This is my story and my transformation. I’m detailed here, because first of all, that's kind of my style, but also, whether we know it or not, EVERYTHING that has happened to us - affects us. Each experience shapes our decisions, depressing our joys, or inspiring our futures. What we eat, where we live, who we talk to, what we tell ourselves - all of it affects us.

Like many people, my upbringing was a mixed bag. A combination of love, activities, child-like wonder, and sibling rivalry. For our family, this was mixed with the bumps and bruises that come from divorced parents, and the painful path that can lead them there. 

I remember one Christmas morning in Albuquerque, where I was born, two of my brothers and I were playing with our gifts to the ambient sound of my parents viciously fighting upstairs.

Crashing, stomping, yelling and smashing. The tension my brothers and I felt then is something I’ll never forget. Though it’s not the violent sounds from this memory that make me shudder, it’s when they all suddenly stopped, and I remember in my 5-year-old brain questioning, “I wonder if that means my mom is dead?”

Hey I'm Dani!

I’ve spent close to a decade studying Iridology, natural medicine, Meditation, Self-Help, and Business. I've read hundreds and hundreds of books, attended multiple schools, met dozens of teachers, conducted hundreds of Iris Readings, provided countless consultations, made thousands of new contacts, in multiple industries, and spent thousands of dollars - all in an attempt to reconcile my inside with the outside and discover where I’m truly meant to be. It’s with immense honor, extreme joy, and honestly some personal relief, that I’ve finally created The Eye and Me.

Looking back on myself as a child, it’s obvious I’ve always been an empath. Or the type of person that seems to vividly feel what the people around them are feeling, and soak those feelings up like a sponge. With the drama of my first 8-14 years of life, I know now that I must have absorbed a lot of confusing feelings around me. Years later I would begin to understand how much anxiety I could experience and how insecure I could feel about relationships. 

The grief, loss, and shame I felt as a child helped fuel my path to subconsciously heal those wounds seeking self-help, therapy, spirituality and anything that could foster understanding and growth. I’m grateful for who I am and my path, but there’s no denying how much inner tension I developed at a really young age. A tension that would drive me to over-achieve, people-please, have a strong fear of being abandoned, and just be tightly-wound overall.

Even though the early years of my life didn’t always feel safe, it wasn't all bad or even close. I  still felt that amazingly free feeling of being a kid and not having any real responsibilities. Also, despite my parents not being a match, they both pushed us towards independence in personality and life choices. 

I was given the freedom to be me.  Along with that freedom, the responsibility of making my own choices and facing all consequences of those choices. 

As a kid and through college, I used this freedom to be very dynamic and allow different parts of my personality to express in equal measure. As a High Schooler, I was the captain of the Lacrosse Team, a nominee on Prom Court, an artist with a couple awards, carried a high GPA, voted the Class Clown, and spent most of my free time at parties, making art or tossing the lacrosse ball with my friends. I also spent a lot of my time taking care of my baby brother. After my parents split, I gained an awesome Stepfather and shortly after, my third brother that I acted like a second mom towards. To this day, he is still one of the best parts of my life. 

Enjoying every second of playing Lacrosse in High School actually lead me to getting a scholarship at The University of Denver where I studied Digital Media, Economics and Spanish, ended up as the Captain of the Women’s Lacrosse Team, the President of the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee, and was the Chair of Intercollegiate Athletics. I also fit in plenty of partying these years too.

​​​​​​​Throughout my high school and college years, I seemed to effortlessly balance everything I did, at the high level in which I did it. It wasn’t until I graduated college that I would let the “real world” start to make me think there was something wrong with my appetite for variety.

It wasn’t until I graduated college that I would let the “real world” start to make me think there was something wrong with my appetite for variety.

After college, and after many opinions that had something bad to say about I lived life, I spent years thinking I wasn’t focused, or I was a flake or just an “idea person” that couldn’t execute. Not only was that the true beginning of a period of intense emotional/psychological suffering, and the start of an up and down mood pattern, but I wouldn’t find out for years that this couldn’t have been more wrong.

