Christine Jones: Crafting a Multifaceted Color Palette

I met Christine around five years ago in New York. I was still working insane hours and operating on very little sleep. As part of my 2018 New Year’s resolution, I vowed to live a healthier and more balanced life. While I had little control over work, I could at least dictate how I spent the little amount of free time I had. So, I decided to start with fitness. Christine entered my life as a personal fitness trainer. She gave me three lessons each week in the morning before my work started. We focused on strengthening my core and increasing my endurance over time. After years of neglecting my physical health and not sleeping enough, training me initially was not easy. Christine was very understanding and coached me in a way that enabled me to embrace workouts as a natural part of everyday life, instead of torture.  

Slowly, Christine helped build my courage and confidence around exercise, which created an immense positive effect to my mental and emotional health. I learned through her that each of us is built differently, and our body responds differently to stimulations. What works for others may not work for you, but that does not mean your body is untrainable. It just means that your body may need more time or a different training method.

Christine’s flexibility and natural curiosity create a strong foundation for her as she navigates her roles between an actor and a health coach. Once you get to know her, you will soon realize she is unapologetically committed to her authenticity. It’s very clear that she knows who she is and what her purpose is. 

As a professional actor and wellness coach, she demonstrates that life can be multi-faceted, that life can have higher purpose and meaning. When you find your core identity and understand what you are living for, all your wildest dreams begin to manifest.

How would you describe yourself?

I am both a performer and a facilitator, but my core desire is to seek truth. I have a natural curiosity about how things work and would call myself a designer, a builder, or a coder of my own reality because I am interested in understanding universal patterns. I believe that patterns persist throughout everything. As an actress and coach or “healer” I think about storytelling and archetypes as patterns of the psyche. If you know them well I believe that you will have the ability to understand all things and all people. I find that the information I have gathered from years on stage and also helping people in their wellness journey have helped me to understand human nature as a whole and how the mind works. I think the curiosity has enabled me to also unify my own psyche especially being sensitive or as people call it “empathic”.

What influenced you to pursue a career as an actor?

I have been reflecting on this quite a lot recently because my self-reflection has led me to question whether or not acting is a true part of my authenticity. I must say, the further inward I have gone the more I am left with a resounding yes.

When I was little, I recall memorizing things and visualizing constantly. Sometimes I would do a scene in front of the mirror. Sometimes I would be alone facing the mirror, delivering the lines. There were a lot of private moments where I observed myself with hyper awareness, watching how I spoke or carried myself. I think some of it was the feeling of being different from other kids, so I would use manipulation in order to feel accepted. I would perform any chance that I got – in church choir, talent shows, school plays, even family gatherings.

My first memory of actually performing theatrically was in fifth grade when one of the teachers had an idea of creating a small (perhaps disorganized) class acting group. I was so ecstatic. I remember I learned all the lines for everyone, including my own and as I was performing there was this immense burst of energy, a high that after that point I couldn’t stop chasing. Luckily, my mom recognized my talent and began enrolling me in camps and after-school programs. Rehearsing with other kids and professional actors allowed me to experience a sense of belonging. I remember at one point one of my teachers pulled me to the side. He looked me straight in the eyes, gripped my shoulder excitedly and said “you know, you could do this for a living don’t you?”

I was astonished. And lit up by the fire of knowing I might be special somehow. And I remember from that point on acting became my singular focus and goal. I had voice lessons, dance lessons, and acting workshops. By the time I was in high school my teachers and coaches were preparing me to audition to the top theater colleges in the country. And I attended the famous Interlochen summer camp where I got my first lead role as Aida in Aida. It was really sinking in – that I could actually do this, that I might not be so invisible.

And if I’m being truly honest, there was perhaps a level of escapism in my pursuit. In high school, everyone around me was focused on academics, sports, or going to parties or raves. I was the weird kid who could quote musicals from beginning to end, who stayed up late analyzing my favorite movies and actors over and over, who’s painful self-awareness had become a prison of self-fulfilling prophecy – no matter how well I performed, no one would truly be able to see me, right? I wanted to be loved so badly, that I think I didn’t know how to be my authentic self when the cameras were not rolling or when the applause had died down.

