Stories and Interruptions

Posted on July 5, 2023 by admin

From what I’ve seen, it’s getting harder and harder to find good storytelling. This is not caused by a lack of good storytellers. There are plenty of excellent storytellers who can keep others engaged for hours with all kinds of fascinating, gripping, and entertaining stories. The best storytellers can even hold attention with stories that aren’t that interesting; their delivery is what makes those stories enjoyable. Unfortunately, it’s becoming more difficult for those skilled storytellers to shine because there are increasingly fewer people who are good at listening to the stories.

Interruptions are the primary symptom. It seems almost universal nowadays for humans to cut in whenever there’s a pause, whether it’s a pause for dramatic effect or to catch one’s breath before continuing. They’ll also interrupt to ask questions that are meant to be answered throughout the course of the story, hurry along the storyteller instead of listening patiently, focus exclusively on one particular part of the story instead of absorbing all of it, and finish the speaker’s sentences when they think they know the outcome.

I think the source of this issue is a lack of presence. Rather than being present with what’s happening around them, it seems almost everyone is always focused on where they think the story is going, the questions they want to ask, advice they want to give, what they did yesterday, what they’ll do tomorrow, and so on. The part I find strange about this is that many of these folks will also read long, dense book series and avoid spoilers at all costs so they don’t learn early on about information that’s revealed much later in the stories. Despite this, they seem either unable or unwilling to wait a few minutes to hear the outcome of a story without trying to jump ahead, ask questions every time there’s a pause, or start telling a different story of their own. That dissonance is so strange to me.

Frequently, I’ll keep talking after someone interrupts me. This sometimes results in the other person quieting down once they realize I still have something to say. On many occasions, however, the other person has continued talking over me. If I stopped talking at that point, as I used to do nearly every time this occurred, they’d carry on as if nothing had happened. Whenever I’ve continued talking through their interruption and they continue interrupting, both of us can talk simultaneously for anywhere from 15-30 seconds. I can’t understand anything they say and I doubt they understand anything I say. When this happens, I find some solace by finishing my thought instead of ceasing to talk as soon as they interrupt me. I still don’t understand why anyone continues to speak over someone when that person is still speaking at length.

Listening extensively to what someone else has to say sometimes results in them returning the favor by giving me plenty of room to talk. However, this is no guarantee that that will happen. It can sometimes result in them talking even more. I often feel tired after listening to someone tell a long story, which makes it much harder for me to hold the floor when it’s my turn to speak. Some folks, even after talking at length, seem to perk up and jump in shortly after I start talking. This usually results in me quieting down due to not having the energy to keep talking or ask for room to talk. Talking can be difficult for me even when I feel good, and it’s almost impossible when I feel tired.

I so appreciate those who do listen with few to no interruptions, even when I have a lengthy story to tell or point to make. One of the things I miss a lot about my dog Sawyer is how he listened to me. He’d often bark or growl at something, but he’d quiet down, look at me, and listen to what I said when I called out his name. Plenty of other animals I’ve met have acted similarly. That’s a huge reason I often feel much more comfortable around animals than I do around humans. Humans can learn a lot from animals about many aspects of communication. I hope they listen.

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Frustration, Learning, and Teaching

Posted on June 28, 2023 by admin

I often feel frustrated when learning something new, especially when it’s extremely difficult. The trouble I’ve had handling frustration has caused me to quit a number of activities before I ever truly learned them. Over time, I’ve gotten better at managing frustration and having the patience to keep practicing something until I get the hang of it.

I can handle frustration much more easily in small doses. When it comes to the frustration of learning something new, I’d rather put a little bit of time into it every day (or almost every day) than spend long hours practicing it. That minimizes my frustration while still allowing me to see regular progress. A perfect example is unicycling. When I was just starting out, I decided I would get 10 good unicycle rides a day and have fun with it. At the beginning, I could hardly go a foot forward before losing control. Even as I got better, some days seemed as if I had regressed tremendously, and others felt as if I’d be stuck at that level forever. Doing only about 10 minutes of practice every day made even the most difficult days bearable and allowed me to practice through the frustration until I eventually got good at it. Although it took almost a year for me to ride smoothly more often than not, this method still allowed me to see decent progress without quitting from frustration.