It still makes me shudder to remember how deeply ashamed I felt for just being myself. 

Honestly, I wish I could hug and sincerely apologize to my younger self for putting her through the years of suffering, doubt, fighting, and pain as I was losing faith in what and who I was. I was so deeply empowered to be who I was as a kid, and still, the strong messages of our polarizing society crept into my psyche, and I felt myself afraid to deviate too far from what I “saw” as successful.

Before learning about natural medicine, Iridology and Health Coaching, I didn’t understand what anxiety really was, or that it was a foundational characteristic of mine. So at this time in my life, just out of college, I was highly anxious, but believed I was just one of those people that was “on top of things.” I couldn’t yet see how my deep fear of abandonment lead me to people-please and burn myself out, so I was always tense, with a short fuse. I was definitely hurting.

The Early Years

Thankfully she was not, and even better, just a few years after that, my parents decided to split when my two brothers and I were 7, 8 and 9. Another feeling I’ll likely never forget. Sitting on the striped pull-out couch in our office that I would take to college years later, it was the first time I felt my heart break. 

The first time I'd lost something major that I had no control over getting back. I remember immediately locking myself in my room for a while after that conversation.

We were all crushed. 

Grief from the divorce aside, most of the trauma and drama ended with the split. Well at least the drama between my parents, but the feeling that there was something “wrong” with my family, and we were inferior to other families, would stay with me for a while. 

We were one of the only families we knew that had divorced parents at the time and my dad's family, he's from Mexico City, also highly disapproved. To the point where my dad didn’t speak with his for almost a decade and my brothers and I would travel to Mexico alone, starting at ages 7,8 and 9, to see our Grandparents every summer until we were out of High School. 

Then on the other side, my single mother from Iowa was looked down upon for not paying for cable TV or for not buying us the latest and greatest toys or kids fashion. She was especially judged for our increased behavior issues as we sought outlets for our tremendous pain. 

She made great money, she just believed in delaying gratification and investing her money. She didn’t believe in “wearing” or “driving” her money, and especially not allowing her children’s material desires dictate the financial decisions.

Career Beginnings

My first job out of college was selling cell phones for Verizon Wireless at one of their really busy locations.

For a while, I thrived in the high-paced environment. It was more than fun meeting and advising dozens of people daily, speaking Spanish and being part of a team that I truly got along with, but I pretty quickly needed more variety and creativity. There’s a lot more to the story of how I ended up leaving this job while I stood up for my personal integrity, but the more important aspect of this story is that I left intending to go to the opposite end of the business spectrum. 

From a big Corporation to a small start-up. Years later, I’d understand my naturally firey energy, that seeks to create, is perfect for starting things, while my appetite for variety is exactly what a starting business needs to get all the aspects going at once.

I kept myself afloat financially with side jobs like handing out snack samples at marathons, secret shopping and even spending days going door-to-door hanging flyers on doors...(sorry everyone!). I was doing everything I could until I made my way into my first official Start-Up.  The skill of making money in multiple ways is something I still use to this day to live a creative life with variety.

Finally, I used a connection through a friend I’d met at a side job to get my foot in the door of a small travel app start-up and volunteered to help in any way that I could. Yes, I did this for free. I didn't know it then, but this would become a core theme in my career - always finding a way to give first. 

Giving first has never let me down. The power of giving, because you can, is like gravity. You become so magnetic, people and opportunities that match you, cannot resist their attraction to you.

I ended up working at the travel start-up for about a year. I had a specific role, but I actually played a jack-of-all-trades role. I loved it. I felt so alive being part of a team-building something from scratch. Working there, I learned how much I love to, and almost need to, immerse myself in new projects and chart unknown territory. 

I had always dreamed of being an entrepreneur. I even dabbled in my first business plan when I was fourteen. It’s in my family, and growing up, I saw both of my grandfather's find success in believing in themselves. I’ve wanted this for myself ever since. So working at my first start-up was already a dream come true.

