with an emphasis in creative writing, which paved the way for an eclectic career that took her to Bain Consulting and the American Medical Association in Chicago.

Jamie Hernandez
Faculty, Holistic Health and Life Coaching, Hypnotherapy and Mind Dynamics
About Me
An Academy graduate, Jamie Hernandez holds a bachelor’s degree from Penn State University in Human Development and Family Studies and two master’s degrees from New York University in Psychology and Counseling. She is the author of Eat the Berries: Weight Loss for Busy Moms – a #1 ranking Kindle best-seller in the Vitamins, Motherhood, and Health, Fitness & Dieting categories – and The Divorced Mom Makeover. In her career, Jamie has worked with children with developmental delays, provided college counseling for high school students, and provided drug and alcohol counseling for people in recovery.
A wife and mother of four and one rescue dog, Jamie’s passion for health and wellness started in 2008 with the birth of her first child. To keep her daughter healthy, she started researching nutrition and discovered the field of holistic health coaching. Feeling strongly that this was part of her calling, Jamie jumped on the opportunity to merge her passion for helping others and wellness into a career. Her specialty is in helping parents and families prepare delicious and healthy meals for themselves and their children.

Juliane Nowe
Lead Mentor, Cannabis Coaching, Spiritual Wellness
About Me
When I was a child I lost the ability to speak. As I struggled to regain the sound of my voice I also grappled with long lists of other symptoms. Years of doctor’s appointments and western medicine could never provide answers or resolution. Often overwhelmed with thoughts of helplessness, I spent years desperate for healing, eager to live a life that felt fulfilled and to live the width of my days, rather than just the length of the time that I had.

Kristina Risola
Faculty, Cannabis Coaching
About Me
Kristina Risola is a double graduate of the University of South Florida, with a Master’s Degree in Rehabilitation and Mental Health Counseling and a Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology. She is a Certified Rehabilitation Counselor, Certified Health and Wellness Coach, and Certified Primal Health Coach. She has over 15 years of experience in the medical, mental health, rehabilitation, and coaching fields, with a specialization in chronic illness and disability.
As one of the first Cannabis Coaches, Kristina has extensive experience working with patients to achieve better health via medical cannabis. She is currently the Director of Operations for Florida Medical Cannabis Clinic, a leading cannabis medical practice. Kristina is also a legal cannabis patient who knows what it’s like to live with debilitating conditions and chronic pain. Drawing from her personal and professional experience, Kristina is able to partner with patients and mentees to provide an added level of expertise, guidance, and support along their journey.
In her spare time, Kristina enjoys hockey, blogging, photography, and spending time with her boys – her husband and two rescue pups.

Laurie Abele
Mentor, Mind-Gut Coaching, Holistic Health and Life Coaching
About Me
Laurie Abele is a Certified Holistic Health and Life Coach, Academy graduate, and owner of Happy Gut Gal. She holds a bachelor’s from SUNY Oneonta and a master’s from SUNY Stony Brook. The foundation of her passions has always originated with her love of helping people.
As a practicing health coach, Laurie enjoys working with clients of all ages to find ways that will support their health needs to add quality and quantity to their years. Laurie places a large focus on the concept of gut health, which she considers the root of all health.
Laurie fully understands that some health journeys and goals can feel overwhelming — or even unattainable — at times. She teaches that small changes over time equal long-term success — from improving acid reflux to autoimmune disorders and more.
Whether it is a pantry clean-out, a grocery store tour, or a coaching package for a fixed period of time, Laurie loves showing people that their health goals do not need to take a backseat, even in busy lives, and that addressing gut health is the key to optimal health.

