About Chandra Zas: Functional Embodiment Guide &
Mood Before Food Coach
As a Functional Embodiment Guide and creator of the Mood Before Food methodology, I help growth-focused individuals transform through body wisdom, somatic practices, and holistic wellness. With nearly three decades of experience, I specialize in rewiring food cravings, plant medicine integration, and sustainable whole-person transformation.
I felt that I had no choice but to change.
Me, at age 2, with "the itchies"
Fast Forward
Welcome,
my name is Chandra Zas.
Author. Coach. Guide. I help growth focused humans transform.
It Started with Eczema at Age 2
At two years old, my body was screaming. Severe eczema.
Specialists tried to help me from food elimination diets to bio-feedback.
My parents did everything conventional medicine suggested—some symptoms were relieved and others created.
Nothing got to the root cause.
That early experience planted a seed: maybe the body knows something the Western Medicine doesn’t.
Maybe symptoms aren’t the enemy. Maybe they’re the messengers.
I didn’t have words for it then. But that question—what is my body trying to tell me?—became the foundation of everything I teach now.
In My Teens, I Started Asking Different Questions.
Weight gain. Depression. A body that cried for help instead of suppression.
I tried diets, including anorexia. I tried exercise, I was on sports teams. I tried willpower. None of it stuck for long.
So I went looking for answers outside the conventional playbook.
Out of desperation, I started learning to listen to my body and tune into the values I wanted to embody.
I didn’t know it at the time, but I was building the foundation for what would later become my life’s work: healing generational patterns through somatic healing, food psychology, and values embodiment.
It Started with Eczema at Age 2.
In My 20s, I Started Asking Different Questions.
On my healing journey
My Journey to Holistic Wellness
I know you can have the state of health and create the vibrancy, energy, and life you desire. I know because I have been there (without my health) and come out the other side.
At the age of 2, I was going to specialists because I was covered head to toe in “the itches” aka eczema. I was doing bio-feedback and on elimination diets in the 80’s before they were a thing. I was the unusual allergic sick kid that today has become sadly more normal.
I took a lot of medications throughout my childhood including inhalers, pills, and cortisol shots for my eczema and asthma. The meds stifled my symptoms but did not give me my health back. In fact, they only created more symptoms like bloating, weight gain, constipation, fatigue, and depression.
My doctors told me that there was no cure for me. I would need to take medication to manage my symptoms for the rest of my life.
As a teenager, I saw a very limited life ahead of me, I questioned if I would ever be able to travel or have kids. I was desperate to feel good.
I refused to accept that this was my life and I started to question this prognosis and these medications. I remember walking out of the office in 1997 and feeling 100% determined to find a way to live a vibrant life. But I had no idea how I would do this.
I was fortunate to have a vegan activist friend who dared me to be vegan for 2 weeks; day 10 I woke feeling remarkably more alive. I had not eaten processed foods because in 1998 in my hometown of Coarsegold, CA there were no vegan packaged foods. I had eaten all whole foods and “felt the difference.”
In 2000, I was accepted to Cal Poly University under a nutrition major. My first nutrition class preached the food guide pyramid which I knew by age 18 was built for profiting food companies and not for promoting health. I transferred to graphic design and went my own way with my health- using art to express my health journey.
After graduating top of my class in graphic design, I chose not to pursue my career in a cubicle. I headed straight for yoga teacher training and then lived and worked in retreat centers, Esalen Institute and BodyMind Restoration Retreats, which I consider my “real education.”
For the next decade, I continued experimenting on my own health using detoxes, cleanses, personal development, self-help, meditation, yoga, energy healing, dance, therapy, and psychotherapy.
What is Useful for You to Know About Me
I may look pretty darn healthy. But it didn’t come natural to me. I had to learn how support my body for it to re-gain a state of health.
You can radically change your state of health; I know because I have been there (without my health) and come out the other side.
At the age of 2, I was going to specialists because I was covered head to toe in “the itches” aka eczema. I was doing bio-feedback and on elimination diets in the 80’s before they were a thing. I was the unusual allergic sick kid that today has become sadly more normal.
I took a lot of medications throughout my childhood including inhalers, pills, and cortisol shots for my eczema and asthma. The meds stifled my symptoms but did not give me my health back. In fact, they only created more symptoms like bloating, weight gain, constipation, fatigue, and depression.
My doctors told me that there was no cure for me. I would need to take medication to manage my symptoms for the rest of my life.
As a teenager, I saw a very limited life ahead of me, I questioned if I would ever be able to travel or have kids. I was desperate to feel good.
I refused to accept that this was my life and I started to question this prognosis and these medications. I remember walking out of the office in 1997 and feeling 100% determined to find a way to live a vibrant life. But I had no idea how I would do this.
I was fortunate to have a vegan activist friend who dared me to be vegan for 2 weeks; day 10 I woke feeling remarkably more alive. I had not eaten processed foods because in 1998 in my hometown of Coarsegold, CA there were no vegan packaged foods. I had eaten all whole foods and “felt the difference.”
In 2000, I was accepted to Cal Poly University under a nutrition major. My first nutrition class preached the food guide pyramid which I knew by age 18 was built for profiting food companies and not for promoting health. I transferred to graphic design and went my own way with my health- using art to express my health journey.
After graduating top of my class in graphic design, I chose not to pursue my career in a cubicle. I headed straight for yoga teacher training and then lived and worked in retreat centers, Esalen Institute and BodyMind Restoration Retreats, which I consider my “real education.”