With all of this in mind, I can’t stand impatient, demeaning teachers who add to my frustration. Those kinds of teachers tend to expect me to be able to do more than I can at any given moment, even when I’m brand new to something. They also might talk about how they learned this particular skill much faster than I did. All of this is made even worse when they only explain things in ways that make sense to them instead of learning how to explain them in ways that make sense to me. Teachers who do any or all of those things make me want to quit.

Accordingly, I so appreciate patient, supportive teachers who help minimize my frustration and bring an abundance of positivity. These folks remind me that it’s ok to make mistakes when learning and encourage me to be easier on myself during the difficult parts of the learning process. That’s much nicer than acting like every mistake is the end of the world. Their encouraging and supportive spirits motivate me to continue learning at my own pace and make it much easier for me to learn new, difficult things.

I always feel sad whenever I see someone berating another who is learning something new, especially when it’s extremely difficult for that individual. That’s why whenever someone asks me to teach them something I know, I strive to be a patient, supportive teacher. I use encouragement, point out where the person is succeeding, offer thoughtful tips, and celebrate with them in their successes. At some point in the process, I often remember how bad I’ve felt whenever I’ve been on the receiving end of bad teaching. That reminds me to pause, be patient, and work with the other person to figure out why it’s not working so that we can work together until we find a way to make it click.

I’ve become even more averse to bad teachers since losing my dog Sawyer last year. My patience in general has gone down since he died, and that is especially apparent when it comes to teaching and learning. At this point, I’m more apt to disengage from a bad teacher and either seek out a good teacher or learn on my own. I’m largely self-taught in juggling and unicycling, so I’m pretty good at figuring out how to do difficult things and then putting in however much practice it takes to get good at them. Fortunately, the more new things I learn and the more skilled people I meet, the more I cross paths with great teachers. I look forward to experiencing more of that as I continue adding to my bag of tricks.

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4 Key Areas of Life

Posted on June 21, 2023 by admin

In many cases, getting a few key areas of life together can yield massive boosts in mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual health. Unfortunately, none of these things are generally prioritized in modern society. One or two of them receive attention at any given time, but the whole package never does. For everyone to have their best shot at a healthy life, major changes have to be made such that everyone can sufficiently pursue these. In the meantime, I’ve benefited tremendously from the changes I’ve made in these areas over the past several years. Without further ado, here are some things worth getting in order, keeping in order, and getting back in order when they go off track.

  1. Sleep: Everything I’ve learned about sleep from Matthew Walker’s wonderful book Why We Sleep has inspired me to put this at the top of the list. Even if you master everything below, a consistent lack of sufficient quality sleep will still wreck your health. That’s how important sleep is. While I haven’t mastered this one yet, I’m closer to it than I’ve been in about a decade.
  2. Stress relief: After sleep, this is the most important thing on this list. Effective stress relief is crucial for the proper digestion of food, quality sleep, civil communication, getting along with others, and effective action everywhere in life. I relieve stress as often as possible, especially before, during, and after majorly challenging events. I always feel better and do better when I stay on top of stress relief.
  3. Water: Going a few days without drinking any water will prove fatal. Not drinking enough water throughout the day, even when sedentary, can result in headaches, cloudy thinking, overheating, and poor decision making. Doing a lot of physical activities, having a few large reusable water bottles by my side for most of the day, and living in Florida have all increased my water intake. The difference between drinking too little water and drinking enough is astonishing, and, usually, I drink enough each day.
  4. Food: After I lost my dog Sawyer last year, I started eating only twice a day. That worked well enough for a while but eventually became problematic. I often would feel lightheaded and get a headache between meals, especially if I went out on a walk or did anything else physical. I’ve since made a point to eat at least two meals before I set out on most activities that use a lot of energy. Additionally, since I’ve gone back to eating three times a day and at least twice before going out to dance, walk for a while in nature, or do something else along similar lines, I’ve felt much better and haven’t noticed the aforementioned issues. That taught me the importance of eating a sufficient amount of food frequently enough. Although my nutrition is far from perfect, it’s pretty good, and I can see it improving even more as I continue working on this.
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Out of Sight, Out of Mind?

Posted on June 14, 2023 by admin

Have you ever spent a lot of time around someone who only ever wants to focus on positive emotions and will go to the ends of the Earth to avoid addressing negative emotions? Have you experienced how it made you feel to be around those kinds of humans? If so, then you may very well resonate with what I’m going to describe in this post.