Even throughout college, after getting accepted to Northwestern University, after making it into the selective showcase process, and getting an agent in both Chicago and New York I was haunted by this never-ending search for being “enough”.

Surprise surprise, in my process of growing up I have firmly landed on the idea that the perfect performance just doesn’t exist. The chase only leads to more chasing. I think that’s why I’ve also arrived in this place of self-reflection about acting. I can’t speak for other performers, but for me the thing that drew me to the stage initially was a deep desire to find connection outside of myself. And now I’m finding that the source of connection, the source of energy has been coming from within.

How did your journey as an actor lead you to incorporate fitness into your life?

In line with what I was describing, I have experienced an urge throughout this journey to jump out of my own skin. I think when I was in the middle of New York City pursuing acting with intense fervor and borderline obsession, I eventually hit a wall. I never left the city, I never took time off, and I was constantly chasing the dangling carrot of “success” or booking that next role. Everyday job that I worked up until that point was out of necessity, not passion. I quickly hit a burnout period which catalyzed my shift into the wellness field. Even when I realized that I wanted to change my day-to-day career, the transition took some time because I was attempting to do everything all at once.

What I often tell people who I work with is that I didn’t wake up eating nutrient dense meals or working out on a daily basis. I have done all the things that are not conducive to feeling good. At that time my main survival job was as a bartender and for me, personally, the lifestyle didn’t match with my natural rhythm and flow. I often ended up drinking a little too much, staying up a little too late because I would attempt to calm down after a busy night of work. I just didn’t feel like I was able to level up or grow because I was constantly catching up on recovery. The only things that kept me balanced and sane were my habits of eating a mostly paleo diet, meditating each day and my appreciation for exercise especially long runs as a form of stress relief.

It happened slowly at first, but at the time my friends gradually started to ask me health-related questions. I became the hub of fitness and wellbeing where I ended up coaching or listening to most people in my life, sometimes even strangers. Ultimately, it just hit me that I was doing all the things that a potential coach would be doing already. So, I started to educate myself and get my training certifications slowly. In the beginning of 2017, I applied to Equinox as a personal trainer and somehow managed to get the job. I admit it was grueling and was very hard to juggle because of that corporate landscape; they wanted all my attention and energy. And I had to live a double life of sorts, sneaking away to audition in the afternoon between clients.

As I look at the whole thing, I feel that it’s everything in my life, on stage and off, is part of the performance. “All of life is a stage” as they say. When you work in different kind of jobs, it’s almost like you have multiple performances going on at once. I got a little scared of changing my identity and entering into that competitive health and wellness environment. There was a tiny fear that if I became good at personal training, I would get lost in it. Ultimately though, I realize joy just creates more joy. If I like what I’m doing, if what I’m doing brings me purpose, it enhances every other part of my life as well. I no longer move with a lack mentality, but rather I am operating from overflowing abundance. And I believe anyone can experience this, it is just getting clear on the vision you have for your deepest, most heart-felt self.

How do you ensure that you don’t lose yourself in your performance?

That is a very good question… I feel in a weird way well equipped for the process of letting go of a performance or character, for a couple of reasons. To me a character is like a friend. When you’re done with the performance it is a process of saying goodbye to that friend.

I grew up moving a fair amount, always feeling as if I was an outsider. I was always connecting and disconnecting with colleagues, friends, teachers, even my family. I came to accept that it’s my role to look at people and circumstances from the outside in.

In college, I took this sense of “being outside” further with a period of psychedelic and entheogenic exploration. I pushed myself to the farthest reaches of my consciousness, further than I had ever gone before.

Post college I feel that it was these consciousness-expanding substances that drew me towards meditation, taking me deeper into states of “ego death”. I began to get this strange and powerful sense that I was looking at life from the outside. I suddenly had this very strong sense that the person I had crafted wasn’t actually the totality of me. On a level this was deeply unsettling because at its core my foundation of identity had begun to chip away and dissolve leaving me with no frame of reference. But simultaneously it was immensely liberating and clarifying. In the process of losing my identity as Christine, I began to discover that layers of inauthenticity such as limiting beliefs or fears began to also fall apart. I’m still in the process of understanding myself, but over time I have inevitably been left with something more true, more resonant with my true nature.

