Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Jen Rubinetti. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Jen, appreciate you joining us today. If you had a defining moment that you feel really changed the trajectory of your career, we’d love to hear the story and details.

All my life I’ve been fascinated by those who had the power to heal. Doctors, therapists, spiritual healers, kinesiologists, acupuncturists…. you name it, I thought of them as special and gifted, but never envisioned I could play in the same fields that they did. I very much was a willing recipient of so many types of treatments, but could I ever join the crusade to help others in such a profound way? After all, despite this fascination, I grew up to be a model agent! I worked in the world of fashion, prestige, luxury, extravagance. Healing was not part of it. Still, the fascination with healers and healing modalities lived in me and preoccupied my thoughts for as long as I could remember.
Then, suddenly at the height of my career, I found myself pulled into serious discord with the new owners of the company I’d worked at for 14 yrs, forcing me to resign due to multiple conflicts of interest. A legal battle ensued thereafter. and I was legally required to sit out of any work in my field for a 6 month period because of a non-compete clause in my contract. I felt lost and unsure of what direction I would go- like the rug had been pulled out from under me. It was during that time that so many things (from old traumas to current dramas) that I’d been ignoring in my life came to light and it became clear I needed to do a deep dive into my own psyche. Amazing where the mind goes when the hustle of daily life switches gears. By a twist of fate, I was introduced to a Vedic healer. The timing seemed right so I decided to work with her. Over the next months, she turned me upside and inside out and the internal exploration and healing I needed to do, finally started happening, I was both forgiving myself and releasing those old traumas so I could forgive others. I was reimagining what my life could be. I was becoming the me I had always hoped to be – but in that time, I also shared with this healer my own desire to become a healer in some capacity. She encouraged me to explore the idea of being a representative for healers and organize workshops and events around healing, but she said she didn’t intuit that I myself could or would ever be a healer. I was disappointed, but believed it. This idea corresponded with what I already believed about myself, so it seemed affirming that the best I could do is facilitate others in their healing roles. After all, my skill set as an agent made sense here.

It was during that time that Covid also hit and the world as we all knew it, changed, My husband became sick very early on (53rd person in NYC) and we got shut out of society abruptly and without any provisions to keep us afloat in quarantine. I had to keep him alive when hospitals wouldn’t admit him, summon supplies from anyone brave enough to come near our home and keep myself, my kids, the whole school community and my work colleagues from panicking due to exposure to us. We all eventually became quite sick. It was a very troubling and frightening time – compounded by my own sense of mortality and my career seemingly coming to a halt as the industry shut down. I started to rely on my meditations and affirmations to keep me sane and I started teaching my 2 children to do the same.

We survived round one of covid, just barely. When we reemerged, everything was different. We were also changed and couldn’t revert to old routines as we always did. We had to find our new normal. It was then I started looking for things to expand my own practices of meditation and self-soothing and also find ways to help us all through the uncertainties ahead. What if covid came back? What if something worse happened? Anything felt possible. I started taking online courses in Reiki and then Sound Meditation, with the intention of simply using these techniques on myself and my family to aid in our recovery and readjustment. I was grateful to live in an age where a computer could be a portal to just about anything you needed.

Little did I know that 2 yrs later, I would find myself back in the workforce and feeling displaced and unsure about how to slip back into my old role as an agent. I was just different now. I’d profoundly deepened my meditation practice and had been practicing Reiki and Sound meditation at home and with friends who were interested in it – but I dared not share it with my work community. I believed the two to be mutually exclusive.

Then, one night I got up to use the bathroom and I stepped on something in the hallway. It felt organic and I looked down and realized my daughter’s hamster had gotten loose and ended up in the unfortunate position under my foot. I was horrified. I didn’t know what to do – so I splashed some water on my face and went back to the scene of the accident. It was alive, but not very. I was sure the poor thing would die in a matter of minutes or hours, so I placed it back in its cage and got online to seek help. It was 3am. I found a service called ASK.com and reached out to a vet in the UK that accepted online payment to give advice. She said the animal was in shock and needed sugar water. It likely would die, but this could give it a small chance. I did as she told me and administered sugar water every 30 minutes for the rest of the night. It shuttered a few times but I was able to get it to drink. I knew that wasn’t enough and I didn’t want my daughter to wake up to a dead pet, so I tried to make a miracle happen. All I could think of was to use what I’d been practicing so I channeled Reiki energy for this hamster for a good 2 hours. I had been using my Reiki practice on my own back pain and it was working, so maybe I could make a miracle happen?