The Up’s Downs The Direction

I became a Healing Diets Counselor, a Reflexologist, a Health Coach and a Flower Essences Practitioner about a year after I left the travel start-up.

After graduating from these schools, I didn’t find a job in Healthcare. Truthfully, I doubted myself too much. Being in the position to advise on other people's health is something I take very seriously and I was really intimidated. Especially because I wasn’t offering mainstream techniques and concepts. I needed more time to develop and to deeply self-apply the Naturopathic health system I’d learned.

So I ended up back in the start-up world, and then bouncing around from industry to industry, trying things out and building skills for the entrepreneurial side of my personality. I experienced many different things like lacrosse coaching, bilingual sales, Charity Benefit auctioneering and fundraising consulting and celebrity event management. Even commercial, lifestyle and active modeling. 
 
I spent these years trying to remain in excellent health and treat everything in my body and mind, naturally. I also continued to deepen my interest and understanding of Iridology, cataloging a database of Iris's making connections between what people told me, and what I saw in their eyes.

I had green smoothies at business meetings or coffee enemas before work, when I was doing cleanses or needed to support my liver and clear my skin. I always seemed to bring up natural medicine or detoxing or Iridology into every conversation. 

I consistently had a big part of my attention on natural medicine. Specifically, Iridology. 

Iridology consumed my thoughts and started to become a strong part of my awareness with every interaction, as I people-watched and with everything I learned, whether or not it related to health.

Discovering connections amongst all my observations serves as the foundation for the work I’m doing.

There are more “ups and downs” on the career path, but as I look back now, I just don’t see it that way. I’ve spent years as a modern-day Renaissance woman, moving around like a jagged line. It’s only when I discovered Iridology, that I could understand a method to my madness. That I could finally start to make sense of my movements in relationships, my career and just life in general. 

So yeah, it sucks I don’t have any letters behind my name to reflect the years of deep study, personal integration and work with others.

But, it would suck even more to know health in only the mental sense. I would have never understood how difficult it can be to not only maintain your health, but restore your health within the career demands, social/family obligations and lifestyles we have in the United States.

What I didn’t know then, that I know now, is that my career path was by design. Everything in my life, up to this point, has led me to create this site, this system and to pass on this precious knowledge that

I’ve been able to successfully implement into my life. 

I believe that had I taken a straight line from getting certified in health to a career in Healthcare,  I would lack an immense amount of understanding behind what it actually takes on a day-to-day basis, to become independently healthy. 

In 2017, my great aunt in Albuquerque went into Hospice and I joined my mom on her death bed. 

It became clear when I asked myself what I would regret if I was at my end, and it was not having some kind of profession in natural medicine, and specifically Iridology. So I made the leap. 

I left the amazing job working with celebrities and as a full-time Charity Benefit Auctioneer and Fundraising consultant to make my way back into natural medicine and find a career in Iridology. It wasn’t easy, I was even offered part ownership of the company in exchange for staying, but I’m not about to live with regret.

When I left there, I started my own Charity Benefit auction business that I call Auctions by Dani,  so I could take my time to develop The Eye and Me. 

I wish I could show you an inspiring physical transformation from the years of deeply applying healing techniques, but that wasn’t the case with me. My body has definitely changed, but those changes have been mostly internal. I eradicated symptoms of insomnia, night sweats, digestive issues, skin issues, fatigue, acid reflux, and PMS symptoms in just a few months of applying holistic healing guided by Iridology. 

Luckily, I documented my Irises from early on in my health transformation though as I've continued my journey in Iridology, I've learned the changes we're seeing here are more than likely due to the cameras and the fluid within the eye getting clearer. Not necessarily the color. Nevertheless, an abnormal about of cleansing and healing happened within those time periods, so part of me still believes there is more to the story to be uncovered. 