Ultimately, it’s been this repeated loss of identification that has enabled me to understand what it is to wear many masks and to accept a level of non-identification. Over time this practice has allowed me a sense of peace being all things and no thing.

The art is allowing the character to become fully real and alive without resistance. And then the next step is fully letting that character go to say goodbye without resistance.

It’s a strange thing to say out loud, but you always meet that character again. It’s always a sort of a “goodbye for now” type moment. The essence will always return, maybe through another person or another script.

What do you feel is more important for an actor, talent or training?

At the end of the day, if you can be embodied in front of the camera, then you can act. We all come to the world with that capacity. When you are not inhibited and allow honest impulses to express themselves even when there is an audience, you can act. Imagination and a fearlessness that overrides all judgment allows a natural, compelling performance to arise.

With that said, the industry is not a reliable place. When you are acting, you are putting your self-esteem, identify and value onto an outcome of that specific project with little guarantee of a specific outcome. The path of an actor is so immensely unpredictable that it can truly make an untrained mind crazy. In order to navigate all the projections and inconsistencies, you need to have a sense of discipline and groundedness, perhaps a meditation practice or a way to act without being focused on an outcome. To be a good actor, you need both discipline and the freedom of authentic expression.

You played different roles in various TV series and movies including Hightown (2020), Harlem (2021), Partner Track (2022), Dose (2022) and others, can you talk a bit about your most profound experience of all the characters that you portrayed?

Harlem was awesome, it was probably the longest process I have done because COVID hit only two weeks into shooting. That first year with the virus we paused “indefinitely” and I wasn’t sure if the project would actually get done. But luckily, a year later they were able to bring us all back with all the new health protocols. Initially it took time to open up to the other actors and the creative team with everyone coming in and out constantly. If I’m being honest it was a little strange for me working with some of the bigger names in the cast. But eventually we were all laughing and improvising and I felt that the creative team actually embraced me and brought me in. It got to the point where our chemistry was flowing so easily that the directors began to allow us to add lines and some additional scenes. It was invigorating to allow myself to play across from Megan Goode and Whoopi Goldberg as equals and collaborators and it completely changed my relationship to fame in the entertainment world. The whole process helped my mind to own up to my skill as an actress and allow the story and character to guide me (without letting nervousness or fear take over). It just felt so good to be able to surrender to the process entirely and to have the cast and crew laughing in response to the work we were doing together.

The second project I worked on recently, I also hold very close to my heart. It was an indie movie called Dose that portrayed mushroom therapy within a twisting and turning psychological drama. My character Emily sort of plays the catalyst for the entire film and it was exciting to go so deep into the psyche of my character and the character of my costar. It won the LA Film Awards and other festivals including the KATRA film series awards in New York City. When I auditioned, the director called me after my callback to talk to me about consciousness, psychedelics, and simulated reality. I was floored. From the moment we started the conversation until the shooting process, it felt as if my role in life as a performer and facilitator were being brought together into one place that I never knew could exist. I had even been micro dosing with mushrooms as a form of my own self-discovery as well as working with psilocybin in ceremonial settings. This beautiful creative space allowed me the freedom talk about the character development in depth with the team and collaborate on script changes. It was honestly one of the most significant projects I’ve worked on so far. 

What type of acting do you want to try out next?

I know I have a knack for drama but I have had this fascination with sitcoms lately because I like the theatrical element with multiple cameras. The idea of having a live audience while performing seems so fun.

What steps do you take to fully understand your character in the story prior to filming?

There are different techniques I tend to go back to over and over but initially I go for a little bit of script analysis at first. I like to use the Stanislavski technique to create my mental map of the character’s world. The technique allows me to step into the circumstances using detailed imagining and discern the difference between objective circumstances versus those that I wish to create. As I develop my who, what, where, when and why it helps me to ground into the project especially as I pick up and put down so many auditions and scripts.

