Wellness & mindset coaching · Online or in person · Salt Lake City
Hi, I'm Xander.
I'm glad you found this page. Most people who end up here have been carrying something quietly for a while, and haven't had many places to set it down.
I'm a wellness and mindset coach. I work with people moving through religious trauma and faith transitions, divorce, grief, and the kind of shame that never announces itself. The ones who look fine on paper and know something is off.
Healing isn't about becoming someone new. It's about coming home to yourself.
Where to start
Three ways in.
Depending on what you need this week, there are a few different doors. None of them commits you to anything, and you can start with whichever one sounds least daunting.
Free · 45 minutes
A conversation
Where most people begin. We talk about what's going on and whether I'm the right person for it. If I'm not, I'll say so and point you somewhere better.
Book an introFrom $100 · single session
A session for your body
Reiki, a private sound bath, or breathwork. For the weeks when you don't want to talk about it, you just want your nervous system to stand down for an hour.
See sessionsCustom rate · any size
Something for a group
Sound baths, breathwork and Reiki for teams, retreats, and groups of friends. Tell me roughly what you want and I'll come back with a plan.
Group sessionsWhat I help with
What people come to me for.
Coaching is one-to-one and online, so it works wherever you are. I'm based in Salt Lake City, and I work with people across Utah and around the country.
Religious trauma coaching
Recovering from high-control religion, and from teaching that told you your own judgment could not be trusted.
Faith transition & deconstruction
Support through a faith crisis, a deconstruction, or a slow quiet drift, whether you leave in the end or stay and hold it differently.
Confidence & self-worth
Rebuilding self-esteem and self-trust after years of being told the goal was to become smaller.
Shame
The belief that something is wrong with you underneath everything else. Usually the root, rarely the presenting problem.
Divorce & life transitions
Divorce recovery, career change, relocation, midlife, and the long hallway between one version of your life and the next.
Grief & identity change
Loss of a person, a marriage, a community, or a version of yourself you spent decades building.
Somatic awareness & nervous-system regulation
Mindfulness, meditation, breathwork and trauma-informed body practice for people who live from the neck up.
Spirituality without dogma
A practice you actually believe in, built from scratch, with nobody handing you a replacement rulebook.
Who this is for
When the belief system you were raised in stops fitting.
Most people who find me aren't in crisis. They're competent, responsible, and quietly exhausted by holding something together. Some version of this is usually true:
The faith you were raised in stopped fitting.
And you can't say that out loud to most of the people who know you. There's grief in it, and relief, and then guilt about the relief.
Shame runs underneath everything.
Not guilt about something you did. The older, quieter belief that something is wrong with you, and that being fully known would prove it.
You're between two versions of your life.
A divorce, a career, a move, a loss. The old story ended and the next one hasn't started, and nobody warns you how long that hallway is.
You've done everything right and feel almost nothing.
By every external measure you're fine. You're also numb, disconnected from your body, and tired of performing okay.
The core belief
Almost all of it traces back to one relationship.
After years of this work, other people's and my own, I keep landing in the same place. The anxiety, the over-functioning, the people-pleasing, the relationships that keep going the same way: underneath, there is usually a person who learned somewhere along the line that they were not quite worth their own kindness.
If you grew up in a high-demand faith, you may have been taught that outright. That loving yourself was pride. That your own instincts were the thing to distrust. That the goal was to become smaller, more obedient, less.
I don't think you need to become less. I think you need to come back.
So this is the belief the whole practice rests on: how you treat yourself is the root system, and nearly everything else is what grows out of it. That sounds soft until you try it. It is the most demanding work most people ever do. It is also trainable, which is the good news, because it's the one thing that changes everything downstream of it.
The approach
Curious, not prescriptive.
I'm not going to tell you what to believe or how to live. I'm interested in helping you get curious enough to find what's actually true for you, which means we work with more than your thoughts.
If you've left a high-control belief system, you have good reason to be wary of anyone offering answers. I'd rather earn your trust slowly than borrow authority I haven't been given.
The conversation
An hour that actually goes somewhere
Weekly or every other week. You set the direction. I ask the questions underneath the question, and I keep track of the threads you drop.
