Griffin is an Integrative Health Practitioner, fitness coach, and functional breathing specialist. Having grown up as an overweight, un-athletic boy with inconsistent physical confidence, it wasn’t until his adult life that Griffin has been able to piece together the nature of his dysfunctions related to breathing, movement, and lifestyle – and fill in the missing pieces for his own well-being.   

A natural teacher with over a decade of experience in education, Griffin’s deepest sense of purpose comes from guiding others, especially when it comes to the mind and body. He is especially interested in opening people’s eyes to the most powerful and least talked about wellness practices that lead to truly life changing results. 

Like a lot of people, I gave exercising and eating better a try in college. By the time I was 21, I was loosely following a paleo diet and doing 6-7 hard workouts a week. From the outside, my body had completely transformed from the sluggish, overweight teen I’d once been (check out that photo!), but inside was a different story.

I had become obsessed with fitness to the point where I would pass on almost any opportunity that would interfere with my workout. Hell, I didn’t even like exercise; it was just something I told myself I had to do. And it ended up being the only thing I had the energy to do.

My life became a dull rinse-and-repeat cycle of studying, working out, binge eating, and stressing out about everything. Every day I was depriving myself of fun and chasing some made-up fitness lifestyle of grueling HIIT and heavy weight training. What I didn’t realize was that my idea of “healthy” left me with ZERO energy to give to the people that mattered, including myself.

As a budding music teacher, I was building a high school choral program from scratch, and life was demanding more of me. After school support, rehearsals, concerts, wide-eyed kids, hopeful parents. I dreamed of being able to treat my body well while having the energy for my students, friends, family, and new experiences. I wanted to want to embrace the challenge and the thrill that life had to offer, instead of looking for the quickest, easiest way to do everything. 

As years passed, I was able to better balance my activity level, but getting outside of my comfort zone still felt like too much work. I thought I was doing everything right with food and exercise, but at my very core, I was still tired, burnt out, and easily injured. Sure, I’d chilled out on the 7-day weekly workout schedule, but planning a weekend getaway with friends or an amazing field trip for my students? “No thanks. Too much to think about. You guys have fun.”

I’ll never forget how humid it was on that July day when I plopped down on my beach towel and started the book The Illuminated Breath by Dylan Werner. Just a few pages in, my world was already turned upside down. It was clear that I’d spent my whole life breathing in a way that was zapping my energy, getting me injured, and giving stress the upper hand.

Since I was a teacher on summer break, I resolved to use that free time to focus on fixing the way I was breathing. The results were mind blowing. My energy and focus skyrocketed, my sleep improved, exercise started taking less effort, and my baseline stress levels went way down. Problems I wasn’t even focused on started to resolve themselves (I even lost weight I didn’t know I needed to lose)! Already having several fitness certifications, I decided to add to my arsenal by pursuing breath coaching certifications to teach others this “hidden superpower” that literally changed my life.

As an educator, the stresses of the job were still sharply increasing post-pandemic. I was having a hard time mustering up the drive to continue pursuing the things that made me happy outside of work. I gradually started to pick up on how posture, food quality, hydration, and sleep were instantly affecting my mood, my energy, and even my breathing patterns.

I kept going, deepening my education on holistic health by becoming an Integrative Health Practitioner and by intensively studying movement mechanics, getting certified as a One of a Kind Fitness Coach. And I used that education to create the healthiest, most balanced life I’ve had to date. I now use the combination of breathing, movement, nutrition, and lifestyle habits to keep resilience high, pain low, and life fun.

After that wild ride, I realized that I was not the only 30-something being tortured by the desire for a full life without the energy to live it. That’s why I created The North Star Body, where I help people just like me get out of pain and learn to master stress, so they can avoid physical & mental burnout and enjoy life on their own terms.

Mid 2007

Late 2023