Shockingly the hamster made it through the night, but even more shockingly she made a full recovery within 48 hours. I don’t know if it was the Reiki, luck, a miracle or a combo of all 3, but suddenly the story I’d been believing that I could never be a healer, stopped feeling so true.

The following Monday at work, I told my colleagues and some of my clients what had happened. Some seemed intrigued by the part of the story where I was practicing Reiki, but each time I told it, I felt braver and more confident in sharing it. I also started sharing how Reiki and meditation work were helping me cure the chronic back pain they’d witnessed me suffer from for over a decade. In a sense, I was outing myself to my work world as something more than just a model agent. Suddenly it started to seem these two parts of my life could actually co-exist harmoniously. I just had to be brave enough to say out loud that I was more than just the one thing they knew me to be.

Soon after, I started talking about my Vedic coach with my team and they seemed interested enough that I created a workshop for them based on her meditation techniques and coaching abilities. They loved it and it gave me the confidence to take next steps on my journey. I created a side business and call it The Mystical Connection. My intention was to simply build retreats and workshops with healers and coaches I’d worked with and bring those concepts and modalities to companies and private groups. It was something that would help me feel aligned with my purpose while still letting me stay in my career in fashion.

The problem was – while I felt happy to be able to bring these opportunities to others, I still wanted to be more than just a facilitator. One day, at dinner with a model client, I casually talked about my Reiki experience and Sound meditation practice. She herself was a spiritual person so I felt safe sharing this with her. She was very interested and encouraging and offered to host a small sound session in her home. I was so excited. The opportunity to use my certifications outside my own family!? Wow. I jumped at the chance but the truth is, I was so nervous. What if they thought it was stupid or nonsense? What if I flubbed the meditation part? What if, What if, What if….
But what if I just tried it and hoped for the best? So, that’s what i did. One Thursday night at the end of a very hectic, NY Fashion week, we all could’ve use a little stress release. I carted my crystal bowls and a few chimes off to her apartment in midtown East, met her 2 friends who agreed to be my guinea pigs and set up shop. I guided them through breath work and visualization and then a sound bath. Almost 75 minutes later, I brought them out of it and one of the participants immediately wanted to share what a profound experience she’d had during the session. She seemed so grateful and so happy for what transpired for her. It was then and there that I stopped believing I couldn’t be a healer. I just needed to follow the small voice inside me that had been urging me to keep going for so long.

Jen, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I call myself a Wellness Concierge. It’s a term I coined myself because I am both a certified life coach and a wellness practitioner, but I also partner with other practitioners to extend wellness, spiritual work and mindset mastery offerings to people who are seeking them. Currently I cohost a podcast called The Manifest Station on Spotify with my partner, Joanna Rajendran (an author, yogi, keynote speaker and coach). We also host workshops and will be hosting a 6 day wellness retreat in Tuscany from Sept 27-October 3, called BEtreat. I affectionately describe BETreat as an “eat, pray, love (yourself) experience” all in one magical Tuscan town. I also partner with Alexina Graham (who is coincidentally the model that hosted my first sound meditation, mentioned earlier). Alexina is also a Reiki practitioner as well as a channeler, medium and Akashic Record reader. We do sound meditation and Reiki sessions and circles together. Beyond that, I offer spiritual life coaching, ritual / ceremonial energy work and sound meditation sessions on my own. Occasionally I also host workshops with my Vedic coach, Vishnupriya Thacker who really was the start to this whole journey and we introduce different spiritual and Vedic concepts to groups, To note – I have not given up my job in the fashion industry. In fact, I have found a way to marry the two worlds and some of the clients I do energy work with are also in the fashion industry.

I think what makes me unique is that I’m coexisting in 2 very different roles, so I simultaneously understand the stresses of a fast paced job but I also understand and practice spiritual and energy work. The latter has become a huge balancing factor in my life. Because of this duality, my clients can sense that I operate in reality and don’t preach lofty ideas that you have to give up your life or luxuries and move to an ashram in order to feel spiritually fulfilled or achieve mind-body-soul harmony.

