I work with women of all backgrounds, ages, and experiences to support them on their path for empowerment through embodiment & connection to sacred living.

Photos by Cliona Soraghan

Joy Herbst is a dynamic and multifaceted artist, teacher, and holistic health practitioner, blending her expertise in dance with a deep commitment to promoting overall wellness. She became interested in integrative health and functional medicine while trying to improve her own health and that of her sons. As a contemporary fusion belly dance artist, she integrates multiple movement styles into her teaching and performances, with a focus on empowering women and nurturing the body’s natural healing abilities.

Her background in ballet, modern, jazz, and hip hop, alongside her extensive training in tribal fusion belly dance, forms the foundation of her unique approach. Since discovering tribal fusion in 2002, Joy became Connecticut’s first certified teacher of American Tribal Style® belly dance and later became a Sister Studio of Fat Chance Belly Dance®. She is also trained in the Jamila and Suhaila formats, which further deepen her technical expertise.

Her studies in Ayurveda and yoga, paired with her deep passion for dance and energetic healing, have shaped her belief in the transformative power of embodiment. By recognizing the sacred within each of us, she has cultivated *Dancing the 5 Elements™*, an intuitive movement practice. This unique practice weaves together guided movement, dance, meditation, and breathwork, offering a path to freedom, healing, and empowerment.

Beyond her dance career, Joy is a family nurse practitioner, certified coach, movement and meditation teacher, and a mother in long-term recovery. She uses her extensive training and experience to help women achieve holistic health through private coaching, movement practices, and workshops centered around the Sacred Feminine. Through her work, she aims to support and inspire women to cultivate wellness, self-awareness, and strength

Joy holds certifications as a family nurse practitioner, a coaching specialist in "Gray Area Drinking," and as an Ayurveda lifestyle and Yoga of Recovery counselor. She is also a certified yoga teacher with 500 hours of training and has been dancing throughout her life. Her healthcare career began in 1998 as a medical assistant in a women’s clinic, following an alcohol-related injury that ended her dance career. She became a Registered Nurse in 2002, specializing in perinatal services, and earned her Master’s Degree in Nursing, gaining board certification as a nurse practitioner in 2008.

Her experience includes adult internal medicine, reproductive endocrinology, and OB/GYN, and she worked at Yale New Haven Hospital before opening her own practice in 2015. Joy’s work is influenced by her studies in Ayurveda, Yoga of Recovery, Heart-Based Meditation, mental health nutrition, and functional medicine, as well as her commitment and practices honoring the Sacred Feminine. She embarked upon the Priestess path 5 years ago, as an ardent advocate of women’s mysteries, their sacred rites, and Divine feminism.