The Transformation People Noticed

Discovering Natural Medicine

During my stint at this first start-up, my health started to decline. Less than a year earlier, I had no choice but to take some strong antibiotics and my system didn’t recover right. I had new digestive issues, like bloating and constipation, and a thick rash starting to break out around my mouth. I endlessly craved sugar and baked goods. I was always tired, like abnormally tired, and I knew something was wrong. 

It took just one visit to a doctor, and one to a dermatologist, to make it clear that Western Medicine wouldn’t be able to answer the “why” behind my symptoms.

Each consultation, diagnosis and subsequent treatment plan focused only on taking symptoms away. I was told the rash on my face was random bacteria and that the food journal I had brought them was useless because diet had nothing to do with it. That doctor even told me constipation isn’t that unhealthy.

What????

Everything inside me knew this was wrong. How could it be “random bacteria”? How can anyone say nothing is causing this? Could the body actually work that way? That night of my failed appointment with the dermatologist, I began my own research-marathon when I stumbled upon the bacterial imbalance called Candida. My whole body got the chills. I knew this explained my symptoms.

I read books on the body’s bacterial environment. I learned what the microbiome (your body's bacterial environment) does for our body, what happens when the bacteria is unbalanced, and most importantly, how to address the root cause. 

I immediately changed my diet and lifestyle to suffocate the bad yeast and bacteria that were causing the symptoms, while promoting the good bacteria which would address the root issues. Within hours of my first Colonic, yes I said Colonic, the persistent, thick and embarrassing rash on my face disappeared forever. 

14 days after my failed appointments with the doctor and dermatologist, I had cleared up all of my uncomfortable symptoms and was feeling more vital than I had before the antibiotics. All using natural medicine.

I saw the light.

The - logical, rational, cause/effect - light of natural medicine. What I experienced with the bacterial imbalance is the first of many conditions I would learn to change in my body. I knew this would somehow become my path. 

I left my job at the start-up and I enrolled in two health schools. The Institute for Integrative Nutrition and The School of natural medicine formerly in Boulder, Colorado.

My Life Now

I’m absolutely dedicated to learning. Not because people say you should or they say leaders should read, but because I feel most alive when I’m learning something new. I study for fun. It’s what gets me out of bed in the morning. Sitting on my deck with a hot beverage, my terrier puppy in my lap and a new subject to study is truly my happy place.

Otherwise, I love to be in nature or traveling with my fiancé, I’m engaged to my best friend in the world. It seems like a cliche, but I’ve never experienced a relationship that was so allowing, loving, humble and growing. I’m also elated to have family, both immediate and distant, that I’m close with and genuinely enjoy spending my time with.

On the weekends I can be found creating what I call FART. Functional Art. I love to repurpose furniture and I’ve dabbled in dozens and dozens of art mediums from mosaics, to jewelry, to sewing and custom building furniture.

I just started playing Tennis! It’s so fun to run around the court like a little kid. 

Now, I'm ready to serve. After almost a decade of consuming health information, Iridology and living the answers as best I could, I’m dedicated to helping you cut through the noise to discover what will work best for you. We all have unique constitutions and we can’t wait to help you explore that to find your own transformation. 

This transformation took a lot of trial and error. This is what I’d love for you to keep in mind as you ponder my Iris transformation image from above. 

That was years of deep cleansing/detoxing, healing diets, bodywork, emotional counseling, herbal medicine, colon hydrotherapy, Naturopathic Health Retreats, daily meditation practice, Sound Healing Concerts, walks in natures, tears, sweat, etc. The point was never to change my eye color, and to be honest, many people will never achieve this kind of transformation.

Simply because many people aren’t willing to actually integrate/have the integrity to live what they learn to be correct for themselves. It takes discipline since, for the most part, we know what we should do to have better health.

Having said that, I truly hope to teach the inspired seekers all I’ve learned that led to this amazing transformation. What we’re teaching here is what I learned to transform my health and my life.

Additionally, I will be creating a more in-depth case study to document what I did over the years, and how each image was taken.  ​​​​​​Again, color changes like this are not proven in Iridology.