Lindsey Webb
Mentor, Ethneogenic (Sacred Journey) Medicine, Intuitive Micro-dosing and Herbology
About Me
Lindsey is an entheogenic medicine practitioner who serves as a guide for others on their healing journeys. She believes in the power Earth Medicines hold for the healing of humanity. Through right relationship with the plant spirit world and one on one mentorship, her method of teaching allows the heart of Sacred Journey Facilitation to reach people through time and space, giving them the tools necessary to harness the energy of the psychedelic revolution with integrity and confidence.
As a modern medicine woman, her life is a beautiful mix of raising conscious children in a time of chaos, remaking southern favorites over into clean, veganish meals, playing in the garden or the at the beach, working with medicines from seed to Sacred Journey and loving on her “clients” who are really family now. Her current areas of focus are trauma informed care, microdosing, women’s issues, addiction recovery and chronic illness recovery. She is a kambo (frog medicine) practitioner, space holder for self-journeys, and small ceremony holder.

Dr. Lisa Clow
Mentor, Spiritual Wellness
About Me
Dr. Lisa Clow, Ph.D., Spiritual Wellness Specialist, certified Mindfulness/Meditation and Yoga Instructor, Lisa is a National Board Certified Health and Well-Being Coach. She published her research on yoga as a women’s population health intervention. She practices ancient Tibetan Yoga, which focuses on the mind and breath, not the asanas or the poses that modern yoga has embraced. While the movement is essential to our well-being, it’s not the magical factor in how yoga “works”. Dr. Clow is writing her book, “I Can’t Do Yoga – If You’ve Ever Said It You Need To Read This Book.” She also produces The Dr. Lisa Clow Podcast. She shares life’s journey with people like you, finding purpose, happiness, and ways to thrive in our new world.
In 2015, she bought six chicks and built a pen out of PVC and chicken wire on 1/4 acre. She fell in love with the farm life and the connection to her food. Since then, she retired from a 30 yr. career teaching health and Physical Education and bought a small farm. Her mission is to grow food without pesticides or chemicals in harmony with the earth’s cycles. She practices the principles of permaculture and biodynamic farming. We continue to be life-long learners of how to live in abundance.
Dr. Clow has developed school-based community health interventions, promoting mental health and well-being solutions for students, teachers, and administrators. She’s presented her findings at regional and national academic conventions, such as the SHAPE Maryland, the National SHAPE conference, and the American Public Health Association. Dr. Clow has served as a teaching assistant for Walden University, and she also served as an online/hybrid adjunct professor in the Health Sciences Department for the College of Southern Maryland.
Dr. Clow is the founder and CEO of Awake Yoga and Integrative Health Coaching, an organization dedicated to reducing burnout prevalence among teachers and other workers in public service. A firm believer in giving back and reducing health inequities, she developed and implemented a community outreach program where she taught free yoga classes to underserved populations. She also served as the Director of YogaMedCo’s Genius Break Project, a mindful movement and activity program for K 12 classrooms.

Lizy Maratea
Faculty, Mentor, Cannabis Coaching
About Me
Lizy Maratea is an Academy graduate and the creator of Full Spectrum Compassionate Coaching, which offers cannabis education and protocol development, as well as guidance on mindfulness, medicated movement, and mindset management for fostering sustainable growth toward autonomy and homeostasis.
At the age of three, she was diagnosed with a degenerative connective tissue disorder (Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome). Having managed her chronic pain with the aid of cannabis for over 20 years, Lizy has spent the last 10+ years actively educating others on the science and benefits of cannabis and holistic healing. As a former medical cannabis dispensary employee, she helped hundreds of patients acquire their medicine for a wide variety of afflictions. She also years of experience developing and teaching various forms of medicated yoga to anyone with a lick of interest in learning.
As a trauma-survivor, Lizy gains the most energetic exchange from helping others who also suffer from PTSD to regain/achieve a safe and secure sense of Self through the mind-body connection. Lizy is also a writer, artist, nature-based educator, and children’s yoga instructor. She enjoys reading, music, cooking, and adventuring outdoors with her family on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.

Dr. Nancie Barwick
Faculty, Past Life Regression & Hypnotherapy
About Me
Nancie M. Barwick is a Clinical Hypnotherapist with over a quarter-century of experience. Her practice is physically located in Northern Virginia, USA. However, she sees individual clients and groups from all over the world via the internet. Her specialties center around wellness issues including disability, pain, anxiety. She also works with members of the transgender and gender non-conforming community on these issues and issues around gender identity, coming out, and much more. Nancie has a particular interest in Past Life Regression.
Nancie is the author of two books on wellness: Beyond Disability: Toward Self-Acceptance and Peace, written while she was dealing with muscular dystrophy and Unstuff Yourself: Finding Joy on the Road to Wellness,
written after her recovery. She has also written numerous articles. In addition to writing, Nancie has been a popular speaker at many hypnotherapy conferences in the United States for many years.