I also really love Meisner and Krakower technique because they both put me into my body and allow physical exploration to tap into my inherent wisdom. Rather than thinking so much about my next move, I think about activating myself to respond in spontaneous and organic ways by changing my body or voice. Ultimately, I feel that if I prepare a script in an open-ended way, while dancing the tight rope of technique and impulse, the captivating performance begins to unfold without effort.

One note I’ll share is to not get so fixed on a formula or single process. The techniques are just different colors in your painting palette that enable you to pull out any combination at a given time. If a director or a casting director or even an audience responds in an unexpected way, I can take what I receive and easily utilize it without being attached to any choice whatsoever.

Who do you consider to be your acting role model whose career you would like to emulate, and why?

I love Florence Pugh, Elizabeth Olsen and Tessa Thompson because they started performing within the indie film world. There is a deep part of my soul that would love to just be isolated on set and in character for a month for two shooting a film. Because it’s cinematic, you can indulge in the time to really be the character and create something very special with the writer and director together.

On health & wellness side, can you tell us a bit of what you do?

I’m a certified personal trainer, certified yoga instructor, precision nutrition coach, meditation coach and hypnotherapist. I often say I’ve had multiple lifetimes as an athlete. I have danced for over 15 years, I have been a long-distance runner for ten years and have run multiple marathons. I used to be a gymnast, I have dabbled in martial arts, and have done yoga for almost fifteen years. I know what it’s like to push myself physically. Physical movement is something that has always come naturally to me and my unique background gives me an interest in the benefits of combined strength, flexibility, balance and agility.

When people work with me, I help them realize that “being healthy” is a series of habits that can be learned by anyone (just like being unhealthy is a series of habits that can be unlearned). I also love to share with clients a sense of joy with fitness and a sense that living a healthy lifestyle can feel good. It doesn’t have to be a form of punishment, in fact my experience has shown time and time again that positive reinforcement and reward is far more effective as a lasting behavior change than punishment or negative reinforcement. I believe we can also intuitively tap into the body’s natural intelligence in order to find balance in ways that are easeful (and not difficult). Using my background in mindfulness, hypnotherapy and NLP helps me to understand how the mind works to guide my clients towards success.

I love to follow the current exercise science and the intersection of technology and biology as well as cutting edge techniques to bio-hack cognition, rest, and performance. I think that we can allow curiosity to take us to the far reaches of research and its intersection with self-discovery. It is not just exercise and nutrition alone that make up deep health or a consistent sense of wellbeing – it is also your immune system, gut health, mitochondrial health, reproductive health, mindset and so many more factors that are often overlooked or go unseen.

What’s your advice to people for living a healthy, loving and engaging life?

Understand who you are and your personal source of joy first. And it doesn’t just have to be one thing! This journey can be a little overwhelming at first, especially if you have spent your whole life being told something opposite to your authentic expression. Allow curiosity and dialogue with yourself, whether that means meditation, journaling, taking a new class, going off the beaten path, cultivating surprises and wonder in your life. Really figure out what gets you excited. Study yourself the way that you might study your job, a celebrity, a text conversation with a potential partner. Observe yourself without qualitatively defining what is wrong and what is right. You can instead invite dialogue with your deepest self – the part that doesn’t conform to society, the part that doesn’t have shame. You can discover what you truly want out of life when you notice the subtle response maybe in your stomach, your heart, or your head. When do you get goose bumps, when do you smile?

Self-reflection and self-understanding will yield great results no matter what you ultimately choose. At its core, your core desire or passion is the thesis statement of your life. If you know yourself, everything becomes much, much simpler. 

What’s the best advice you were given?

I have been told to mess up. Try to do the thing before deciding the outcome. If it’s a career move why not just find out what happens, rather than swirling around or planning in the hopes of being perfect? In the acting industry, there is a lot of potential judgment that gets thrown around. You get to “fail” in the public eye. But my experience is that by experiencing what I thought to be failure over and over, I have come to discover that I couldn’t actually get hurt by it at all. That I am instead becoming stronger, more refined, and more myself every single day.

For those who are interested in finding out more about wellness services that Christine provides, check out https://www.mysticbodyclub.com.