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If you’re reading this, I’m going to assume a few things about you already.

You’re not looking for “10 mindset hacks.”
You’re not looking for another hype coach screaming discipline at a camera.
You’re not looking for a soft, spiritual bypass with pretty words and no backbone.

You’ve already done enough life to know that surface fixes don’t hold.

You’re here because something in you is tired of circling the same drain.
You don’t want enlightenment posters.
You want a way of living that actually changes your nervous system, your body, your choices, and the way you feel when you’re alone at 2 a.m.

So let me start clean:

Who I Am and Why I’m Still Here

I’m Sam.

6–11: sexually abused.
14–20: hall-of-fame alcoholic.
19–20: starved myself from 170 lb down to 122 lb.
20: fully accepted suicide, made a plan, went to the cliff. Got interrupted by a miracle.
21: had my last real drink the night I turned 21.

That’s the quick version.

The longer version is this:

I grew up carrying a secret that burned holes through everything.
I didn’t have language for what happened, but my body did: dissociation, shame, chronic anxiety, rage that never quite found a target.

By 14, alcohol became the first thing that felt like an answer.
Not because it was fun—because it was quiet.
Inside the bottle was the only place my nervous system could drop below panic for a second.

From 14 to 20 I drank like I was trying to erase myself.
I’d starve, binge, black out, deny, repeat.
On paper I could play the game—athletic, smart, “fine.” Internally I was dissolving.

At 19–20, the self-hate turned inward harder.
I stopped eating. Watched myself shrink in the mirror like it was a project.
Every pound lost felt like proof I could control something about the pain.

Then came the weekend everything snapped.

I won’t glamorize suicide and I won’t give you instructions.
What matters is: I made the decision.
Not “cry for help” decision. Actual decision.
I was done. I was calm. I had a plan and a place.

And then something I cannot logically explain interrupted that plan.

Call it God, grace, probability, whatever you need.
I call it a miracle because it gave me one thing I hadn’t had in years: a crack of doubt about my own despair.

I flew home.
I confessed more to my parents in one letter than I’d said out loud in my whole life.
I detoxed—off alcohol, off starvation, off the identity I’d glued myself into.

And then I walked into a gym.

Not to get jacked. Not with some heroic intention.
Just because it was down the street and there was nothing left but try something.

That gym happened to have a dry sauna.

So after I lifted a few clueless sets, I walked into a cedar box at 200+ degrees, sat down, and for whatever reason, closed my eyes and followed my breath.

That random choice—barbells, then sauna, then stillness—became the spine of everything I’ve built since.

I Didn’t Learn This to Teach You.

I Learned It to Not Die

This is important to understand up front.

I didn’t wake up one day and decide to be “trauma-informed” or “a healer” or “a men’s coach.”
I didn’t sit in a café and brand myself.

I started lifting and meditating and reading and journaling because I knew in my bones that if I didn’t find a way to live inside my own head, I would not make it to 25.

There were no hashtags in that decision.
Just survival.

I tried everything on the way out:

Therapy that helped and then hit limits.
Meditation apps that took the edge off, then felt like toys.
Psychedelics—psilocybin specifically—that ripped open the memories I’d buried and forced me to confront what actually happened to me as a kid.
Breathwork, journaling, dopamine detoxes.
Ultra-masculine “no excuses” phases.
Soft spiritual phases.

Most things helped a little and then stopped helping.
Not because they were fake—but because they were incomplete.

The gym and the sauna didn’t fix me either.
What they did was give me a repeatable structure to sit in front of myself every single day without running.

Heavy weight is honest. Heat is honest.
You can’t lie to a barbell or to your breath at 230 degrees.

Over time, I realized something no one online was really saying in a way that clicked:

The point isn’t healing. The point is capacity.

Why “Healing” Was Making Me Worse

Here’s the part where I lose some people, and that’s fine.

When I chased healing as a goal, I became more miserable.

Why?

Because healing, the way culture markets it, is secretly about trying to change the past so you can feel different in the present.

“I will do XYZ so that Future Me is healed, and then Present Me won’t hurt.”

That logic doesn't make sense.

Every time I “worked on healing,” I was reinforcing the belief:

“I am broken now, and my life starts later.”

So I would:

Go to therapy → feel lighter → crash.
Learn more about trauma → feel awakened → crash.
Do a “new protocol” → feel hopeful → crash.

Cynicism grew.

Because underneath everything I was still relating to myself as someone broken who needed fixing.

What finally clicked was this:

You cannot heal the past.
You can only build the capacity to stay present with what already happened without splitting yourself in half.

The goal stopped being “heal trauma.”
The goal became become large enough inside that my trauma fits in me without owning me.

When I focused on that—on capacity, on presence, on nervous system regulation—something weird happened:
Healing started to show up as a side effect.

