I had some challenges growing up. This informs my therapeutic approach.
In 1971 when I was seven, I awoke around 6 a.m. to rocking and rolling. Its an earthquake, my parents said. Get into the car. My parents were worried we could drown because a dam had broken in San Fernando, CA. The car was running at the curb and they urged me to get out of bed and get to the car. I imagined water over our heads, above the rooftops, us deep under not able to breathe. I didn't know then, what may happen when a child thinks: The Ones I Depended Upon Can't Keep Me Safe. There was another incident when I was 7 with a school nurse. Though I remembered outlines of these incidents, I recall no emotion.
I grew up with the Vietnam War on TV. My two Uncles fought in Vietnam. By age 7, I knew what being drafted meant, and I was encouraged to be a conscientious objector if I were ever drafted. A lot for a boy to consider. The draft almost returned when I was 18 and I wrote a semi-official letter of conscientious objection. The draft was not begun and I moved on.
People who knew me in childhood experienced me as quiet, intelligent, and protective of my sister. People who experienced me in preadolescence experienced me as obnoxious and sarcastic. When I was 11 my best friend Brian told me he had to stop being friends with me because my sarcasm made him cry one too many times. I apologized and asked him to reconsider. He did. I continued to be sarcastic and he had to cut me off for good. I was kicked out of a soccer game with a red card for being verbally obnoxious to the other team. A friend named Robert told me when I was 13 that I was 90% less of an asshole than when I was 11 and 12. He attributed it to the fact that I had a girlfriend.
Around my 14th birthday I got a motorcycle and crashed it many times, usually under the influence of alcohol. Over a seven year period I "got my bell rung" a lot: from high-dives into lakes, crashing from innertubes behind fast ski boats, fistfights, and a concussion snow skiing when my friends laughed because I didn't know my name.
In childhood I wanted to be an Astronaut. In High School I was good at math and decided I should become a math teacher. I attended college but my test scores dropped 49 percentiles between the SAT and the GRE. I didn't get into the colleges of my choice but I did attend graduate school for 3 semesters. I failed a few classes and couldn't study. I was using more drugs, alcohol and sex. I was not able to finish the credentials I'd need to teach. I felt ashamed that I was not performing well in the one thing I thought I was good at. I was depressed and slept a lot. A new building was starting on campus so I took a job as a construction worker on the same campus where I had been a student.
I was a construction worker for 15 years from 1979 - 1994 mostly in the Laborer's union in Seattle and Bellingham and then the Carpenter's union. I worked on large buildings: schools, hospitals, sewage treatment plant, refinery, paint hangar for jets, and the Pike Place Market which also has a 14 story condo above it and two more 4-story apartment complexes with courtyards. I accepted that my life would be a construction worker.
Our daughter was born in 1989. We were not married. I committed to the relationship and the family, and my commitment and love grew, which was a major turning point in my life. Around 1991 after an awful incident of drinking, I stopped drinking.
I was raised Catholic and had considered the priesthood when I was 15. At 17 I became interested in Methodist youth groups. In college I studied zazen breathing meditation and the writings of Chogyam Trungpa. During my construction worker years I read everything by DT Suzuki, Tarthang Tulku and Lama Yeshe. I became a member of Sakya Monastery in Seattle. I received numerous buddhist empowerments including Medicine Buddha and Avalokiteshvara (Chenrezi) in Seattle in 1993.
One week while I was between construction jobs, my wife was on her way to her second appointment with Physical Therapist Randy Nakasone. In the first appointment he had done something that her back pain stopped after 3 car accidents. She had never had a day out of pain in the six years we had been together. Since I was laid off, I asked if I could attend her session. She called Randy who enthusiastically agreed. He used Muscle Energy Technique which was fascinating to watch. He did 50 minute sessions with fun music playing. I knew that day I wanted to switch careers to physical therapy. He told me he didn't learn the good stuff in PT school but in CE continuing education from Osteopathic Doctors. He said I'd be eligible for this CE if I went to a one-year certification as a massage therapist and, on his advice, I registered for the Brian Utting School of Massage. I began attending CE for Osteopathic Techniques mid-way through my year of massage school, racking up over a hundred CE hours in Muscle Energy Technique and another hundred in Cranio Sacral. I started a private practice right out of school, which none of the other students attempted, and I survived (barely) renting a room at a chiropractic office for a year and from my wife's dayspa for 3 more years. From 1994 to 1998, half of my income was from insurance: I was a "preferred provider" for blue cross/blue shield of washington, car insurance for auto accidents, and the State of Washington Department of Labor and Industries for on-job accidents.
In 1996 I felt I wasn't getting what I needed from buddhism. One afternoon, in front of my buddhist altar in the basement, I "asked" for a teacher who could give me what I needed.
