Tales from a life of battling pain—physical, mental, emotional, spiritual. I’ve faced it all. Now, my purpose is to turn my experience into a roadmap to healing for others.
The speaker opens with a friendly greeting and describes being in Santa Barbara, highlighting the area's healing qualities and the reason for the visit.
The host ties the trip to a larger theme about what to set down, explains creating and outgrowing identities, and links this personal transition to recent struggles with anxiety.
The speaker narrates the timeline and impact of a ruptured appendix, including intense pain, cancelled plans, hospital recovery, and reframing the event as a forced but meaningful pause in life.
He connects a past knee injury and systemic inflammation to mental stuckness, explains researching treatments, and describes traveling to Santa Barbara to learn a Resistance, Flexibility, and Strength modality that quickly relieved his pain.
The host outlines how the modality associates identity types with organs and meridians, explains fascia release and trauma-related pain, and reveals that his 'appendix' type represents change—tying his appendicitis to personal transformation.
He commits to saying no more often, describes dietary and lifestyle resets to reduce inflammation, expresses gratitude for support, and previews a stretching session for recovery before signing off.
Good morning, cadre. How is everyone doing today? I am coming at you from Santa Barbara, California. One of the most healing places in the entire world. Surrounded by mountains, surrounded by ocean. I've been told it's the only climate in North America or even the Western Hemisphere that mimics the same temperature of the Mediterranean. So you have all this unique flora around here. And it's just incredibly beautiful. And I am here for a unique reason. And I'm going to tie it in with the theme for this month, the theme for this week.
And especially for this week, what can you set down? And I am setting down an identity that I created, gratefully created and so grateful for, but am ready to move on from. And I've done this a few times in my life. I'm a creator. I love to create things, grow them, and get to the point where they are flourishing in their own right and I can move on to create something else. And for a while, I guess for the past couple years, I was having a tough time. I was really dealing with anxiety that I didn't want to deal with and anxiety is very similar to pain.
Physical pain is information and anxiety is also information. You're feeling it for a reason and it's important not to mask that anxiety with things that are going to mask your feelings. You got to be in touch with them and Gosh, how do I tie? There's so many stories tied in all this, so I'm gonna see where I end up going with this one. But I think I mentioned, actually I don't even think I mentioned this, but if I did, I'm still in the story, so I'm gonna mention it again. But I had surgery for a ruptured appendix on, I don't even know what it was.
It was the second Thursday of April. Time has flown by. It's been very crazy for me. But yeah, my appendix ruptured right as I was going to be officially kind of moving on from this identity that I created ten years ago. And with that identity that I'm moving on from, I still do plan to have Some relationship to it. I've got a relationship with all of the identities that I've created and moved on from evolved from grown through over the years and It's important to leave all that in good standing and I love that but I'm ready to lean into my what my role is in the wellness world and Having my appendix rupture literally the day I'm transitioning into this new role could have sent me in a spiral.
You know, I had doctors telling me I could die. I was hearing all these horror stories of what happens to somebody when their appendix ruptures. And, you know, it was quite the ordeal. I was in pain for four days, terrible pain. And I could have let myself just be really depressed and disappointed. The pain started for me after Easter dinner when I had gone to sleep, and that Monday I had meetings scheduled. All week I had these incredible sauna meetings scheduled, one of which was with the CADRE contributor, Jen Varale.
We had to push that back, but I was grateful to get a sauna in. A few weeks down the road, she was my first sauna session post-surgery, so that was great. But I just got all excited talking about Jed and I lost my train of thought. Thanks, Jed. So yeah, I had to cancel all these meetings. And I worked hard to kind of set this transition in place and then all of a sudden it's just blown up, literally, inside my body, right? I had to deal with that. So as I was, in the four days I was in pain, I was just suffering, I was trying to not be in pain.
And then post-surgery as I'm in the hospital trying to recover with a tube sticking out of my stomach, kind of a funny little thing, but the night I had surgery, my business, back channel brewing, amazing business, you should go, even if you don't drink, you don't need a drink to go to the brewery. We have plenty of NA options, more NA than beer. But as I'm having surgery, my brewery won best brewery in the state of Minnesota. And that wonderful accomplishment may have prevented myself from moving fully into my identity, right?
It's one of those things that kind of happens where it's like, oh, no, We're going to reel you back in. We're going to reel you right back into this identity. It's like we know it's comfortable for you. You've been doing it for a while. Let's reel you back in by giving you best brewery in the state of Minnesota. My appendix, my appendix had other plans. My appendix probably knew this was happening. It was like, no, I'm going to be making the rules from here on out. I'm going to slow things down for Josh.
Not speed things up. I want the appendix is talking here. The appendix wanted this transition into this next identity to be about doing it at the right pace. And I am super grateful for it. Not even upset at the least. You know, my appendix burst. So what? Here I am. I had a great support system. Everything happens for a reason. You gotta just look for the bright spot of that reason. Don't let it get you down. So now I'm here in Santa Barbara, and I came here last year around this time. It was actually mid-April, so a little over a year ago, and it was for a knee injury that I had while playing hockey.