I’m very happy and proud that I found the courage to make myself known in both capacities. It took a lot for me to believe that I could be accepted in 2 very different fields and even more for me to find a way to make them work together. The journey I took in my first career is ultimately what led me to the discovery of my second one. I believe it’s the combination of my NY edge and my deep desire to help others that makes me both approachable and makes what I do feel accessible. I am both a realist and a dreamer – and I believe we all can be.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

Years ago in my fashion career, my agency went through a big change. The original founder and director of my team unexpectedly left and took with him most of my team members. I felt blindsided. I believed my value there to be based on being part of that team and not on my own merit as an individual. Eventually, I was invited to join the departure to their new company, but something in me said to stay where I was, even though I was confused and concerned about what would become of me. The next morning the Director of the sister team at our agency asked me to join them. It was something I’d always aspired to and never thought would be an option, but here it was! Still, I was unsure I was up to the task. Insecure and displaced, I was called to a meeting with the CEO of the company. He shared some valuable life knowledge with me that day. He told me that I don’t need anyone to lead me, and that I am a leader myself. He told me the best leaders are the ones who leave their egos aside and need no external validation. He assured me that my decision NOT to follow the others was an indicator of my leadership abilities unto itself, He then recommended to me a book called The Leader who had No Title, by Robin Sharma. He recommended I take the position on the other team and run with it and so I did.
It took a short while to gain my footing, but I got there. That team also had a director so the part of me that was still learning to be my own leader was grateful there was someone there to defer to. Funny how the universe works though… I was given my first opportunity to be a leader during my first week. The director had booked one of our top models on a big, important campaign shoot in Iceland but had neglected to get her visa done so she could enter the country, The model realized it the same morning before the flight! I answered the landline when she called and she told me the dilemma. My director was having a bad day and seemed unable to manage the situation, so I jumped in to help. I summoned all my problem solving skills and over the next 6 hours managed to get the situation sorted and get her visa granted and in hand. I was hero for the day and that felt great – but the internal sense of accomplishment that came from taking it on with no direction and getting it done was really the reward.
2 years later, my leadership abilities got tested again. Out of no where, history repeated itself and I found myself in the same circumstances as my Director and one of our top agents abruptly left the company. Again I was offered the chance to join, which was flattering, but again I heard that inner voice telling me to stay where I was. The old feelings of insecurity came flooding back – but this time I remembered how I’d survived the last time and thrived. I remembered the words of my CEO telling me I didn’t need to be led and that I was a leader. I remembered the book I’d read at his referral. I remembered who I was . I stayed and even though there were bumps in the road, I once again thrived and learned finally to be my own leader. We never hired another director after that. We didn’t need one.

It’s these experiences among many other challenges I’ve faced in my work and personal life that also gave me the courage to forage a path as an energy worker and life coach. I learned it doesn’t matter where you are in your life’s journey. You can reset, reimagine and reinvent yourself as many times as you want, The only limits are in your mind,

Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?

My partner, Joanna and I were college friends and eventually housemates in our senior year. Joanna was always a bit out there, She talked to angels and lived on a cloud. She was habitually cheery and down to earth, but cool and fun and just full of good vibes. I was a tough girl from the Bronx with a chip on my shoulder – but also sensitive and big-hearted even if I didn’t often show it. Somehow we got along. After graduation, we went our own ways and I got into fashion and Joanna got into makeup. When I started working at my first big agency, I helped Joanna connect with photo teams so she could build a portfolio for her makeup artistry. As years passed, I stayed in one lane and Joanna tried many. She went from makeup artistry to waitressing, to skincare sales, rising to the top her team and building a real living from it. Throughout her journey, she was training in yoga and mindset mastery with an unlikely mentor named Tao Porchon-Lynch, who was known as the world’s oldest living yoga teacher. Tao taught Joanna so much about mindset mastery, manifestation, breath work and yoga. I’d always admired Joanna’s life from afar. She seemed to easily flow with change and growth. Joanna regularly asked me to be her agent. She wanted to team up and have me represent her first when she was a makeup artist, but later again when she wrote a book and started keynote speaking and teaching the concepts she learned in working with Tao. I felt it was all out of my wheelhouse until my own journey of self-discovery began to reveal itself and my own growth in that realm took shape.
One day while scrolling through instagram, I saw a post that featured Joanna appearing on someone’s podcast. I was so impressed. She was really out there doing it. I texted her to tell her how proud I was of her and my phone rang 1 minute later. There she was saying, are you ready to join me yet?
This time I was. That’s where our true partnership began and now only a year + later, we have led multiple workshops and events, sound and meditation events; we have a fully launched podcast on Spotify and a retreat in the works in our favorite place, Italy. We even lead a course together called BEST.LIFE.EVER. which teaches our students how to stop simply reacting to life and instead to start co-creating it. We have a lot more in the works too….the best is yet to come.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.themysticalconnection.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_mystical_connection/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100088261398075
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jen-rubinetti-93936930/
• Other: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4wwq5vuoPz5CLC1IiYVVFy 

Image Credits

In photos – Joanna Rajendran

photographers: Andrew Bisdale & Abrahm Shearer