After I'd graduated West Point with honors and a medical discharge (epilepsy, from a near-fatal heat stroke at the end of a marathon race) in 2000, I really didn't have any direction.  I didn't know how to recover, to assess what mattered, or where to begin.  What I did know was that the medical professionals I'd encountered up to that point had no real advice for me either.   It turns out that the one piece of advice the doctor did suggest turned out to be some of the most valuable: "get plenty of rest and don't be surprised if you are sleeping more."  It's still true to me now: a large aspect of my assessment and therapeutic approach is centered around how we're sleeping (and recovering while we sleep).  

This is not to denigrate medical doctors; it's just that the therapies I needed to recover from my near-death event weren't being offered by them, aside from very good advice to get more rest.  I needed to recover an incredible amount of damaged tissue throughout my entire body.  

I had a 'long row to hoe."  It wasn't until sometime in to my pre-med biology course when I learned what Creatine Kinase (CK) was, and that normal levels should be in single digits.  Anything over 10 is too high.  Creatine Kinase is elevated when proteins in the body are "denatured."  They elevate during a heart attack, or other events that cause massive and sudden muscle loss.   It turns out that when the medics rescued me at the finish line and recorded my body temperature as 108F, and then 107F, I had already cooked a whole lot of protein in my body.  I lost nine pounds of flesh that afternoon.  I was lucky to still have "normal" heart, brain, and kidney function.  When I was discharged from the ICU three days later, the lab report put my CK levels at around 9000.  My CK levels remained elevated for many weeks afterward, and I began the long path to full recovery. 

It sounds somewhere between trite and cliche to say it: my journey to recovery led me to natural therapeutics.  But honestly, there was a point where I wasn't even looking (as if I'd even know where to start) when a "healer" put her hands on my neck and sent a pulse through to my fingers and toes. 

So, in some way  I wasn't looking for the healer: she found me.  About a year after my episode and discharge from the Army I was working for Cirque du Soleil when one evening and I developed a splitting headache after an only minimal amount of physical work.   Someone in the crew went and found Gail, the Cirque "Healer", and brought her to me, and she began her work by placing her hands on my neck and sent an electric "shock" through my body.   The pulse shot through me like a bolt.  It was at that moment I decided two things simultaneously: "I'll have what she's having, please." and "This is what I want to do with my life: accessing this energy and giving it to people."  Unfortunately the feeling didn't last, because as soon as she'd started, she removed her hands and said: "What you have going on needs more help than I can provide: you need to go to a chiropractor." and she gave me the name of the guy she worked with.  The next day I was at his office hearing and witnessing things I don't think I ever heard before, but that made absolutely perfect sense to me, as if I really did know it already.  

A while later I started having recurring dreams and visions of myself as a physician.  Having a conversation with my heart, I'd literally look down at my sternum and talk to myself, and "God."  I'd say: "I know I want to be a physician, these visions are mine, after all, and I can see myself doing it.  BUT, please, please, please, show me a way to get medical training in medicine where I can help others overcome illness and injuries, recover, and regenerate completely.  I didn't have the words to describe this approach to medicine yet, like "regenerative, integrative, functional, energetic, harmonic."    I continued the negotiation for months and months, until the day I learned about Naturopathic Medicine.  Right under my nose, like a well guarded secret, Naturopathic Doctors were licensed physicians in my home state of Connecticut; little did I know.   I knew instantly that this was the direction I'd take. 

While I went back to college to finish the prerequisites while working as a stairbuilder, I dove into studying everything that Naturopathic students had in their curriculum.  What took my interest early-on was "Energy Medicine" and homeopathy.  I couldn't get enough of it.  Before I'd landed at Naturopathic college (in 2006 and graduated four years later in 2010),  I'd already studied countless hours of homeopathy and energy modalities, and even tried some remedies on myself.  I became a patient, as well.  I visited an acupuncturist, a chiropractor, an herbalist, touch-for-health therapist, a homeopath, an iridologist, a colon hydrotherapist, and a reiki practitioner.  I also got certified in Touch For Health, a hands-on wellness system based on kinesiology, chinese medicine, and chiropractic. 

I kept a garden, (and still do), learning how to identify and tend to plants, and also use them: both wild and cultivated.  I went on herb walks with master herbalists.  I studied all I could about mushrooms, ancient practices, and whatever else I could absorb.  I developed my own internship during a semester of naturopathic college with one of the best homeopathic prescribers I knew: Dr. Farokh Master MD(HOM) in Mumbai, India.  While I was over there I also spent time at a homeopathic clinic in Bhaktapur, Nepal.   As an intern I couldn't stop the impulse to try and learn something homeopathic about every case, and mark those lessons and opportunities as some of the most formative. 

It got to a point where anything that happened in my life was relevant to my curiosity in natural medicine and naturopathic education, and was an opportunity to practice what I'd been learning.  I took every chance I could. 

After all this, and still to this day, although I'm accomplished as an herbalist and acupuncturist and manual-therapist, I identify first and foremost with homeopathy.  As a system of medicine homeopathy stands alone, and it is the most powerful and transformative modalities I've ever seen.

I use energy devices.  I believe that the cellular biofield can be recharged and reprinted, energy delivered to the system, and the informational field corrected with a number of energetic approaches.  I also use LIGHT, FREQUENCY SPECIFIC MICROCURRENT (SCENAR), SCALAR BIOFEEDBACK (CYBERSCAN), OZONE (energized oxygen gas), HHO (Hydrogen), RIFE, and probably something I'm forgetting to list.   Although you we don't need "power" to use homeopathy, it is fundamentally energy medicine as well. 

I completed an informal post-doctoral residency and training, with an emphasis on homeopathy, with Dr. Michael Smith ND in Matthews, NC between 2010-2012.  Since then, I have been in private practice in Lebanon, CT where I share my wonderful life with my wife Luda, two pups Marley and Franky, and a flock of chickens.  I currently consult with patients locally, nationwide, and worldwide.   

• My two pups: Franky came into my lives a little more than three years ago, and Marley six months later.  They're just what I asked for, and what I'd envisioned!  Two aussie-catahoula rescue pups from the swamps of Arkansas/Louisiana. 
  
• Gardening: I've developed into a kind of wannabe, amateur permaculturist that does a halfway (being generous) job at biodynamic, and wild-crafting too. 
  
• Hiking: Long, slow walks are my favorite way to be alone, but not completely...to do something, but not really...t o go somewhere but come back around to the start...to breathe and exercise, but without overdoing it. 
  
• Creative Expression: Art, Carpentry/woodworking.  My grandfather and father before me were both woodworkers, and so I came about it naturally.  I have memories of the smell of sawdust and the sound of a whirring saw blade going back as early as I can go. 
  
• Cooking: I'm told that I'm a creative cook.   My repertoire is (bit by bit) growing, and meanwhile we all get to eat!