A Celebrity Reiki Healer and a Life Coach Are Throwing a Comedy Show in NYC
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You’d think comedians would mercilessly mock all things spirituality-based. Personally, whenever I think of comedy and woo-woo-hippie shit intersecting, that one Jackass clip where Johnny Knoxville destroys an entire yoga class by farting throughout comes to mind.
But in New York, two of the city’s most hilarious comedians are holding a stand-up comedy “Moon Ritual,” complete with chanting, crystals, and story-telling. Dead-ass, you guys.
Sara Armour and Jessica Brodkin are not only professional stand-up comedians, but also work as a reiki healer and a life coach, respectively. The Moonual is their monthly comedy show, to be held every full moon at Caroline’s Comedy Club. It started June 22, and they combine stand-up and spirituality in a way that surely no one else has been crazy enough to try before.
The Sept. 14 show features Molly Austin from TruTV Emojistyle, Kat Timpf from Comedy Central, Barstool, Fox, Charla Lauriston wrote for Kimm Schmitt and wrote for and was on Hannibal Burress’s WHY, and YouTube star Haley Sacks. Click here for tickets and use the code MOON for a discount.
“Our Moonual will honor mother nature and her divine lunar cycle, tap into the humor, intuition, and healing that comes with this historically ‘hysterical’ time,” the ladies explain, “and leave you feeling refreshed, lighter, and as bright as the moon that guides us.”
Talking to Jessica and Sara when they stopped by Galore HQ to talk about their show this week, it’s not hard to see how they’ve turned improbable careers like coaching and reiki and stand-up into their bread and butter. They’re both determined, smart, and hilarious. And far from the Xanaxed-out hippie chick personas you might expect from two such spiritual ladies, they’re witty af and talking to them is like watching a professional ping pong match.
In a city full of comedians at all stages of development, Jessica and Sara have to be the only ones who also spend their downtime getting in touch with people’s inner whatevers. And that connection’s not lost on them.
“When I call Jessica to hang out,” Sara said, “she’ll like, ‘I’ll be over in an hour, I have to go to the McDonald’s at Park Place and release Dawn, she’s a spirit that’s been living over there since the 1800s and she said she needs me.'”
Sara and Jessica whole-heartedly believe in and practice what they preach. They don’t scoff at spirituality (well, most of the time), and they insist that no matter what your beliefs are, as long as they make you feel better, that’s all that matters.
And their back stories are insane. Jessica worked for the CIA for 10 years before an illness led her to try reiki healing. It worked, miraculously, even though modern medicine had failed her. She’s now totally healthy and has turned in her spy card (they have those, right?) to do stand-up and clear other people’s chakras full time.
She’s also a medium, a talent she discovered when she was in the shower one day and she heard a message from Patti Stanger’s dearly departed uncle. No joke. So she emailed info@millionairematchmaker.com to tell Patti she had a message for her, heard from Patti the next day, and had her first of several celebrity clients lined up.
You might think her background as a CIA worker, and the multiple heavy-duty degrees she had to complete before clinching the job, would make her skeptical — and they did. But she’s made peace with her calling and she believes whole-heartedly in what she does for a living.
Sara, on the other hand, started life coaching after college, when she realized she was providing so many hours of free advice to friends and acquaintances that she simply had to start charging. She now provides guidance to clients in the form of creative workshops for corporations, one-on-one coaching, and more. A conversation with her is like a perpetual pep talk in the best way possible. It’s not hard to understand why she literally makes people feel better for a living, whether it’s through comedy or coaching, 24/7.
They also have serious feminist street cred. Not only is the show being held at Caroline’s on Broadway — the swankiest comedy club in town, which also happens to be run by yet another boss bitch, Caroline Hirsch — but one time when Sara was performing there for the 20th anniversary of the Ms. Foundation, feminist legend Gloria Steinem stopped by and heard Sara tell a story about a guy plopping his naked dick on her head.
See the below photo for proof. Sara has helpfully circled Gloria Steinem.
Sara and Jessica’s comedy cred is unquestionable, so I know their show will be a totally non-corny gathering of hilarious women and a few dudes.
So what’s the deal with the spirituality part?
A skeptic by nature, I wasn’t sure what to think when Jessica started pulling crystals out of her massive purse during our meeting. It was like the loaves and the fishes — she pulled out rock after rock, seemingly out of nowhere, and explained which ones were for love, which ones were for money, and which ones did or didn’t need to be “charged.” And I have to admit that I definitely picked up on all the vibes she was talking about. Picking up a pink 3D-star-of-David-shaped crystal, I really felt like my heart chakra was doing something.
Whether you believe in spirits and self-help and mindfulness or not, one thing’s for sure: laughing cures literally anything, and laughing with a bunch of badass babes like Sara, Jessica, and the audience their show will attract is even better. Reserve tickets for the Moonual here.
This post has been updated with new show information.