The body
Because insight alone doesn't land
Breathwork, somatic practice, nervous-system awareness, sound, and stillness. Shame and grief live below language. We meet them where they live.
The integration
What you carry back into the week
Small, specific practices that fit a real life. If psychedelic experiences are part of your path, this is where we make meaning of them.
The practices
What we'll actually do.
Not one method applied to everybody. A real toolkit, and a coach who is honest about which tool fits the week you're actually having.
Affirmations
Not pretending to feel something you don't. Catching the sentence already running underneath your day, and asking whether you'd ever say it to someone you loved.
Mirror work
The simplest thing I teach and the one people resist hardest. You look at yourself, you say something kind, and you notice what rises up to argue. Whatever argues back is the work.
Breathwork
State before insight. Lengthen the exhale and the body stops bracing. From there we can have a conversation you'll actually be able to use.
Somatic awareness
Shame doesn't live in your reasoning. It lives in your jaw, your gut, your shoulders. We learn to read those signals instead of overriding them, which is probably what you were trained to do.
Meditation & stillness
Less about emptying your mind, more about staying in the room with whatever shows up without immediately trying to fix it or explain it away.
Visualization
Rehearsing a version of your life your nervous system doesn't believe in yet, on purpose and repeatedly, until some part of it starts to.
Sound & Reiki
For the weeks when talking isn't the thing that's needed. Tone, stillness, and rest: the kind your nervous system counts, not the kind you get from a screen.
Psychedelic preparation & integration
Most of what a psychedelic experience turns out to be worth is decided in the weeks around it, not the hours inside it. I'm trained as a facilitator and as an integration coach, and I'll be specific with you about what that includes before we begin.
You won't be handed all of this at once. We start with what your week can hold, and we build.
Just want a single session?
Reiki, sound baths, and breathwork are also bookable on their own, one at a time, no commitment, for individuals or groups.
The shape of it
You should feel something in the first hour.
Some approaches ask you to get worse before you get better. That is not how I work. Most people leave the first conversation lighter than they came in, partly because saying a thing out loud to someone who does not flinch already does something, and partly because you go home with something you can actually use that night.
Relief starts here
Not because anything is solved in an hour, but because you finally said it to someone who did not flinch, and because nobody asked you to justify it.
Things you can use that night
A breath that settles you in two minutes. Something to do with the three in the morning version of your thoughts. Small, and they work straight away.
Now we go underneath
The patterns, the shame, the story you did not choose. This part is slower and gentler than people expect, and it is where the change stops needing maintenance.
It holds on its own
You notice you handled something that would have taken you out a year ago, and it barely registered. That is the whole goal.
Nobody runs this exact line and some people move faster. But you should not have to white-knuckle your way through months of feeling worse to get somewhere better, and I would not ask you to.
Ready
Press start
Try it now
A regulated breath, before anything else.
This is the simplest thing I teach, and often the first. A longer exhale than inhale tells your nervous system it is safe to come down. It works whether or not you believe in any of it.
Four seconds in. Hold for one. Six seconds out. Three rounds is enough to feel the shift.
About Xander
I got here the long way.
I spent years in global supply chain and executive leadership. The kind of work that rewards you for being competent and never asks how you are.
Somewhere in there my own life came apart and got rebuilt: grief, a divorce, an identity that stopped matching the person wearing it, and a faith transition I didn't plan for. Those seasons taught me something I didn't expect. Growth isn't always about fixing ourselves. Sometimes it's about learning to stop fighting who we are.
What pulled me through wasn't a framework. It was mindfulness, breath, movement, and the slow work of reconnecting to a body I'd been managing from a distance. Underneath all of it was one unglamorous discovery: the day I started treating myself like someone worth being kind to, every other problem on my list got smaller. I trained in these practices because they gave me my life back, and I coach because I'd rather be honest company on that road than an authority above it.
I'm also a dad, and it has been the most beautiful part of any of it. It is also the most honest mirror I have. My kid does not care how capable I am, or how much I can carry, or how well I am holding it together. They notice whether I am actually here. That is a harder standard than any job ever set me, and a much better one, and most of what I know about being present I learned from failing at it in front of someone small.