I’ve always had difficulty with folks who suppress their emotions. This has been particularly troublesome whenever I’ve felt upset or concerned about something and wanted to work through it, only for all of my efforts to be shut down by the other person. In addition to paying no mind to my emotions, they also ignored their own. At least, they attempted to ignore their emotions. If I continued attempting to discuss the issue, they would feel increasingly angry, which often made them yell at me and, sometimes, behave violently toward me. As a result, I still have trouble bringing up concerns, even with those who have always been receptive to talking through things or, at least, haven’t acted with hostility when I’ve attempted to do so.

The trouble continues. I’ve known at least a few who seem to want to forget the good stuff in their attempt to forget the bad stuff. This can happen when a loved one dies. While I want to do all I can to remember that loved one even if doing so is painful for a time, others may avoid talking about that person, shut down or exit conversations in which that person is mentioned, and either get rid of or at least keep out of sight any of their belongings. This does nothing to get rid of the underlying pain, however. It prolongs the pain, compounds it, and causes the person using this approach to be hypervigilant against anything that could cause the pain to surface. It also makes it incredibly difficult to talk with that person about the lost loved one, especially when talking helps me get through my struggles.

I’ve experienced this repeatedly since losing my dog Sawyer last year. Most of Sawyer’s toys, blankets, towels, and other belongings were packed up and put away the day he died. If it was up to me, all of that would have remained as it was during Sawyer’s final few days for at least a year after his death. None of it was in the way, all of it served to remind me that he was here for 11 years, and seeing it all vanish within hours of his death added another layer of pain to an incredibly painful situation; it was as if he had never been here in the first place. I would have much preferred to gradually pack his things up as I worked through the pain at my own pace.

If I still saw things the way I did up until a few years ago, I might have also attempted to avoid painful emotions around Sawyer’s death in the hope that doing so would eliminate the pain. At this point, I’ve learned that there’s nothing more painful than perpetually holding onto pain. With as much experience as I’ve gained in releasing pain through feeling all of it without resistance, constantly resisting painful emotions seems completely alien to me. It also puts me at odds with those who do it, particularly when they attempt to avoid anything that reminds them of a human, animal, or experience that we both shared.

When someone mentions Sawyer and talks about him with me, it doesn’t remind me that he died. It reminds me that he lived, and it fills me with joy whenever someone wants to hear stories about him, including stories about how he made me laugh, comforted me when nobody else would, greeted me excitedly after we’d been apart for some time, and made each day special by just being himself. Additionally, it shows me that others will continue remembering and appreciating him well into the future; that I’m not the only one keeping his memory alive. That is so incredibly comforting to me.

Regarding humans who are at odds with their emotions, I don’t trust them with my emotions. I’ve learned the hard way to not expect those who won’t even address their own emotions in a healthy way to do so with mine. Those folks tend to be emotionally unavailable, unwilling to sit with me through the hard times, focus excessively on their own opinions instead of showing any interest in what I think, and give bad advice when all I want is someone who listens with the intent to understand. When I’ve trusted them (often against my better judgment), I’ve been dismissed, ignored, mocked, insulted, and shown in other ways that what someone else wants me to do is always more important to them than what is good for me. No more.

This is why I’m very cautious when talking with others about my deepest, most painful feelings. I only do this with those whom I trust, and I trust those who have consistently shown interest in what I think and feel without trying to force their own perspectives onto me, tell me I’m wrong, belittle me, etc. Even then, I only occasionally talk with others about the inner machinations of my emotional life. Everything I’ve learned about emotional intelligence has almost entirely eliminated both the need and the desire to vent about my struggles. I’m much better able to handle all sorts of emotions than I was for most of my life, and thus don’t need someone else to help me through anything shy of the most painful experiences. It is such a relief that I no longer have to risk being hurt after sharing the most vulnerable parts of myself with just anyone. When I do share, I do so with those who can support me effectively because they’ve learned how to effectively support themselves in their own emotional journeys. While that won’t change my past experiences, it will create a much nicer future than I could have otherwise obtained.

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The Joy of Sharing

Posted on June 7, 2023 by admin

Ashrita Furman has spent much of his life breaking world records. He’s done this so much that he holds the world record for holding the most world records: over 600 across his life and 530 simultaneously at the time of this writing. His creativity and collection of skills both seem to grow endlessly over time.

