OJAI, Calif. — Jacqui Burge gently pinged a meditation bell inside her Ojai yoga studio. As the sound decayed, Burge, seated in the classic cross-legged, or “sukhasana” pose, seemed to drop into a peaceful, meditative trance for several minutes.

A half hour later, seated in her living room, Burge was producing a different, and far more dissonant, sound. She was thrashing away on an electric guitar.

Burge is a fan of punk rock.

Years before Burge learned any Buddhist chants, she was in a punk band chanting such songs as “Hey Bastard!” A recording exists of her on the internet performing the song in 1990 at New York City’s famous “CBGB’s” club.

“Hey, Bastard!” a young Burge screams into the microphone. “Love me for what I am!”

Burge now admits that she did not love herself. However, ironically, Burge said she has since harnessed the same rebelliousness she found in the punk rock scene to find her self worth.

“Punk means that you really follow your own path,” Burge said.

Her path led Burge to practice and preach what she calls “Punk Wellness,” how to create inner harmony, but on one’s own terms.

“(It’s) marching to the beat of your own drummer,” Burge said. “(It’s) taking care of your own body. Cause this is your body.”

Burge, who grew up in Southern California, first found a measure of fame as a child actress and competitive ice skater. Burge said how, in her teens, she was traumatized after her parents divorced, and her mother moved her all the way across the country to Washington D.C.

Burge said that’s where she became rebellious and discovered a taste for punk rock.

In her 20s, fame came calling again. She went to New York, where she fell into an all-female punk rock band named “STP,” and toured as a side act with Sonic Youth and Nirvana.

Burge said it was also around this time that she found heroin.

“And I was a daily addict for probably two-and-a-half years,” Burge said.

Burge claims that one day, at the height of her addiction and while walking down the street, she heard a voice.

“You’re going to die if you keep this up,” Burge remembered the voice saying.

“It is incredibly, incredibly hard to stop doing Heroin,” said Burge, who claims she went “cold turkey” and launched herself into recovery and began attending 12-step programs.

While she got sober, Burge said she discovered, in meditation and yoga, the same things she was searching for with drugs — a sense of wellness and inner peace.

“You start to drop into just a state of being that is euphoric in a way,” Burge said, “(but) without it being a momentary feeling. It’s an ‘all-the-time feeling.’”

Later, when Burge got a corporate desk job, she realized she and her colleagues were feeling stressed. She convinced her boss at the time to allow her to teach yoga during lunch breaks. That eventually developed into her own business.

Now, Burge is famous, yet again, but now for a well-known internet franchise called “Desk Yogi.” It’s a series of videos where Burge instructs people how to exercise yoga right at their desk. Her original intent was to allow people to do simple meditative exercises in the workplace but without drawing attention to themselves.”

In one video, Burge teaches a neck exercise.

“This is super-secret ninja motion,” she said, while rolling her head around.

Burge also conducts live online sessions for paying clients.

“Hi, Shelley. I haven’t seen you in a while,” Burge said as she stared at her office computer and welcomed students into her virtual classroom. She then launched into a series of simple yoga exercises.

“It’s 15 minutes,” Burge explained. “We do yoga, fitness, breathwork and a mindful moment.”

And that, Burge said, is the point. In the middle of a crowded life, people should be able to find wellness and peace by injecting bits of meditation and mindfulness into their daily lives.

And that, she said, is the “punk” part of her practice. It’s a rebellion against any dogma which says people need to be spiritual “gurus” or spend hours on a yoga mat to get the benefits from movement and meditation.

“We all have jobs,” Burge said. “We have kids and bills to pay. (We) might not have the ability to meditate for hours in a day. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t meditate.”

“You move your body, even for five minutes, and you feel better,” Burge said. “And that’s the whole message that I’m attempting to get out into the world, or Desk Yogi, or Punk Wellness or whatever I’m doing. All you need to do is move just a little bit. And that little bit leads to a little bit more, and a little bit more, and a little bit more.

Burge recently opened a brick-and-mortar space in Ojai called “Move Sanctuary,” for people to practice punk wellness in person.

“It’s 'punk,'” Burge said. “The experience that you have in your body is up to you. But, the flip side of that is, you’re also 100% responsible for your own health.”