I'm Michael.
I understand this work because it's my journey too.
I’m a personal coach who works with people navigating lives that have been changed by chronic health conditions. A life-changing health condition catapulted me into a years-long (and still ongoing) exploration of my body, mind, identity, and spirit. My own winding, humbling, confusing, and ultimately evolutionary path is the foundation of my coaching. My philosophies, modalities are shaped by the very questions I continue navigating:
How do I trust and live in an unpredictable body? How do I make sense of who I am now? How do I build capacity for navigating difficult experiences - physically, emotionally, spiritually? These are the questions we navigate together.
Before I was a coach, I worked in finance for many years. I felt pulled toward something deeper - some sort of interpersonal work. I wanted a life more connected to my values, less caught up in noise and achievement, So I left finance and spent time in Southeast Asia studying Buddhist and contemplative traditions. At the time, I thought that was the beginning of my deeper path.
Then, while traveling, I sustained a life-changing head injury.
What had been a voluntary exploration of mindfulness became survival. The symptoms were relentless and upended every facet of my life. In fact, it felt like my life stopped. I had no lens beyond getting through the day, and underneath it, always: how will I ever get out of this and back to normal life?
Living with post-concussion symptoms for years became its own kind of curriculum. I had to learn to inhabit a body that no longer felt reliable, to face uncertainty every single day, and to rebuild a relationship with myself when nothing looked like it used to. Slowly, the question changed. Recovery wasn't about getting back to who I was. It was about becoming someone new, with a different way of being in the world.
The most common thing I hear from people who've worked with therapists is some version of: "I love my therapist, but they just don't get it. It's a good place to vent, but something isn't shifting." That gap is where coaching comes in.
I'm not working from theory. Everything I bring to a session has been lived, tested, and rebuilt through my own recovery. Chronic illness can be isolating precisely because most people can't relate, even the people who love you most. You don't need a coach who's had your exact diagnosis or lived through exactly the same rupture, but something becomes possible when you're sitting with someone whose nervous system has been through a rupture too: the experience of being truly met, instead of just accompanied.
Coaching with me is as dynamic as it is compassionate.
I'll sit with you in the hard stuff. I'll also call out the patterns I notice, push you when you need it, and tell you honestly what it actually feels like to live in an unpredictable body — not just the theory of it. I'll meet you where you are, and then I'll help you see past it.
If any of this sounds familiar, I'd like to hear your story too.