I think about therapy the same way I think about running advice.
There’s the standard playbook — the one we all get handed.
And then there’s what actually works in real human bodies with real lived experience and real nervous systems shaped by trauma, culture, identity, and the world we're navigating.
Modern therapy has done good for a lot of people. Let’s honor that.
But it was built inside systems that weren’t designed with everyone in mind — especially not Indigenous folks, especially not women, especially not anyone outside the white, Western, clinical mold.
So instead of burning it down and pretending we don’t need support (we do)…
What if we rebuilt it?
What if we treated emotional care the way we treat long-term athletic care — holistic, community-powered, body-aware, culturally grounded, and owned by the person in the arena, not the person holding the clipboard?
Step One: Stop Pretending the “Expert” Always Knows Best
There’s a difference between expertise and authority.
The current model puts the therapist at the center. They diagnose, they interpret, they direct — and you receive.
What if healing wasn’t top-down?
What if it was shared?
Imagine a space where expertise is collaborative. Your lived experience matters. Community wisdom matters. Spiritual and cultural knowledge matters. Lived trauma expertise matters. Healing isn’t a hierarchy — it’s shared leadership.
Same way I coach:
You bring your body knowledge, I bring guidance, science, and pattern recognition. We build it together.
Healing deserves the same approach.
Step Two: Let’s Stop Medicalizing the Human Experience
Not every emotion needs a diagnosis.
Not every struggle is a disorder.
Sometimes your body and brain are reacting exactly the way they should given your history, your stress load, and the world we're all running through.
Therapy shouldn’t hunt for pathology.
It should help you develop agency, context, tools, and support.
Step Three: You Cannot Heal a Disconnected Nervous System by Sitting Still on a Couch
Talk therapy helps.
But your body remembers things your mouth hasn’t said yet.
Athletes understand this instinctively. Stress lives in tissue.
Trauma lives in breath patterns, muscles, posture, fascia, reflexes.
Healing requires movement.
Not punishment movement.
Regulation movement.
Integration movement.
Walking, running, shaking, breathwork, yoga, grounding, strength work, ceremony, somatic expression — choose your entry point.
Talking doesn't unlock every door. Sometimes the door unlocks when your feet hit the trail.
Step Four: Healing Belongs in Community, Not Isolation
You are not meant to self-heal in a silo and then come back to community “fixed.”
That’s not healing — that’s assimilation.
Connection repairs us. Witnessing repairs us. Belonging repairs us.
Peer reflection, community processing, identity-safe spaces, shared experience — that’s medicine.
And if you’re Indigenous or come from a collectivist culture, you already know this. Healing has always been communal.
Step Five: You Can’t Breathe Your Way Past Structural Harm
Therapy can't be divorced from context.
Trauma isn’t always internal. Sometimes it’s systemic.
Sometimes your anxiety isn’t a personal flaw — it’s a nervous system responding to colonization, patriarchy, racism, capitalism, medical harm, and chronic survival mode.
Healing must acknowledge the ecosystem you move through.
We don't “fix” people by telling them to cope better with harm.
We empower them — and we build environments where they don’t have to armor up to exist.
Step Six: Spirit Isn’t Optional — It’s Human
Somewhere along the way, Western therapy decided spirit didn’t belong in the room.
Which is wild, because every culture on earth had healing practices tied to land, ancestors, ceremony, intuition, story, and spiritual connection long before insurance codes existed.
No dogma. No coercion.
Just honoring the truth: humans are spiritual beings, and healing requires meaning, not just measurement.
Step Seven: Healing Isn’t a Commodity
Care shouldn’t feel like a monthly invoice.
Support shouldn’t be a luxury item.
Healing shouldn’t be a subscription model.
Imagine sliding-scale community-supported healing environments led by trained guides, elders, movement practitioners, cultural healers, somatic facilitators, and peers.
Imagine healing that isn’t owned by a system…
but practiced by a community.
Step Eight: You Don’t Need Saving — You Need Your Power Back
The goal isn’t dependence on a professional.
It’s self-trust, agency, embodiment, and connection.
Not “fix me.”
But “walk with me while I remember who I am.”
That’s not rebellious.
That’s returning to what humans have always known.
Healing is communal.
Healing is embodied.
Healing is cultural.
Healing is personal.
Healing is slow and relational and rooted.
Healing is yours.
Therapy doesn’t need to disappear — it needs to evolve.
And honestly?
So does the entire wellness industry.
We’re not here for passive coping.
We’re here for liberation, embodiment, community, and capacity.
That’s the revolution.