What I like to do the most
Adoration in Hollywood
This isn’t just a business, it’s a reflection of what I believe in, what I live and what I immersed myself for years. My work is not built only on personal experience, but on formation, both clinical and spiritual. I am Functional Diagnostic Nutrition Practitioner (FDNP) and Specialist in St. Hildegard Sciences, the European monastic medical tradition rooted in Benedictine spirituality. I have spent 33 years as a Christian missionary across three continents, planting churches, leading discipleship and healing ministry, forming communities, and homeschooling three children. Before any of that, I was a nurse in anesthesiology and intensive care. I know what it means to be with people in their most vulnerable moments, physically, spiritually, and in every place in between. Viriditas Life is where all of that converges.
I am not offering “wellness coaching” in the usual sense. I am building a bridge that most people don’t realize is missing, and it is missing from both sides. Most faith-based healing programs address the soul while ignoring the body. Most health programs borrow spiritual language without doctrinal grounding. I stand in the gap between both.
My approach is rooted in a Catholic understanding of the human person: that the body is not separate from the soul, and that health is not merely the absence of symptoms, but the presence of order. I draw especially from the wisdom of St. Hildegard of Bingen, whose medical and theological insights align in many ways with what modern functional medicine is now rediscovering.
Iwona Bednarz-Major
BackgroundBefore any of this had a name, there was a life.
I spent four years as a nurse in anesthesiology and intensive care, which means I have held people at their most physically vulnerable, and I do not romanticize the body or its suffering.
I homeschooled Teah, Kevin and Sophie for fifteen years, in five countries, and started several homeschooling groups and communities along the way. I have also spent 33 years as a Christian missionary across Poland, Russia, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United States, co-founded Catholic HalleluJah community in Wrocław, planted churches with Evangelical Vineyard, and served six years as an intercessory missionary at the International House of Prayer in Kansas City.
I have studied (did not finish) Theology at the Papal Theological Faculty in Wroclaw, Poland, I have done residential healing and deliverance training with Ellel Ministries in England, a Discipleship Training School with Youth With a Mission, and completed the Fiat Course on mental health and Church life through the University of Notre Dame and the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. Stone to Flesh, the ministry I founded and that preceded Viriditas Life and now runs alongside Viriditas Life, has been my work in Los Angeles since 2017. Within Stone to Flesh my main work now days is Hildegard Healing with workshops, online courses, fasting courses and retreats.
I say all of this not to impress but to explain why I am not easily rattled by complexity, suffering, or, if needed, the slower work of formation. I have lived inside all of those mentioned for a long time.
I am a happy grandma of Adam and Alena.
How I Work With PeopleI treat the body as part of a person to be formed, not just fixed. A lot of health coaches try to eliminate symptoms or optimize biomarkers. I approach the body the way a good spiritual director approaches the soul: there is order, sequence, and virtue involved. Clients who are exhausted from chasing protocols feel this immediately. It is not another hack but a path built to their level of resilience and current state of whole person health.
I connect physiology with meaning without losing either. I do not stay purely clinical, nor do I drift into spiritual language that isn’t grounded. I actually tie metabolism, nervous system function, digestion, and energy to rhythm, order, suffering, and restoration and I keep it actionable. Your body and your faith operate from the same anthropology and I work from that premise.
I begin with discernment, not intervention. I approach the phases of healing in natural sequence: drainage before detox, rhythm before supplements, context before interpretation. Those who have been over-treated, over-supplemented, or simply overwhelmed will recognize this as a different kind of assistance.
I can hold complexity without making it chaotic. I organize health goals and journeys into phases, patterns, and maps. Clients feel oriented rather than managed.
I take suffering seriously without dramatizing it or bypassing it. I do not reduce people to their trauma or their diagnoses. I approach suffering as something that can be worked and lived through and I hold the Catholic understanding of redemptive suffering not as a platitude but as a genuine clinical and spiritual reality. I also recognize that many of the people I work with are the ones holding others through suffering. They have rarely been held themselves. That matters to me.
Who I Work WithI do not try to appeal to everyone. I work with a specific kind of person, one who is often overlooked in both healing culture and parish or church life. You may be a good fit if you:
carry pastoral, familial, or professional leadership, and have spent time giving formation or caring for others while not having time or capacity to take care of their own vital resources
want your faith and your body to operate from the same anthropology, not as parallel tracks that meet randomly
know the difference between the clinical and the sacramental, and don’t want one colonizing the other
are skeptical of both biohacking culture and the vague spirituality that has infiltrated so much of the wellness world
are anchored in the sacramental life, prayer, Scripture, and want your physical health to connect and emerge from that center, not compete with it
These are often parents, ministry leaders, clergy and religious, professionals, and people for whom faith is not a weekend practice but the architecture of daily life. They are intelligent, formed, and tired, not from lack of discipline, but from living at full capacity for too long without adequate support.
Formation and Credentials
My clinical formation runs along two distinct but convergent tracks. The functional lab work gives me the clinical precision to see what is actually happening in a body. The Hildegardian formation gives me the framework for understanding why, and what it means for a person made by and for God to be living in that particular pattern of dysfunction. One without the other would be incomplete.
3rd Degree Specialist in St. Hildegard Sciences - Certificate by Polish Center of St. Hildegard Dr. Alfreda Walkowska and The Pontifical Faculty of Theology in Wrocław
I am trained in the full application of Hildegard’s teaching on the human person: her system of health evaluation, her understanding of disease and its root causes, and the spirituality that animates all of it.
The program drew from philosophy, theology, anthropology, medicine, pharmacy, physiotherapy, and music, all read through Hildegard’s works and the Catholic tradition that formed her.
Functional Diagnostic Nutrition Practitioner
As FDNP I assess overall health and interpret functional labs and create personalized protocols that reverse chronic health conditions & restore vitality. I detect dysfunctions in hormonal, immune, digestive, detoxification, energy production, nervous systems and recognize the level of the oxidative stress.
FDNPs use proven systems and expertise in coaching with a new paradigm of health “where each individual takes an active role in educating themselves & supporting their bodies to the best of their ability.”
These trainings allow me to bridge clinical insight with a broader understanding of the person, rather than reducing health to isolated symptoms or protocols. I understand that the people I work with are not simply looking for information, but for clarity and stability in a season where their capacity has been stretched. My role is not to replace your judgment or responsibility, but to help you see more clearly what is happening in your body in relation to your soul, and to restore the conditions that allow you to live your vocation with greater steadiness.