My wife had just opened a dayspa we called Natural Essence. Soon after I built the sign on the roof that said "Natural Essence," a person named Stephen walked in the door. "I feel like I was called to be here," he said. He said he teaches being natural and embracing your essence. Feeling called, he was driving around and when he saw the sign on the building that said Natural Essence, he knew this was the place. Stephen (here is his blog) was a counselor and Vietnam veteran who also taught groups and workshops. My wife increased her rental to the whole building and he began offering counseling and workshops from the new big room, and I rented the small room in the back. I attended hundreds of hours of his weekly and one-day workshops, which I consider more valuable than the other Continuing Education I had received. We also went to Stephen for family counseling, after which I continued to receive counseling for myself. When he retired from counseling in 1999 I continued doing phone coaching with him, which I do to this day (at the time of this writing, 29 years). His guidance has made all the difference for me.
We were planning to move to Arizona, and Stephen had moved to the other side of Seattle, and I wasn't receiving the coaching for a while. I had a lot of anxiety about earning a living as a massage therapist in Arizona. They didn't have medical massage clinics there. Most of the ads I could find in Arizona were for sexual massage. I visited Arizona to check out the job market and was very disappointed. I had begun drinking again and got a DUI in 1999. When the social worker interviewed me regarding my drinking and drugs, which began at age 12, she recommended the maximum sentence which I received. Because of that I was mandated a year of addiction group counseling, which I attended in Phoenix. I stopped drinking in 1999 and took up running with more commitment.
After we moved to Arizona, in 2000 I flew back to Seattle to receive Reiki training and empowerments from Stephen. During this time time I got probably the best possible job a massage therapist could have had in Arizona at that time, one of the first 6 therapists hired at a ritzy new dayspa within a health club near Paradise Valley, AZ. I became the most-requested therapist and earned more than I ever had as a massage therapist, allowing us to qualify for our first home loan. Now that I am writing this, I believe this good fortune was a result of the empowerments from Stephen during the Reiki certification classes.
During the year after receiving the Reiki empowerments from Stephen I came up with a new method called Melting Muscles. In 2002 and 2003 I published two influential articles in Massage&Bodywork magazine and Massage Therapy Journal, and with that exposure, I taught this new method to therapists in 13 States. I believe this discovery was triggered by the empowerments from Stephen.
Success went to my head. My fourth article was rejected because I sounded too arrogant, they said. Bad news, because I had already quit my lucrative job at the dayspa near Paradise Valley, believing the teaching would support me better than massage had. Now jobless and rejected by editors, I began to feel hopeless, like a failure. I was not earning enough. My first wife and I divorced in 2004. Statewide licensing began in Arizona and I did not apply in time. Once I got the license, I found few people are resilient enough to want a massage from someone feeling as low as I was after the divorce. In addition to massage, I waited tables part time, did construction for a shady contractor in Phoenix part time, and gradually began offering CE again. I got a contract to train a good number of therapists at a different destination resort, and I was regaining some confidence.
When Stephen was healthy enough, I continued to have phone sessions. For years he helped me cope, with a foundation of seven things he always talks about: unconditional compassion, nonjudgment, non-self-importance, presence, patience, vulnerability and curiosity.
In 2007 I received treatment from my new wife's Physical Therapist, John McRae, who asked me, "When did you get your head injury? I said I never had a head injury. He said he could feel it, as he had his hands on my head. A day later, I recalled the 20 head injuries. I did some research about head injuries and found this could have explained why my test scores had dropped 49 percentiles in a 4 year period, and some of the orneriness. Around this time I began learning that the incidents I experienced in 1970 could have created PTSD and Moral Injury. This could be used to explain some of my behaviors. I also stumbled across a book about Adult Children of Alcoholics. When I read the list of characteristics, I knew that I was not totally responsible for all my unwanted behaviors.
All of the challenges of my life have, perhaps synchronistically, provided opportunities so that I can support others who have been through intense things in their own lives.
Nature photography really balances me! Jogging and hiking have really helped.
Since 2020 I have also been teaching Math and Construction Trades at the Community College in Tucson, where I also serve on a council for issues of employee wages and working conditions.
I met my wife Traci in 2007 when she was reading her poetry and memoir at a coffee shop in Phoenix. Together Traci and I began Monsoon Voices, a live literary magazine with poets, memoirists, fiction writers and musicians. Traci teaches writing workshops online and in-person.
My daughter/offspring (they/them) is a musician and counselor. I enjoy hiking off-trail with my Nikon D4 camera, and I take a phone to capture 5-second videos of water or wind movement. In Arizona I have encountered a Black Bear, Bighorn Sheep, White-Tail Deer, and curious little Coati.
In our yard in Tucson, where I have a home-office for treatments and workshops, we have seen numerous Bobcats, Coyotes, Great Horned Owls and Harris's Hawks which hunt as a cooperative family.
Some of my nature photography is posted on Flickr and some on Facebook. Please enjoy this little photo essay on Facebook of me meeting a deer that was stranded and how this mirrors my own life until now: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/15knTuycAZ/
I hope to connect with you at some point!
Feel free to use the Contact Me form with any questions or comments.
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