Although I’ve never broken a world record and I’ve not come anywhere near Ashrita in terms of skill acquisition, I still seem to collect increasingly more random, niche skills as I go through life. Juggling, unicycling, and swing dancing have been my main skills for years now. There are also the skills I’ve developed with Rubik’s Cube, rola bola, and imitating a cricket by whistling. My newest interest is card tricks, which I’ve been learning for the past few months. With any one of those skills, sometimes I demonstrate it for onlookers, sometimes I teach it to someone interested in learning it, sometimes I learn more about it from someone else, and sometimes I simply watch a master at work. I love being in any of those positions.

I find immense joy in learning how to do cool things and then sharing them with others. The joy isn’t in being able to show off, fool them, or one up them. For me, the joy comes from having fun in the journey we share through the cool thing, both the destination and the path that takes us there. Even something as simple as sharing pictures, videos, or stories of my dog Sawyer with someone who cares is wonderful.

My recent journey with card tricks has gotten me back in beginner’s mind, which, in addition to being a wonderful place, is somewhere that I haven’t visited in a long time. Since I started going to a local magic meeting back in January, I’ve mostly watched in amazement as those who’ve been doing this for many years have dazzled me with their hard-won skills. After a few months, I learned a handful of easy tricks and have, for the most part, performed them successfully in casual settings. On a few rare occasions, I’ve gotten to teach some of the easier tricks to people close to me, whether they wanted to be able to do them or just wanted to know how they’re done. I’m loving all of this. Even as I continue learning and improving at this skill, I doubt that it will shift toward wanting to show somebody up or another kind of attempt to make myself feel superior. I’m certain that the joy and satisfaction I feel from learning cool things and then sharing them with those who appreciate them will remain the core elements of my journey.

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One-Size-Fits-None

Posted on May 31, 2023 by admin

Imagine three people seek medical attention. The first has a broken arm, the second is having a heart attack, and the third has a malignant tumor. Without knowing anything else about their situations, it’s easy to see that it’d be a bad idea to give them all the same treatment. If they were all treated for one of those problems, that would help the person who has that problem while leaving the other two high and dry. Worse still would be if all three of them were treated for an issue that none of them had. The proper thing to do is customize the care to fit the needs of each patient. That gives each person the best chance of surviving, recovering, and living a good life thereafter.

The same goes for mental and emotional health. Even if two siblings close in age were traumatized from the same incident (or series of incidents), they may still both respond quite differently. For example, one may retreat inward and become extremely avoidant to any type of conflict while the other may expand outward and become extremely aggressive even in calm situations. The way each responded to the same traumatic experience will necessitate different approaches to helping them both heal and learn healthy ways of living.

Some things are standard for anyone who is struggling. Asking someone what they’re wanting and needing is an excellent starting point. Working through painful emotions is always beneficial. However, each person is still a unique individual who will get more out of a custom-tailored approach than a one-size-fits-all approach.

Unfortunately, this is often lost on those wanting to help. It seems that most folks start by offering what would help them feel better instead of checking in to see what the struggling person needs/wants. A remedy that’s perfect for the person providing help may be wholly inappropriate for the person needing help. This can result in strained relationships, delayed healing, increased health problems from unhealed pain, and other major issues.

When I lost my dog Sawyer last year, I got all kinds of opinions on what I should or shouldn’t do, how I should or shouldn’t feel, and how that experience will or won’t affect the rest of my life. I also heard several painful stories of loss, whether human or animal, from those close to me. I didn’t ask for any of that and I didn’t want it in most cases. Being told more sad stories of loss when I was deep in the worst pain I’d ever felt only made me feel worse. Wanting to avoid all of that unsolicited input is one of the reasons I kept to myself as much as I did over the past year. Fortunately, that solitude allowed me to release huge amounts of pain in ways that I never could have had I listened to what those around me were saying about grief, death, loss, etc. Despite that, I often wonder how my healing journey would have been different if others had asked me how I felt instead of assuming they already knew, inquired as to how they could help me instead of giving advice, and sought to understand my experiences instead of telling me about their own.

Mental/emotional health seems to be much less valued and much less understood than physical health. With how much pain there still is in the world despite countless advances in medicine, technology, poverty reduction, food availability, and so on, I have to think that mental/emotional well-being is the missing piece of the puzzle. For everyone’s sake, I hope that changes soon. That’s entirely possible as there are plenty of resources out there on why trauma develops, how to cure it, and how to prevent it. Even small changes in this area from one generation to the next can yield massive benefits for both current and future generations. I hope to see some major improvements before my time on Earth is through.

