Jane Sibbett Made History with Her Friends Role. 30 Years Later, She Reveals Why She Left Hollywood for an Unexpected Career Change (Exclusive)

For those who grew up in the ‘90s, Jane Sibbett will forever be etched in our memories.

From portraying Ross’ first wife, Carol Willick, on Friends — a groundbreaking role that made history with the first lesbian wedding on network television — to the unforgettable villain Clarice Kensington in It Takes Two, Sibbett’s impact on pop culture is undeniable.

Almost three decades later, Sibbett is looking back on that time, reflecting on her career and how she embraced a new chapter as an energy healer.

“It’s fascinating because I’m working on the memoir of this whole situation, and one of my mentors had said, ‘Go back before the gift.’ The gift has been here 10 years now,” Sibbett tells PEOPLE exclusively about transitioning from acting to healing and spirituality. “When I work with the dancing hands, it’s not me. It’s source energy coming through me, and so I just feel nothing but bliss and joy and love when I am in this state.”

Since stepping away from Hollywood, Sibbett’s spiritual practice has blossomed into something unexpected and extraordinary.

While living in Topanga, Calif., Sibbett and her then-husband Karl Fink had a calling. During this time, she hosted goddess circles for women, with groups ranging from 15 to 100 people, depending on the day. “They would come to my home and eventually my ranch, where we did a lot of the work. There was a lot of spiritual activity,” she recalls.

Still, the Herman’s Head actress felt a deep longing to live in Hawaii, so they packed their bags and moved to the island in 2015. Together, they launched a production company, Wild Aloha Studios, and continued to collaborate, eventually becoming keynote speakers at the Big Island Film Festival.

“My husband and I split [when] we were in Hawaii, and I was on my knees because I was really brokenhearted by everything, and part of that was my stuff that I had to deal with,” she says.

In the wake of heartbreak and personal transformation, Sibbett found herself on a new path — one that would eventually lead her to embrace a calling she never expected: energy healing.

“He and I had been producing documentaries for healers who don’t call themselves healers, and one in particular, [Abdy Electriciteh]. My work with him suddenly became a part of this organization, because I’m really collaborative, so I wanted everyone to be in on this,” she continues. “[This healer] asked me to go from [working on] the documentaries to producing these live events, so it was a perfect synthesis of my belief in the gift of him [and] what he was doing and me coming off of Friends.”

“I’m really a shy person, and so for me to step up into a crowd and introduce him all day long to all these people and have a different story, each and every time, I started to feel the way that source energy or God energy was moving through me,” she adds.

“Then somebody said, ‘Hey, you were so good at that. I know somebody else who needs your help,’ and so I went to one person, and then I did the next person, and I did the next.”

One thing led to another for Sibbett, and soon she found herself immersed in a new world of energy healing. What started as a work collaboration quickly grew into something much bigger, and her first-ever experience started at one of Electriciteh’s events.

“He tapped me on my third eye and I went down, I passed out into the state of bliss for about an hour,” she recalls. “There was no thought, there was no fear, there was just — you can’t even say it, but on the other side of it, days later, it was bliss. Some people came up to me afterward and [said], ‘We see this light coming off of your hands,’ because while I was under [the healing trance], my hands started to dance.”

This was the beginning of Sibbett’s “dancing hands,” which, per her recollection, woke her up the following day. “I woke up the next morning, my hands woke me up,” she says. “They were dancing above my head, and I began to just watch them with fascination, again, no fear, no thought, just watching as each digit was coming online. They were showing me how they could move independently without me.”

Sibbett called Electriciteh a few days later to check in and share what had happened since the event, and he encouraged her to explore it.  “He said, ‘Follow it, watch it, [and] we’ll see what happens,'” she recalls.

What sets Sibbett’s healing practice apart is that she was never formally trained in energy work or traditional healing methods. Instead, her gift emerged naturally, without any prior instruction or guidance.

“I wouldn’t call it Reiki,” she notes. “[My hands] just started dancing because I was never trained in Reiki, so I wouldn’t even know what that is. I believe in it, I trust it [but] it’s just not what I do. This wasn’t trained. This just came in fully fleshed, immediately.”

The It Takes Two actress enjoyed hosting events, gathering with light workers and helping people, but that’s where she had initially drawn the line.

“I never wanted it [and] I wasn’t looking for it, I just wanted to go back to being an actor. That was much more fun,” she says when asked about her gift. “I never had aspirations to be a healer. When I was working with the healers, I saw the troubles that they had, and so I’m like, that’s not something to aspire for.”

When reflecting on her spiritual gift, Sibbett recognizes how her background in acting shaped her approach. She explains that as an actress, she was trained to fully surrender to the story, allowing herself to become a vessel for the role.

Whether she was performing an intense scene or simply embodying a character, she was taught to release control and trust the process.

“We talk about the muse and the muse is flow,” she adds when asked how her career in Hollywood influenced her spiritual journey. “A muse is a source coming through, and I think every actor worth their salt knows that they are embodied by the character. At some point, you give yourself over, [so] I understand why my body is trained to let itself go. That’s part of the actor crisscross there.”