Buenos días de México! Y feliz año nuevo, y todo that has passed since I closed my practice in Seattle and began this sabbatical time.

— I’ve been in Mexico just over one month. This after a month in Austin, that after two months in Montana, my beloved homeland. This last leg, Mexico, has definitely felt the most emotionally challenging to me. All three have been different intensives of sorts in Life 101 — all beautiful, deep and useful in their own right.

— I’ve not been publishing any writing, nor making any videos. This has felt like an important step for me: letting everything, all my ideas about how things work, go.

— My feeling is that tide is starting to turn a bit, again, towards the outer world, towards production and how I can both be of use in this world and have a good time doing it (or as F. Buechner said: “the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”)

— I see, at least in a lot of our culture, the need and desire for:

• inexpensive, sane health care — also simple where applicable — especially for chronic and metabolic pain/disorders
• movement that is both fun (play) and yet uses smart progressions and has answers (training); if play is for the inner child, training is for the inner adult; both seem important to me
• body-centered guidance for those who are energetically sensitive (a lot, and I’m guessing more and more, are), while still living your normal life: being a mother, husband, employee, etc
• more lived, no-nonsense empathy, and ASAP; from climate change to education reform to the day-to-day how we talk to each other, this seems to me a, if not the, central pillar supporting real and lasting positive change

— I feel excited about being part of the conversation, well underway already, about all of those needs above. This excitement has been there for awhile and is getting further stoked during my time off (for which, you may recall, the sole mission has been: burn everything; see what remains and grows naturally, with minimal if any management).

— How this will happen, i.e. what I’ll do … I’m still unsure. I do imagine, and get the hunch, that it’ll be at least a rebranding of what I do and what I can offer. One affect is my website name, and thus location including blog, might change (but the switch’ll be easy, promise, if you’ll like to join me in this new movement, and I hope you will).

— I’ve lost almost all interest, as far as I can tell, in trying to be or sound like someone else, even a little bit. What a gift.

So, my next steps seem to me, in summary: keep listening close, keep writing a lot, keep moving and learning a lot, in ways both obvious and subtle, both fun and emotionally terrifying. And when comes the time to create, create.

Adios, from last night’s sunset over San Miguel.

I will keep you posted.

Thank you all who have sent me your thoughts, guidance, questions, considerations and well wishes. (There’s an amazing crew of people following this blog and on my e-list!)

Cheers, paz, luz, amor,

LB

For this post, I wanted to share a conversation I had over someone who watched and commented on one of my YouTube videos (the one that kind of went crazy with the 20,000+ views).

I think this conversation points to something really important, how tissues, how we, do or don’t regenerate. And to encourage some questioning of old assumptions, so old and so assumptive we often don’t even know they’re there.

This conversation ends with question only, and in that sense isn’t inspirational like “here’s how this guy got past his pain after a ‘permanent’ diagnosis”—I haven’t heard back from him, and may never—tho’ I hope it gets some gears turning for you. (Obviously, for sure and of course: I’m just trying my best, giving my best educated guess, here too! I’m not a doctor, not a physical therapist, nor anyone who can diagnose per se, much less over the internet. Again, the important part, I think, is the question.)

The guy says:

I have a tingling, burning, stinging pain in the bottom of both feet and in the toes that started at the same time. I can’t relate to what caused it besides that I do cycle a lot. After over three months I can barely walk they hurt so much, I had a EMG test and was told I have damaged nerves – Neuropathy. I was told there was nothing I could do to fix the problem. He put me on Gabapentin 300mg and said it could take up to a month before the med starts helping. I have found out if I press on a nerve on the bottom of my foot in the area of the arch my pain goes crazy…  I know what the doctor said but the nerve I pressed on sure seem to be the source of my pain.

My reply:

Hey Robert, sorry to hear that amigo … I’d go see a highly-reviewed PT, or practitioner like what I do, asap! Sounds like some release could be really helpful, and at LEAST get another opinion besides going right to the gaba … my 2 cents

He reiterates:

My Neurologist did a EMG test and told me that I had peripheral neuropathy.

And here’s my reply, and the part I wanted to emphasize …

Totally, I’m just saying I’d go get a second opinion.

Maybe you already have. And obviously I don’t know that what your neurologist said is or isn’t absolutely true—that there’s nothing you can do to fix it—but I think it’s at least worth another look by another practitioner, preferably from a different field.

There was a time not long ago when most medical practitioners thought posture, i.e. the amalgamation of joint spaces that give you your particular shape, was fixed and unchangeable. That’s patently not true, as most would agree now.

I think much of what’s emerging around metabolic conditions and neurology will prove to be much more curable than the standard med thinks now … Just a hunch, and hope it helps.

…

Back to us, I’ll end the same way: hope this helps! Cheers, LB