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It’s Simple

Posted on May 24, 2023 by admin

I’m a simple man

I strive for consistency and am full of contradictions

I want to live simply in a small town, travel around the US in a camper van, get a home in the country, and live in the city of my birth

I want to be free and independent, and also get married and raise my kids alongside some animal friends

I want to keep things as they were during my dog Sawyer’s life and find new adventures to fill my remaining years on Earth

I keep things simple while also overcomplicating them

I want to save humanity and also give up on it

I want to interact in meaningful ways with others and be by myself as often as possible

I value silence but almost never stop talking when I’m alone or around animals

I’m a good speaker and often struggle to get my words out

I’m pretty easygoing but it takes a lot to keep me feeling good

I feel more at peace than in most other times of my life and still wonder if my deepest agonies will ever end

It’s just that simple

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Grief

Posted on May 17, 2023 by admin

Grief is such a bizarre feeling.

Aside from the sheer pain, it leaves you confused more often than not.

You wonder how seemingly everyone you know can feel so good while you feel so bad.

Eventually it dawns on you that time has stopped for you but keeps moving for everyone else and that your world ended while theirs kept going.

You don’t want to be a burden, but you do want somebody to notice you feel bad.

Sometimes you want someone to make it all better.

Other times you want to be left alone.

You walk around in a daze, as if you’re halfway between asleep and awake, alive and dead.

Everything seems lackluster compared to how it was before, even your favorite things.

You end up trying everything that you think will take away even a small amount of the pain.

It seems like you’ll never feel good for more than a few seconds ever again.

You may even want to feel bad, as if feeling good would be a betrayal to the one you lost.

You might not want to die but sometimes you hope you don’t wake up in the morning.

Sleep becomes an oasis in which the pain is manageable, and perhaps even absent for a little while.

Sometimes you get to see your loved one in a dream, although that never happens as often as you want.

Then, against all odds, you find something that helps, and you cling to it with all you’ve got left.

Things gradually begin getting lighter.

One day, you realize how far you’ve come and how much better you feel.

Looking back on old memories from when the grief was still fresh, you’re amazed at the difference between then and now.

That gives you hope, and hope can work wonders in even the darkest times.

–For my dog Sawyer
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4 More Ideas to Avoid

Posted on May 10, 2023 by admin

This is a follow up to a post I wrote back in January. Given how many harmful ideas there are in the world of self-improvement, I have a feeling there will be more follow ups to come. Without further ado, here are more ideas to avoid.

  1. “You can’t become more sensitive to pleasure without also becoming more sensitive to pain.” My experience has been the exact opposite. The further I’ve gone on my personal growth journey, the less sensitive to pain I’ve gotten. By that I mean I’ve become less affected by personal attacks, manipulations, threats, and other abuses. Simultaneously, it’s become easier for me to have fun, laugh freely at things I find enjoyable, get into a good mood and stay there, recover more quickly when I get into a bad mood, etc. Having less emotional baggage has made the good feelings stronger and the bad feelings weaker. As such, I completely disagree with the notion that increased growth leads to increased sensitivity to pain. Further, the primary person who said a version of this around me has undergone little to no personal growth, and, accordingly, has no experience from which to speak on this. That is why I don’t trust her perspective on this, and my own experience is why I don’t believe others who repeat this idea.
  2. “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” Going through a painful experience doesn’t give you strength, fully recovering from it does. I’ve written before about this, so I won’t go into too much detail about it here. I will say that the pain and stress from my dog Sawyer’s death last year weakened me severely for most of 2022 and I’m certain that’s why I got sicker last summer than I had been in over a decade. All the healing work I did to get through that pain is what strengthened me, not the pain itself. Additionally, because not everyone succeeds in fully healing after a traumatic experience, anyone who doesn’t heal will experience a lower quality of life after the trauma than they had before the trauma.
  3. “Fight for those you love.” My perspective on this one has undoubtedly been shaped by being around argumentative people almost all my life. That said, I don’t see why anyone wants to fight for their relationships when they could cooperate instead. Yelling, interrupting each other, lobbing insults, and other examples of dysfunction neither solve problems nor move anybody forward. Progress and healing happen when emotions settle down and each person can communicate effectively about what’s bothering them. That doesn’t happen when tempers flare, emotions go through the roof, and nobody can hear what anybody else is saying. By the time all of the dust from a fight finally settles, so much time and energy have been wasted and huge amounts of ill will have been created. All of that makes it less likely that problems will be solved, which makes the relationship much more likely to fail. It’s much better to skip over all of that negativity by recognizing when emotions are too hot for effective communication, waiting for them to settle, having a heart-to-heart, and then quickly arriving at the problem-solving part. My life has become much more peaceful as I’ve steadily removed those who are determined to take everything personally, fight, and escalate a calm discussion into a full-blown altercation. Those who are worth sticking by are those who communicate in a civil manner and work effectively through whatever problems arise.
  4. “Match energy.” Some live by this philosophy that demands they treat others exactly how others treat them. Similarly to the previous idea, I prefer to do one better. With those who treat me well, I find it extremely easy to treat them well in return. Earlier in my life, I would treat badly those who also treated me badly. That has changed. At this point, I still treat well those who treat me well, and I interact as little as possible with those who treat me badly. I totally avoid them whenever possible; when that’s impossible, I minimize our interactions. This way, I can still feel good by refusing to stoop to their level without risking getting hurt by them yet again. Plus it leaves me with more time and energy to spend with those who treat me well.
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A Better Approach to Healing

