The Performance Trap: Chad Herst on Success, Grief, and Coming Home to Himself

What happens when the thing that saved your life becomes the thing you have to heal from?

Chad Herst has been practicing Ashtanga yoga since his twenties — authorized to teach by Sri K. Pattabhi Jois himself in 2003 — and coaching high-performing founders and executives since 2008. From the outside, he'd figured it out. From the inside, he was running the exact pattern he now helps his clients name: the drive that builds something real, and then keeps running long after it stops feeling like enough.

Harmony and Russell sit down with their old friend from the Mysore years to talk about what actually broke that pattern open — a body that finally refused to cooperate, a decade of sitting with ayahuasca, and a grief from his brother's death in 1991 that he didn't let himself fully feel until he turned 50. It's a conversation about achievement, identity, family patterns, and what it costs to keep proving you're enough — and what's on the other side of finally stopping.

Chad's new book, The Performance Trap: The Ache No Success Will Ever Fix, launches October 1, 2026 Get the first chapter, read in his voice, at herstwellness.com/chapter-one.

Guest bio:

Chad Herst is a mind/body coach and licensed acupuncturist who has coached founders, executives, and high performers since 2008 — the kind of people who look, from the outside, like they've figured it out. Most of his life, he was one of them, which turned out to be the part the work was about. He spent years training in Ashtanga yoga and was authorized to teach by Sri K. Pattabhi Jois in 2003 [VERIFY]. His new book, The Performance Trap: The Ache No Success Will Ever Fix, names the pattern he kept finding underneath the success in his clients, and in himself: the drive that builds something real, then keeps running long after it stops feeling like enough. He lives in Northern California with his wife, Melissa.

Connect with Chad:

Website: herstwellness.com

Free first chapter (read in his voice): herstwellness.com/chapter-one 

Key takeaways:

• Achievement can be a coping mechanism as much as a calling — and the two can look identical from the outside
• A pattern that starts as protection (being "the good kid," never a problem) can quietly become an identity you can't set down
• Practices like Ashtanga, meditation, and ceremony don't create your patterns — they reveal and can magnify them
• Sometimes the body has to break down before old grief finally has somewhere to go
• Integration — bringing an insight into ordinary daily life — is harder, and more important, than the peak moment that produced it
• Telling the truth about your own story, even imperfectly and even when family disagrees with how you tell it, can itself be a form of healing

Content Advisory: This episode includes a personal conversation about grief after a suicide loss, a family member's mental illness, and the complicated emotions that can follow. Please take care while listening, and feel free to skip this one if it isn't the right time.

If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available:

• United States: Call or text 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline), or chat at 988lifeline.org. Available 24/7.
• Canada: Call or text 9-8-8 (Suicide Crisis Helpline). Available 24/7, in English and French.
• Outside the US and Canada: Find a helpline in your country at findahelpline.com.

If you're in immediate danger, please call your local emergency number (911 in the US and Canada).

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