Sherry Asuncion
Mentor, Meditation and Mindfulness
About Me
Sherry Asuncion is the founder of Resilient Health. She has a Bachelors of Science in Psychology from San Francisco State and is also certified as a Health and Life Coach, Gut Health Specialist, Cannabis Coach, and in Essential Hypnotherapy Skills. Outside of her business, she is also a part time Meditation Teacher, Reiki Practitioner II and Executive Program Coordinator and Mentor for the Natural Wellness Academy.
After six years of silently suffering and going through about a dozen doctors, Sherry’s healing journey started in 2013 with her diagnosis of Hashimoto’s, an autoimmune thyroid disease. What really catapulted her to begin her spiritual journey to find a true balance of mind, body and spirit, however, was her painful journey of ending a 17 year marriage. It was then that she realized that in order to be truly healthy, one must be healthy as a whole and not in just one area.
Inspired by these two major life events and the difficulties she overcame, Sherry has dedicated her life to being a role model for her two children (both of whom share the same paths of autoimmune diagnoses) while serving as an educator and healer in providing knowledge, emotional and energetic healing to others.
Sherry truly believes that everyone has the capability of healing themselves and finding the light in the journeys they are all taking, as long as one is willing to put in the work and follow the path to self love.

Rebecca Smolenski
Student Ambassador, Mentor Cannabis Coaching
About Me
A two-time DARE Essay Award Winner back in fifth grade, I would’ve easily been voted least likely to leave my corporate training career to talk cannabis. Until my own chronic pain was unresponsive to treatments. My story is not unlike many others you will hear as you build your own coaching practice: I suffer from major depression, anxiety, PTSD, fibromyalgia, problematic sleep, migraines, and a chronic knee syndrome that used to render me way too often unable to even get out of bed, let alone complete daily activities, work, and social requirements. Cannabis has significantly improved my own well-being in nearly every aspect of my life, so much so that I’ve devoted my work to it. I am a Certified Cannabis Coach through the Academy, founder of Highly Well Cannabis Coaching, an educator and advocate, and a content enthusiast.
It is my goal to combine my professional background in communication and corporate management and training along with my coaching and cannabis education and experience to provide you with the tools you need to succeed as you incorporate cannabis into your personal wellness and/or the wellness of others. When working with me, you can expect privacy, honesty, empathy, knowledge, and a good sense of humor.
I live in Cleveland, Ohio with my soon-to-be husband, our three dogs, and a ton of plants. When I’m not hustling, I enjoy hiking (we have a beautiful National Park a half hour away, I swear!), reading, rooting for our often-disappointing Cleveland sports teams, and watching all the true crime documentaries.
A key underpinning of our approach is that we take our Mentorship with candidates very seriously. This cherished collaborative relationship commences in the registration process and may continue long beyond your course completion, as we applaud and support your continued growth in the coaching profession.
Mentoring is a developmental, collaborative, and mutually beneficial partnership through which a more experienced person shares knowledge, skills, information and perspective to foster the personal and professional growth of a protege. Your mentors are graduates of the Natural Wellness Academy coaching program who have gone on to successful careers in coaching, counseling and therapy. They know exactly what it’s like to go through the learning experiences and will provide constructive guidance on all of your assignments and projects.
Your mentors are available to you via email, messaging, and our private Facebook group, as well as through scheduled phone or Skype sessions that can be utilized in a variety of ways; from brainstorming possible career paths, to consulting on specific issues or helping you through roadblocks.
We maintain a close relationship with our graduates, who have went on to open thriving coaching practices, start their own specialty certification programs at the Academy, publish acclaimed books and receive accolades, expand their original businesses to include a new revenue stream, and above all, change lives.