About the Author

Debra Kahnen is a registered nurse, nurse educator, mindfulness teacher and researcher, and integrative health practitioner with decades of experience at the intersection of healthcare, nervous-system regulation, and embodied resilience.

For more than forty years, she has worked alongside individuals and professionals navigating stress, burnout, chronic illness, and life transitions—particularly within high-responsibility caregiving and performance-driven environments. Her work has been published nationally, and she has presented her research internationally on stress physiology, mindfulness, and integrative approaches to wellbeing.

Debra’s approach bridges neuroscience, psychophysiology, coherence research, and lived clinical experience. Rather than focusing on productivity or performance optimization, her work centers on helping people restore regulation, safety, and partnership with their bodies—especially those who appear capable and composed on the outside while living under persistent internal strain.

Her interest in nervous-system regulation is not only professional, but deeply personal. After years of functioning in high-stress healthcare roles, her body reached its limit, culminating in bilateral hip replacement at age 54. This experience reshaped her understanding of stress—not as something to overcome, but as information the body communicates when safety has been missing for too long.

Today, Debra teaches, writes, and speaks on coherence, presence, and the relational transmission of stress and safety. Her work offers a grounded, compassionate alternative to hustle-based wellness culture and invites a more humane, embodied way of living and leading—one rooted in regulation rather than endurance, and presence rather than control.