I was not in a fixed state.

On April 12, 2020, I nearly died.

And somewhere in that hospital bed, I made a decision.

If I got to live, I was going to live differently.

I didn’t know what differently looked like. I didn’t know how to change. I didn’t know who I would become or how radically my life could transform.

I only knew that the way I had been living could no longer continue.

What I didn’t understand then was perhaps the most important thing I would eventually learn:

I was not in a fixed state.

For years, I had mistaken patterns for personality. I thought certain ways of thinking, reacting, coping, shrinking, controlling, fearing, and surviving were simply who I was.

They weren’t.

They were patterns.

And patterns can change.

That realization fundamentally changed my life.

The years that followed became an extraordinary education in transformation—not only through study, training, teachers, and mentors, but through the lived experience of rebuilding a life from the inside out.

I learned about the nervous system. I learned about somatic response and body-based healing. I learned that insight is important, but insight alone doesn’t necessarily create change. I learned that the body can continue responding to an old experience long after the mind understands it.

But what surprised me most was that this transformation wasn’t only happening in my mind.

It was happening in my body.

As I began to understand my nervous system and my body’s stress response, things began to shift physically. Ailments I believed I would live with forever—and some I had been told would never fully resolve—began to change.

I started to understand what prolonged stress had been asking my body to carry. And rather than continually living at the mercy of that stress response, I learned how to recognize it, regulate it, and gradually turn down the volume.

Not through one enormous intervention, but through small, intentional somatic experiences—tiny bridges that repeatedly showed my body something different.

You are safe here. You can soften here. You don’t have to respond the way you always have.

And as my mind changed, my body began changing with it.

That was one of the most profound discoveries of my life: my body wasn’t simply something I needed to manage or fight against. It was something I could learn to listen to, work with, and support.

I began to realize that I could become an active participant in my own healing.

Most importantly, I learned that transformation doesn’t usually happen in one enormous, cinematic moment.

It happens in the moments that follow.

• What do I do when I’m triggered?
• What do I do when I’m afraid?
• What do I do when my body wants to react the way it always has?
• How do I stay with myself instead of abandoning myself?
• How do I practice becoming the person I now know I can be?

Those are the steps between the steps.

And that is where SBS — Steps Between the Steps — was born.

Today, I am a mindset, nervous system, and somatic teacher. I help people recognize the patterns that are keeping them stuck and teach them practical, physical ways to create a different response.

I want the people I work with to have more than an insight.

I want them to leave with something they can do.

A somatic practice. A way to regulate their nervous system. A different response. A stronger voice. A physical tool they can use when life is actually happening—not three hours later when they’ve finally calmed down.

Because the tool can be simple.

The transformation can be profound.

I know that because I have lived it.

I once believed my life was something I had to endure, manage, or somehow make the best of.

I had no idea how changeable a human life could be.

Today, I have a genuine joie de vivre—a zest and reverence for being alive that I could never have manufactured by simply telling myself to think positively.

I know what it means to get another chance at life.

And I don’t believe we have to nearly lose our lives before we decide to truly inhabit them.

That’s why I created SBS.

I had to discover much of this slowly, piece by piece. Had someone handed me these tools and taught me what was happening in my mind, my body, and my nervous system, I believe I could have found my way much sooner.

Now I get to be that teacher for someone else.

SBS is the space between knowing better and living differently.

And sometimes, that space is where an entirely new life begins.