Memories didn’t disappear.
But the charge around them changed.

I could think about what happened without my stomach dropping through the floor.
I could talk about my story without my whole identity becoming it.
I could feel pain and not immediately reach for a drink, a distraction, or a plan.

This is the first big distinction in how I live and how I teach:

Healing as a goal will eat you.
Capacity as a goal will liberate you.

Why the Body Has to Go First

You can’t mindset your way out of a dysregulated nervous system.

If your body is stuck in fight-or-flight from age 6 onwards, all the “reframes” in the world are just decoration on top of panic.

This is one place my path diverges from a lot of spiritual communities and mindset creators.

Most people start with:

Beliefs
Affirmations
Journaling
Story work

All of which can be helpful.

But if the body is still convinced you’re under threat, the mind will either:

collapse into numbness, or spiral into hyper-control.

For me, the gym and sauna were the first environments where my body could express and discharge the trapped energy in a way that actually mapped to reality:

Heavy squats = my system finally getting to push back, to express force.
Long runs = my system finally getting to move, to complete all those freeze-and-fawn responses.
Sauna meditations = my system finally getting to sit in stress on purpose and learn that I can survive it.

After lifting, my mind was quieter.
After the sauna, my ego was too tired to perform.
In that post-workout, post-sauna pocket, my awareness could “shoot into the stars” and stay tethered to my body.

I didn’t know the neuroscience terms then.
I just knew:

If I trained hard and then sat still, truth could reach me.

Over years, this became an equation:

Bodywork (tension) + Breath (pattern) + Stillness (awareness) = Capacity.

That’s the core of my method.

Not because it sounds cool.
Because it’s the only thing that consistently worked when nothing else did.

Awakening vs Embodiment

I’ve watched a lot of people chase big mystical experiences:

Ayahuasca
High-dose psychedelics
Kundalini activations
Retreat highs

A lot of them find “awakening” in the sense that they feel oneness, love, unity, the whole thing.

And then they come home…
…and still can’t regulate their emotions,
still self-sabotage,
still blow up relationships,
still disappear into addictions.

That’s not because the experiences were fake.

It’s because awakening shows you the sky. Embodiment teaches you how to live on the ground.

My mentor, right after my suicide weekend, told me not to do ayahuasca.

At first, I didn’t get it. I knew enough to understand how powerful that medicine can be for trauma survivors.

Her words were something like: “It would be too much. You’d float.”

What she meant:
I had already been cracked open. My problem was not access to transcendence—it was anchor.

My system didn’t need more sky.
I needed density. Muscle. Ritual. Breath. Faith. Form.

That’s why I say:

The gym is one of the most honest spiritual temples we have.
It’s where heaven gets metabolized.

Your “awakening” doesn’t matter if you can’t hold eye contact with your partner when they’re upset, if you can’t tell the truth about your cravings, if you can’t stay with your breath when a barbell is on your back.

So my work is not about getting you high on consciousness.
It’s about integrating whatever you’ve already seen into:

your training
your nutrition
your relationships
your nervous system
your daily rituals

Awakening is the spark.
Embodiment is the forge.

The Men I Actually Speak To

I’m not for everyone. I’m not supposed to be.

This is who I’m really writing to:

The guy who is miserable in his own mind, even though his life looks “fine” on paper.
He lives in cycles of self-sabotage he can’t fully explain.
He’s dissociated from his body or stuck in chronic pain and fatigue.
He’s anxious all day, always thinking 5 moves ahead but never actually present.
He slips back into vices—porn, booze, weed, work, whatever—he swore he was done with.
He’s losing respect for himself in quiet ways.
He feels a burning in his chest or his gut that there’s way more to life than what he’s been offered.
He’s spiritually open but allergic to organized religion as he’s seen it.
He’s allergic to fake in general. He can smell performance a mile away.
He’s tired of “trying harder” and secretly terrified that nothing will ever actually change.

If that’s you, I get it. I was you.

You’ve probably tried:

Therapy
Meditation apps
Cold plunges
Psychedelics
Breathwork retreats
Journaling
Self-help books
High-discipline grinds

Some of it worked for a while. None of it gave you a full system that held when life hit back.

That’s the gap I exist to fill.

What I Actually Know How to Do

Here’s the part where most people start stacking marketing jargon.
I’m not interested in that.

This is plain:

In the physical dimension, I can:

Get you stronger and more muscular in a way that supports, not destroys, your joints and nervous system.
Build you a nutrition structure that keeps you lean, fueled, and clear without turning you into a macro-obsessed robot.
Teach you how to use endurance training (running, etc.) as a spiritual and psychological tool, not just cardio.