In their words
What people say afterward.
Verified reviews from breathwork, sound, and Reiki work at The Om State, rated 5.0 on Google. These are for the sessions, not the long-term coaching; that practice is newer, and I'd rather show you real ones than fill this space.
Working together
Start with a conversation.
No intake form, no pitch. We talk for forty-five minutes about what's going on and whether I'm the right person for it. If I'm not, I'll tell you and point you somewhere better.
Where we meet is up to you
Most sessions happen over video, which suits people who would rather not be seen walking into a building in the town they live in. But it does not have to be a screen. If it would feel better to walk, we can walk. A trail, a park, a bench, the long way around a neighbourhood you don't live in. Some people say more when they are moving and nobody is looking straight at them.
Start online if that is easier and we can change it later. The only thing that matters is that you feel safe enough to be honest, and I will meet you wherever that turns out to be.
Intro conversation
Free · 45 min
A real session, not a sales call. You'll leave with at least one thing worth trying whether or not we work together.
Book a timeSingle session
Rate on request · 75 min
For a specific knot: a decision you're circling, a conversation you're dreading, an experience you need to make sense of.
Book a sessionOngoing work
Rate on request · 8 or 12 sessions
Where the real change happens. Enough time to move something structural rather than manage the surface of it. Sessions are shaped around you: conversation, breath, and practice in whatever mix serves the season you're in.
Ask about openingsIn plain terms
What this is, and what it isn't.
People leaving high-control environments have usually been promised a lot. So here is the boundary of what I do, stated before you spend a dollar.
- Coaching is not therapy. If what you're carrying needs clinical treatment (PTSD, an eating disorder, active crisis), that's a licensed therapist's work. I'll say so plainly and help you find one.
- I'm trained as a psychedelic facilitator and integration coach. What that means for you depends on where you are and what's permitted there, and I'll be specific about it with you directly rather than vague about it on a website. I don't source substances.
- I'm not handing you a belief system to replace the one you left. Where you land is genuinely yours to decide.
- You set the direction every session. I bring practices and questions, not a curriculum you have to complete.
- What you say stays between us.
Questions
Before you book.
I'm not sure I'm "deconstructing." Is this still for me?
Yes. Plenty of people I work with still hold their faith and are simply trying to hold it more honestly. Others left years ago. Others were never religious and are here for grief, a transition, or shame that predates all of it. You don't have to arrive with the right label.
Do I have to do the breathwork and body stuff?
No. It's offered, never required. Some people work entirely in conversation for months before anything else sounds appealing, and that's a legitimate way to do this. If you've been taught to override your body's signals, choosing when to say no is the practice.
Do I need to have left my religion?
No, and plenty of people I work with haven't. Some are still in and trying to hold it more honestly. Some are halfway out. Some left years ago and are dealing with what came after. Where you land is not something I have an opinion about.
What if my partner still believes?
Common, and hard, and workable. A lot of this work is about staying honest without turning your marriage into a debate. I'm not going to push you toward leaving or toward staying, because that isn't my call to make.
How is this different from therapy?
Therapy tends to work backward, diagnosing and treating what happened to you. Coaching works forward from where you are toward what you want to build, with trauma-informed care about pacing. Many people do both, and they complement each other well.
How long does this take?
Most people feel a shift in the first few sessions and need something more like three to six months for it to hold. I'd rather be honest about that than sell you a breakthrough weekend.
Are sessions online or in person?
Either. Video is the default and it is what most people choose, partly because it works for anyone who isn't ready to be seen walking into a building in their town. But if meeting outside would feel better, we can do that instead. A hike, a park, a bench, wherever you would actually talk. I'm in Salt Lake City. Tell me what would make this easier and we'll work from there.
What if I try it and it isn't a fit?
Then we stop, and I'll help you find what is. There's no package you're locked into and no conversation where I try to talk you out of leaving.
One question to start with
What happens when you stop trying to become who you think you're supposed to be, and start becoming who you actually are?