At 30, my life was built around whitewater kayaking. It wasn't just a sport — it was my identity, my purpose, the thing that gave my days shape and meaning. Through kayaking I found yoga, initially just as a way to keep my body strong and healthy enough to stay on the water. Around the same time I was introduced to modern mindfulness philosophy. I had no idea the two were deeply intertwined — or that both were quietly preparing me for what was coming.

In 2018 I began falling ill. Slowly at first, then completely. The person I thought I was started to fade. Plagued by fatigue, severe depression, suicidal thoughts, and overwhelming pain. I was losing trust in myself while doctors told me I was fine. Just pushing too hard, they said. Just needing rest. Something deep inside me knew that wasn't true. But I had no way to make anyone listen.

At the end of 2018, after being cleared by doctors, my now wife Alicia and I made the decision to go ahead with our dream trip, a whitewater kayaking expedition to Chile. It was supposed to be everything. Instead I fell seriously ill on the trip. We came home. And at 1am in an emergency room in Hood River, Oregon, a CT scan changed everything. I was full of cancer. 48 hours later I had a diagnosis, a one week prognosis without treatment, and a 40 percent chance of survival.

"When they told me, something extraordinary happened. The thoughts stopped. For a brief moment it was just me — and the processes of my body — and a feeling of love and trust in myself I had never felt before. Then I watched the ego reveal itself again. And that's when the suffering returned."

That moment, that gap between the diagnosis and the fear rushing back in is the most present I have ever been in my life. The mind went quiet. The body spoke. In that silence I understood something I had no words for yet: that the breath, and the body, and the present moment are not separate things. They are the same thing.

What followed was one of the hardest years of my life, a twelve-hour surgery involving five surgical teams, a body I was told might never work the same way again, and the long, humbling work of rebuilding from the inside out. Alicia was there for every moment of it. She quit her job, gave everything, and devoted herself completely to my survival. She is the reason I am here. It is why we now stand together and offer The Art of Nervous System Regulation, because we know firsthand what it means to show up completely for another person.

Breathwork was the first thing that gave me internal space when everything else felt unbearable. It created a separation from the story I was telling myself - just enough distance to breathe, to prepare, to find moments of clarity inside the chaos. Yoga came later, slowly rebuilding the body I had lost trust in. Together they didn't just help me survive. They gave me a way to understand what had happened, and a reason to share it.

I began teaching from that place. Not from a curriculum or a certification, but from the direct experience of what breath and movement can do when everything else falls away. In 2024 I found my teacher, Janet Stone. Globally known for her rigorous asana, and her teachings that are rooted in compassion, and kindness towards others. Through her I discovered that the framework I had been living and teaching had ancient roots thousands of years deep. I wasn't inventing anything. I was finally finding the language for something I had already survived.

I teach because breath kept me alive when nothing else could. And I show up every day to give that same space to someone else.