My Story
I'm Josh Krieter Dela Cruz — a veteran, someone who lives with chronic pain every day, and a gay man. These are not incidental details. They are the ground from which this practice grew.
My path here has been anything but straight. I graduated from West Point and served as a Ranger-qualified officer leading paratroopers — work that demanded everything and left its mark on my body in ways I'm still learning to live with. After the military I kept moving: two years living as a civilian in the Middle East, making wine on a vineyard in Sonoma County, tending bar, and eventually spending many years as a tennis coach working with everyone from young beginners to collegiate competitors to senior citizens rediscovering the game. I've been a student of people my whole life, and I've learned more about resilience, humor, and the human will to keep going from my students and clients than from any book.
Through all of it, I was living in fear and shame, while also quietly navigating my own chronic pain — the kind that doesn't resolve, that asks you to build a different relationship with your body rather than simply fix it. That journey led me deep into integrative health: the most current western medicine alongside eastern modalities, mindfulness, contemplative practice, and eventually formal training in health and wellness coaching. I didn't come to this work from the outside. I came to it because I needed it.
What I've found — and what I bring to every session — is that the most useful thing one person can offer another isn't advice or a roadmap. It's presence. A mirror. Genuine curiosity. Company on the road.
That is what I'm here to offer you.