For the next decade, I continued experimenting on my own health using detoxes, cleanses, personal development, self-help, meditation, yoga, energy healing, dance, therapy, and psychotherapy.
My Real-Life Education in Somatic Healing and Nervous System Regulation
I didn’t learn this work in a classroom. I learned it through experience—at Esalen, in Zen raw food retreats, through Ayurveda, in plant medicine ceremonies, and through my own healing journey and witnessing thousands of others heal.
I created both my Mood Before Food Process and my Functional Embodiment container to teach others how to use their own body signals to heal generational patterns and embody their values. For the kids. I started this work for my own inner child at Esalen.
My Real Education
Gestalt Therapy at the Esalen Institute
I lived and worked at the Esalen Institute, home of Gestalt therapy and incubator of the Human Potential Movement, for five years. I participated in over one hundred workshops; all of which helped me understand what I call “inner reality,” our human emotions, experience, stories, and human potential. My biggest and hardest lesson at Esalen was unlearning how to suppress my emotions and instead allow my self to feel and process them. This was the first wave of relief to my depression: learning to lean into and feel my uncomfortable emotions instead of stuff them down.
Raw Food and Mindfulness at BodyMind Restoration Retreats
Following my time at the Esalen Institute, I lived and worked at BodyMind Restoration Retreats in Ithaca, NY. During the summer of these 5 years at Esalen, I lived, worked, and studied at a raw food zen retreat center called BodyMind Restoration Retreats in Ithaca, NY. In addition to understanding the importance of detoxing and reducing toxins combined with focusing on nourishing foods, I learned about my mind. I learned how to watch the thoughts my brain creates, I learned about awareness. I learned how to use breath to focus my mind. And I learned the beginnings of how to use my mind, instead of it using me.
Ayurveda and Eastern Medicine at the Dhyana Center
For two years I studied and practiced Ayurveda at the Dhyana Center in Sebastopol. During my studies, I became attuned to the deep wisdom of Eastern medicine. My education in Ayurveda introduced me to a new paradigm of understanding each of our health as a unique inner relationship that we can re-balance and maintain.
Age related diseases are actually imbalances that we do not have to suffer. In my own life, I also use Chinese medicine to help support and balance my body systems.
Holistic Health and the Wellness Paradigm
Eastern medicine is the greatest example of what the west is growing to understand as holistic health or the wellness paradigm. A person is a physical, mental, and emotional being. Understanding the interplay between body, mind, heart and soul as the equal factors that contribute to health and wellness (or lack of). Your health is totally doable; especially if you have a guide like me.
“Ditch diet culture and focus inward. The journey to food freedom comes from within.”
Jennifer
Then My Daughter Was Born. And My Transformation Work Got Amplified.
I'd been doing this work for years. But when my daughter was born, I realized something that changed everything:
She wasn't just watching me. She was absorbing my nervous system. My dysregulation became her experience. My unhealed patterns became her inheritance. The values I pacified became the patterns she absorbed.
I could see it happening in real time. The way she mirrored my reactions before she even had language.
That's when I became extra motivated to do the deeper work. That's when "for me" became "for her."
Because the patterns stop with me. And they stop with you. I couldn't just know my values. I had to embody them. Because kids don't learn values from what we say. They learn from what we do.
"My daughter is a healthy, regulated, inspirational product of the work I do. She is the living proof that we can embody our values and heal generational patterns."
Today, I Offer Two Paths to Healing Generational Patterns and Embodying Your Values.
Mood Before Food: Heal Emotional Eating Through Food Psychology
Stop using food to numb. Start using awareness to nourish. This 4-month program addresses your mood first—so you can embody your values of health, love, and sovereignty instead of pacifying them with food and screens.
Functional Embodiment: Regulate Your Nervous System Through Somatic Healing
Stop reacting from old patterning. Start responding from wisdom. This 2-12 month program guides you to regulate your nervous system through functional embodiment practices—so you can show up kind, playful, and present instead of snapping and rushing around dysregulated.
To put my wisdom into efficient life-changing tools, I went to coach training at The Life Coach School (which cost more than my degree at Cal Poly, SLO.)
Ready to Heal Generational Patterns and Embody Your Values?
Every time we are with people, our daughter is complimented. She is present. She is resilient. She is kind. She is emotionally intelligent. At nearly eight she chooses foods based on how she knows they will make her feel.
Upon soul searching the question, "How do I want to contribute to the world?" I heard my deep desire to help people raise their consciousness by distilling, sharing and teaching the concepts and tools that are designed to tune up body and brain on every level from food, mood, stress, and time.
I studied under and was certified by my mentor Master Coach Brooke Castillo, an educated psychologist, self-help guru. Studying with Brooke was the puzzle piece that brought my life’s experience together. I now felt equipped to help others make changes in their lives.
I used to think that life coaching was cheesy and lame… until I understood that a life coach helps people EXPAND into their own human potential. Now I think it is the best ‘job’ in the world.
Ready to Transform?
If my journey resonates with you, I’d love to support yours. Explore my coaching programs or book a free consultation to see if we’re a good fit.
Real Results from Real Clients: Healing Generational Patterns and Embodying Values, One Session at a Time
You don’t have to take my word for it. Here’s what clients say about the work we do together.
What Clients Are Saying...
I am making more money in less time with more presence
I, now, show up for myself, my kids, my partner, my grandkids, and my business the way that I want to: grounded, present, calm, patient, and trusting.