Posted on May 3, 2023 by admin

The more I learn about trauma, the more I realize how limiting labels are. My recent increased interest in this subject came from The Body Keeps the Score. In that book, psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk covers what he has learned throughout his career of studying and treating traumatized people.

Van der Kolk believes that the increasing reliance on an endlessly growing list of different diagnoses based on symptoms has done more harm than good. He makes the point that, when starting by looking at the symptoms, any of a huge number of diagnoses can be made. The diagnoses may be complementary, opposing, or a mix of the two. Which diagnosis receives the most attention will determine what treatment(s) are pursued. That approach ignores what is going on underneath all the symptoms, including whether there might be a common cause for a variety of seemingly unrelated issues. By overlooking that, the possibility of eliminating all of the symptoms by solving the underlying problem is kept off the table.

He compares this to the state of medicine prior to the twentieth century. Due to the limited amount of information at that time, doctors both named diseases and based their treatments of those diseases around the physical symptoms that arose. As medicine advanced, such practices fell by the wayside. Unfortunately, van der Kolk sees modern psychiatry as having taken a similar path once the focus shifted to symptoms above all else.

Is someone an “introvert”, or is that person still being held back by early-life trauma? Do they still feel afraid that someone they don’t know may attack them physically or verbally, act like a friend before betraying them, or otherwise create a situation in which they feel unsafe? If so, they may be always on edge and hypervigilant to even the smallest potential threat. Similarly, is someone an “extrovert”, or does that person feel afraid to be alone with their thoughts and feelings? Are they still dealing with unhealed trauma and so look to be constantly distracted (especially by interacting with others) to avoid having to face that deep-seated pain? In that case, they may always struggle to focus on the present moment and talk at length to escape the inner agony. Either way, labels derived from looking at symptoms seem to do more harm than good by obscuring important information that isn’t immediately visible.

Looking only at symptoms while ignoring the root cause is nothing new, and it applies to much more than mental/emotional health. I’m convinced that many of the problems that have plagued humanity for centuries and even millennia are still around because the source of those problems has never been addressed. If it were, then I believe that so much of what has long been considered to be part of “the human condition” would evaporate within a generation or two. Although I have no idea if that will happen and I’m not holding my breath that it will, I’d love to see it put to the test. If I’m right, then the world could forever change for the better. If I’m wrong, then I’d start looking for another possible solution.

As you can guess, the importance of solving the underlying problem rather than merely treating the symptoms was my biggest takeaway from the book, although I was already thinking along those lines long before I read it or knew much about it. Above all else, the primary reason I am so interested in this because getting to the root of the problem has done more good for my health and well-being than any amount of focusing solely on symptoms. I’ve only been doing this since late 2020 and already it’s completely overhauled my life. I’m convinced that it was *the* thing that allowed me to make it through the pain of losing my dog Sawyer. Even without looking at everything it’s done for me before and since then, that alone makes it worthwhile. I hope that this becomes more common so that more people can experience true healing and lasting relief from issues that have long been tormenting them and their loved ones.

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