And that knee injury wasn't getting better. It was like stuck, you know? And I can relate this to this stuckness of the identity that was in. So now my knee was becoming this physical example of this mental anguish that I was navigating. And it just wouldn't get better. And I've had three ACL surgeries, you heard my story a little bit. So I'm very in tune with my knees. But it wasn't getting better. And then the pain started to manifest throughout my whole entire body. It got so bad that I couldn't even raise my arms over my shoulders and my wife Melissa would have to roll me out of bed because I didn't have the strength.
to do it. It hurts so bad. And I found out after seeing a couple, going to a couple doctors and eventually a rheumatologist that I just had inflammation. So with that, I made the decision. I was like, gosh, I got to tone it down on what I'm consuming. I got to tone down the refined sugar in my diet. I got to really toned down any sort of alcohol even though I was doing a better job at that. I haven't really consumed much alcohol over the past few years. Nothing like when I started the brewery. So I was doing a better job of balancing that in my life.
But it just wasn't getting any better and my knee was really frustrating me. So I did some research and I found a gentleman who created this modality called Resistance, Flexibility and Strength Training and I had been utilizing his book for the previous couple years for solo stretching and it was incredible. I got me playing hockey after 12 years of not being able to play hockey and I didn't even think I was going to be able to play hockey again. And so I come out, I signed up for this seven day intensive course where I'm going to learn how to stretch.
So I figure if I have, if I go to the source and get the tools, I'm going to be able to figure this out. And so I go to Santa Barbara and I'm not even there for a day and a half and my knee pain is gone. It was incredible. I was able to, sorry, you're kind of catching me shivering here a little bit. The sun's coming up. It's like 50 degrees here. It's going to be 66 later. I got a Tangelo tree in the back, but it's a little breezy. So anyways, so I get my knee healed, the inflammation pain is significantly reduced, and it was fantastic.
I really connected with Bob Cooley, the creator of this modality, and I came there for stretching, right, and learned a whole lot more. I learned that he has created this whole genetic personality type relationship to his modality that is also associated with the Chinese meridians and it's fascinating. I was like a little taken back at first, but the more I listened, the more I learned, the more I did a little of my own research into what he has created, I was kind of sold. I was like, wow, this makes a lot of sense.
Is it going to be my complete guide forever and ever? No, but it's a wonderful reference and it's a great way for me to learn about myself, learn about others, and kind of just understand the evolution of life a little bit better. So these identity types are associated with organs in the body that are associated with meridians, that are associated with muscles. So when you're stretching muscles, you are also stretching organs, which is allowing you to just be functioning at the top level. And what this modality does is that when you're doing the assisted portion of it, you are generating so much force that you're eliminating dense fascia in the body that has been created either from physical trauma or emotional trauma.
That's right. Pain can be stuck in us from emotional trauma When our body reacts to something that it doesn't want to happen again, so it protects us. So if something bad happens to you as a child or if something happens later in life and you get really depressed, that will leave a mark inside your body. And depending on its relation to what meridian and what relation to the situation, there's a stretch for that. And as I learned what Bob my type was, I learned that I was the appendix. And the appendix represents change.
So when I was going through this change in my life, this change through this identity, and I found out I had appendicitis, and I was like, I don't want to get rid of that. That's who I am. And then my appendix, it had other plans, and it's like, no, you don't need me. You don't need me anymore. I've served my purpose and now I'm going to explode and leave my legacy. So I feel like my appendix, my appendix's legacy is to force me to slow down in life, force me to be my authentic self, force me to not take meetings just because it's a meeting and I should take it.
No. is a complete sentence. I can use that. And I'm going to try to get more comfortable with saying no to things that might not make it through this filter that I've created to ensure that I'm taking the right steps to hit my goals. So, you know, I guess That was a lot. And I'll kind of continue to unpack all that throughout stories each week and kind of what it means to me. But you're catching me at this really beautiful time in my life. I'm going to have to start kind of building myself from the inside out.
new diet. So for a month now, I haven't had any alcohol, any sugar, any coffee. Can you believe that? I guess you could say I've had caffeine because I've had some green tea, but cut out caffeine. I mean, I'm going down to the bare bones here to truly build myself back up from the inside out. And I am so grateful for the support system that I have from my wife, my family, my friends. I'm so grateful that I get to tell this story to the Kyrosphere and help myself understand what I'm going through.
So I've got a pretty exciting day. I'm going to be getting stretched by Bob Cooley and two of his trainers today. We're working on eliminating inflammation in my body because I got a lot of organs that are inflamed from the toxic liquid that was spilled out of my ruptured appendix and also going to be doing some of these stretches to eliminate scar tissue and prevent scar tissue from even developing so it's gonna be a good day and I don't know what the weather's like back home, but I'm gonna send some of this Santa Barbara sun your way, and I'll look forward to speaking with you all another day.
Cheers cadre.