In the mental/emotional dimension, I can:

Teach you how to actually meditate—not as an app habit, but as a direct practice of presence.
Show you how to read your emotions as data instead of threats.
Help you understand your nervous system so you stop thinking you’re “broken” when you’re just overloaded.
Show you how to suffer on purpose—in the gym, in the sauna, in life—in ways that build resilience instead of trauma.

In the spiritual dimension (in the least fluffy sense), I can:

Point you toward how I found God—not as a rule-set, but as a living presence.
Show you where to look for meaning that doesn’t collapse when circumstances change.
Teach you how to build an internal guidance system so you don’t have to outsource every decision to a mentor, guru, or algorithm.

Practically, that means:

I can teach you presence.
I can help you develop awareness.
I can teach you to listen to your intuition so you run on brainpower and instinct.
I can help you become someone who can be seen without wanting to crawl out of your skin.
I can help you turn confidence from a performance into a side effect of how you actually live.
I can show you where peace is and how to return there under pressure.

I can’t make you invincible.
I can’t make your life painless.
But I can walk you into a way of living where pain no longer dictates your behavior.

My Philosophy in One Line

If I had to compress everything I’ve learned into one sentence, it would be this:

The goal is to become a human who can stay present with reality as it is, and act coherently, under load.

Load = trauma history, stress, barbell, heartbreak, success, whatever.
Coherence = your body, mind, spirit, and actions point in the same direction.

The tools are simple:

Lift heavy with precision.
Not chasing ego numbers, but learning to handle intensity on purpose.
Breathe with awareness.
Use breath as the steering wheel of your nervous system.
Sit in stillness.
Not because it’s trendy, but because awareness needs empty space.
Tell the truth.
To yourself first, then to others.
Repeat. For years.

Over time, the system you are changes:

You stop quitting on yourself.
You stop needing to collapse.
You stop outsourcing your sense of “Am I okay?” to other people’s reactions.

You don’t become some perfect enlightened being.
You become a man who can be trusted—by himself first.

Why I’m Building a Curriculum, Not a Coaching Personality

I could have done what everyone online does:

12-week 1:1 programs
High-ticket masterminds
“Heal your trauma in 8 weeks” funnels

The problem is: this process is not linear and it is not 8–12 weeks.

Even moving fast, it took me about three full years to move from suicidal, addicted, dissociated, and scattered…
…to sober, strong, regulated, aware, and actually peaceful most days.

And that was with a miracle, a mentor, a brutal amount of self-work, and no map.

So what I’m building is not a “program.”
It’s more like an academy or a curriculum:

Levels instead of deadlines.
Embodied tests instead of worksheets.
Clear “grades” you pass through at your own pace that prove you're headed in the right direction.
You pay as you progress, not for a time-box with arbitrary pressure.

Because this is the most individual process on Earth, and trying to cram it into standard coaching timelines is a disservice.

I’ll keep creating free content so anyone who’s hungry can learn the principles.
That’s how I pieced most of this together myself—books, podcasts, long walks, and a lot of trial and error.

But if you want structure, if you want someone who’s actually walked the full arc and can say, “Here, do this next, skip that dead end,” that’s what my paid work will become.

What You Should Take From This

(Even If We Never Talk)

Whether you ever join anything I build or not, here’s what I want you to walk away with:

You’re not broken.
Your nervous system is responding logically to what it’s been through. You’re overloaded, not defective.
Healing is a side effect, not a target.
Aim at capacity, presence, and coherence. Let “healing” be what shows up when you stop trying to fix the past.
Your body is the gateway.
If you’re not training, breathing, and resting in a way that respects your biology, no mindset tool will hold under real pressure.
Awakening is cheap. Embodiment is rare.
Seeing the truth doesn’t mean you live it. Build structures that force you to practice it daily.
You don’t need a guru. You need a structure.
A human can guide you. A curriculum can hold you. But no one is coming to save you. You will have to participate.

Why I Care This Much

I have no interest in being “another coach.”
I don’t want to be your hero, or your father, or your savior.

I care because I know exactly how it feels to be:

ready to die,
completely alone in your experience,
suspicious of every person who claims to have answers,
and still unwilling to give up on the idea that life could be something else.

It tears me apart, in a good way, that I can’t just upload what I’ve learned straight into your nervous system.

So this—these words, the training systems I build, the curriculum I’m designing—that’s my best attempt at translating lived, hard-won truth into something you can actually use.

Not for a weekend.
For the rest of your life.

If anything in you read this and thought “Finally, someone actually gets it”, then good.

That means you’re not crazy.
You’re not alone.
And there is a way to build a life where your past is fully acknowledged, fully felt, and no longer in control.

From here, the path is simple, not easy:

Pick up the weight.
Feel your breath.
Sit in the heat.
Tell the truth.
Repeat.

Everything else unfolds from that.

TRAUMA & ADDICTION RECOVERY

Strength | Discipline | Presence