ABOUTMeet Your Instructor
Joann Schermerhorn
Ayurvedic Health Counselor · Certified Herbalist · Holistic Esthetician · Sound Healing Practitioner · Yoga Teacher · 20+ Years in Practice
Most estheticians reach a point in their practice where they can feel the edge of what they were taught. The protocols stop answering the questions in front of them. The results plateau. And something — some instinct that drew them to this work in the first place — starts asking: is there more?
I've spent twenty years finding the answer to that question. Not in one place, and not all at once. In tent camps and national parks and Ayurvedic clinics and herbalism school and spa treatment rooms across time zones. The path was long, circuitous, and exactly right.
Tending Practice is where all of it lands.
The Long Way Here
I grew up in Missouri and spent my early twenties working in the national parks — four years of open sky, physical labor, and the kind of quiet that teaches you to pay attention. After my time in the parks I traveled to Atlanta, GA and this is where I was first introduced to the spa and wellness industry. I managed the student clinic of a Massage and Esthetician School, and I fell in love. From there, I moved to Bolinas, California, to complete a Permaculture Design certification at the Regenerative Design Institute. I lived in a tent. I learned how systems work, how everything is connected, how the health of the whole determines the health of the part.
That lens never left me.
I went on to study herbalism. Got my esthetician license. Managed spa clinics. Completed my yoga teacher training. Traveled through Europe working on permaculture projects. Moved to Portland and managed an Ayurvedic spa — and then, because I couldn't stop pulling on the thread, went to school for Ayurvedic medicine myself.
By the time I returned to the Midwest in 2023, I had something I'd been building for two decades without knowing it: a genuinely integrated understanding of skin, body, and nervous system — from the inside out, from the soil up, from the ancient texts to the treatment table.
The estheticians I meet who are ready for more — who feel that edge, that itch, that sense that there's a deeper layer — are the reason I teach. I know what it's like to be hungry for something your training didn't give you. I built Tending Practice to hand you what took me twenty years to find.
How I Teach
Everything at Tending Practice is built on one foundational belief: the whole body before the skin.
Skin doesn't exist in isolation. It is a map — of constitution, of inflammation, of stress load, of what the lymphatic system is or isn't moving, of what the nervous system is or isn't processing. When we treat the face without understanding what the face is trying to say, we get temporary results at best. When we understand it — really understand it — we become practitioners our clients can't live without.
I teach from lineage before technique. Every modality I offer — Ayurvedic facials, marma point therapy, advanced facial massage, herbalism, kansa wand work, holding space — is taught with its history, its philosophy, and its mechanism. Not because the background is interesting trivia, but because practitioners who understand why they're doing what they're doing make better decisions in the room. They adapt. They go deeper. They get results that technique alone doesn't explain.
My teaching style is direct, warm, and clinical without being cold. I share what I know freely. I find the work genuinely fascinating, which means I can talk about it for a very long time — and I've been told that's not always a bad thing.
Training & Credentials
Permaculture Design Certification — Regenerative Design Institute, 2006
Certified Herbalist, 2009
Licensed Esthetician, 2011
200-Hour Yoga Teacher Training, 2013
Holistic Esthetician Certification, 2014
Vodder Method Lymphatic Drainage Certification, 2019
Ayurvedic Health Counselor & Panchakarma Technician, 2021
Natural Skincare Formulator Certification, 2022
Sound Bath Practitioner, 2025
Advanced study in:
Yakov Gershkovich Structural Face Lift
Pro-Age Neolifting Face Lift Massage
Gua Sha Method
Facial Cupping Therapy
Facial Reflexology
Kansa Wand Therapy
Facial Poultice Massage
Where You'll Find Me
I'm based in Overland Park, Kansas, and teach workshops locally in Kansas City and nationally. In addition to Tending Practice, I'm a practitioner at Very Well KC in Overland Park, where I facilitate sound baths, Ayurvedic bodywork, and yoga.
Online, I'm building the Tending Practice Collective — a community for holistic estheticians who want the depth, the lineage, and the company of others who are asking the same questions. If that sounds like you, come find us.