Anything Can Happen
In February of 2023, I sat in my car in the driveway of my house and said out loud for maybe the first time in my life:
I want to die.
I’d felt this same sensation in my body too many times to count: the rising panic that starts in my belly, swells in my chest, and chokes me at my throat; the tidal wave of hopelessness; the absolute certainty that this feeling will last forever and there is no relief in sight. But while the feeling may have been familiar, what was different this time was the fact that I named it. I said it out loud. I didn’t choke it down, didn’t dismiss it, didn’t pretend like I didn’t mean it. This time, I let it live outside of me and that single act probably saved my life.
It’s the poison we swallow that kills us, not the kind we spit out.
I went into the house after the wave subsided, found my wife upstairs, and told her I needed help. She heard me, promised her support in whatever measures I wanted to take, and the next day I got to work figuring out a plan.
It wasn’t like I was new to needing help. At the time, I was four years sober, a feat that doesn’t happen without a team of therapists and loads of support, but this time felt different. I knew I needed something new, something I couldn’t outsmart. I knew I needed to turn toward the trauma that had taken root in my body and help it find a way out. I just didn’t know how to do that alone.
Enter Katie Asmus and the Somatic Nature Therapy Institute. How I found Katie is a delightful story about the intersection of sacred intuition and the algorithmic power of Google, but it is a story for a different day. What matters is that I found her and that what she offers also happened to be exactly what I needed. By June, I was in my car, driving 900 miles to a mountain outside of Boulder, CO where we were scheduled for a 3-day intensive. Just me, Katie, that mountain, and the smallest sliver of hope that I wouldn’t have to carry this weight in my body forever.
I got into Boulder the night before our intensive started, so I found some Sweetgreen for dinner and holed up in my Embassy Suites, hoping for a mindless night before our work started the next day. But the longer I sat munching on sweet potatoes and chickpeas, the more this sense of dread started to spread in my belly.
“What have I done?” I said out loud.
I drove 900 miles and spent thousands of dollars to work with a woman I’d never meant on some remote land 10,000 feet in the air. Who does that? What if it didn’t work? Worse yet, what if she’s weird and I don’t like her? Way worse than that… what if this is some sort of trap and she lures people to this land to… what? I mean killing me felt far-fetched, but also, I’ve had some weird shit happen in my life, so it wasn’t completely beyond the realm of possibility.
And as the panic rose, I realized I had two choices: get in my car and head home or turn toward the terror and figure out a way through. I chose the latter. It was one of the wisest choices I’ve made to date.
For about a year before this, I’d been practicing this method of movement called The Class that I could access through their virtual platform. I’d used it many times to intervene in places where I felt panic rising in a way I couldn’t talk myself out of, and so without any other option available to me, I got out my computer, queued up a Class, and hit play. The theme of this class was “Meeting Uncertainty” and the teacher opened with a reflection that asked me to consider these three words:
Anything can happen.
On one hand, these three words can inspire hope. They open a horizon of possibility that stretches the imagination and makes room for something new. On the other hand, they can incite terror, reminding us that bad things happen to good people without provocation every single day and there is nothing stopping us from being the next one in line for potential tragedy. But her point was simple… those three words really only mean one thing:
They mean exactly what they say. Anything can happen. In either direction, anything can happen and anything likely will. Our only job is to be present to the possibility of both.
The next day, I ascended that mountain, met Katie (she’s not weird - well, she’s a little weird but in the way the best people are always a little weird,) and together we did the kind of work that changed everything for me. In fact, Somatic Sessions were born on that mountain when I shouted out loud on the second day of the intensive:
"EVERYONE NEEDS TO KNOW THEIR BODIES ARE CAPABLE OF DOING THIS!”
And now, here we are, many months later, and hundreds of people do know that their bodies are capable of - in fact, created to - turn toward the trauma and give it a path out. Here we are, many months later, celebrating over 500 visits to the studio in the month of November. Here we are, many months later, with many months ahead of us to discover what becomes possible when we begin to believe that anything can happen and that anything always does and that every anything is always better when we experience it together.
And so come in. Join us in this work. Find your way free. Then, lead others to do the same.