Nathan (Nate) M.
Interests: SNOWBOARDING, PHYSICAL THERAPY, VAN LIVING
Blog Posts
2023-10-28: Dry Land Training & Goal Setting Workshop
After the success of our Self-Esteem workshop, Sundays became the day where Nate and I would hop on zoom to brainstorm our next idea for a Goal Setting Mindset Workshop. He wanted to incorporate it into his Dry Land Training event for the ski and snowboarders at Big Bear and Snow Summit. Being their coach for the last few years, Nate had a good understanding of what the participants were wanting to work on and the hurdles they were trying to overcome to reach some of these goals.
I took to my journal and wrote down the type of experience I was hoping for with this workshop. One that would include:
Love between everybody
Open hearts, receptivity
Collaborative, honest discussion
Connection
Deep thoughts, “aha moments”
With anything that goes from a thought to a written form and then discussed with others, it has a higher probability of coming to fruition and therefore I’m happy to report that all of these bullets manifested in the most beautiful of ways. A young boy realizing that love could be created from within himself instead of only found externally from others. Another gal who mentioned that intrinsic and extrinsic values could be seen differently depending on one’s perspective. The main point being we use them for good. Lastly, a hard core baseball lover who shared the power of thoughts to create our reality.
Ten of us worked through the following curriculum during an hour time period:
Initial Goal Assessment
Intrinsic and Extrinsic Values: Discussion and Activity
Goal Setting: Personal, Educational, Training/Sports/Health, Professional
Match your goals to your values & your why
Action Plan: Contributing factors to achieve your goal
Visualization Exercise
I couldn’t be more pleased with the collaboration between the participants and myself along with the joint effort from Nate and I to create this program for them. We look forward to the next event and would love to hear your suggestions for another workshop. Maybe a Resilience / Perseverance workshop? What would you like to be covered in this workshop?
Send your thoughts my way: hello@thepathsleadingbacktome.com
2023-06-03: FTR Grand Opening
We always knew Nate had a business mindset because when he would be asked to cut the grass at a young age, he would find a friend in the neighborhood he could pay to do it for him.
Unfortunately, this business mindset took Nate down a dark path for a bit during his high school and early adult years, but he turned himself around and took the high road to becoming a physical therapist. From here he set out on finding a way to combine his knowledge of healthcare, personalized approach to helping patients, and his love for snowboarding and sports training.
I’m stoked to tell you Nate figured it out and took an opportunity to rent a 2,500 square foot space in Big Bear, CA where he got the equipment and tables he needs to start doing what is called functional training and rehab.
What is FTR?
It’s a therapy program that helps to improve a person’s overall physical fitness and performance by training the body to perform movements that are relevant to daily activities or sports.
Check out FTR’s instagram @ftrphysiotherapy that shows many great videos on exercises and techniques Nate and team does with their patients.
The grand opening was shared with two other businesses, a gym called Fitness Source and a mixed martial arts place called Fight Syndicate, that are housed under one facility called High Altitude Training Center.
Nate and I were able to collaborate during his grand opening where he opened up his space for me to facilitate a “Self-Worth Workshop” and put out samples of my skincare line, which will now be sold at Bear Valley Wellness down the street. It was a great success!
Eight lovely people joined in where we had a brainstorming session to identify our self-worth, created diagrams to personalize this discussion, and touched upon how our self-dialogue impacts our thoughts of self-worth vs. self-doubt.
Nate’s vision for this space is really beautiful. He wants to invite others who are experts in their areas of yoga, meditation, stretching, nutrition, therapy etc. to use FTR Physiotherapy as a place to gather and help bring full body transformations for all the people who come there. Couldn’t be more happy for this guy!
2021-09-11: "Stay Wild" Van Build
My brother, Nate tends to bring home interesting “gifts” that none of the family is expecting though apparently he thinks about them for quite some time beforehand just doesn’t tell anybody. Like when I was in high school and he brought home this yorkie and said we couldn’t get attached to the puppy because he
was planning on selling the little guy to someone else. Well you know that didn’t happen as planned and we learned many great life lessons from this playful dog.
Same thing happened when he brought this van over to my parent’s house with these ideas to do a custom build and live out of it. At the time we didn’t realize it was a big thing especially for sports enthusiasts to complete these amazing van builds and live on the road. But with anything Nate puts his mind too, we support him 110% and said let’s give it a go.
This all happened right as the COVID-19 lockdown was taking place. Nate, my dad, and I coincidentally were in the same place during these quiet months and it gave us the perfect opportunity to do a very fun project with the family. My dad, who grew up working alongside his father in a machine shop and later became an
aerospace engineer, was the brains behind the custom build. I simply used it as an apprenticeship to learn more about something I absolutely enjoyed doing. And my brother, well it allowed him to save time and money on the custom build being able to leverage two very willing enthusiasts to do a lot of the work with him. So let’s just say all the stars were aligned when they brought us together.
We thoroughly thought through the material selection process and decided to use aluminum for the framing because it was lighter than wood and we didn’t want anything heavy weighing the van down.
As we built over the next year, we immersed ourselves in this process of constructing with precision, strength, and the right materials. I learned all about a vernier and how to do fraction calculations that made my head spin! Don’t ask me to do it again because my mind will probably go blank. But what a very fun challenge it all was.
At the heart of this build was my brother. We wanted to make this van represent who he is and what he enjoys. So I started a mixed-media painting for Nate that was a replica of a picture taken of him snowboarding at Big Bear (same one that’s on his shirt in the header pic 😉).
We learned a lot from this van build, especially my brother. For one, after we added in this ceiling to provide greater insulation, Nate realized he probably should have gotten the taller van that was a bit more expensive so he could more comfortably walk around. Then after adding in the bed, he thought how it might have been better to have something that
folded up like a Murphy style bed or one that lifted to the ceiling so he could utilize the space in the back for more purposes.
It was good these learnings happened beforehand because half way into the project, Nate got into a bad snowboarding accident that left him with 9 broken bones and a collapsed lung.
It’s interesting how our outside worlds tend to symbolize what’s going on with our inner worlds because shortly after his van also got into an accident of its own.
With both of these occurrences and two offers that came in on the van, Nate had a little heart to heart with himself during the 3 month healing process. He came to the conclusion that it was best to let the van go and try again with one that would be more suitable to his living style sometime in the future.
This was a very wise move and one that happened when we renovated the Texas farmhouse. See we have to go through these test phases to know if something like “van living” or building a center out in the country is really the thing for us or not.
For Nate, he learned it was with a few modifications of course. For me, I learned I prefer a full, functioning, spacious bathroom with a flushable toilet. The pull out from under your bed, compost toilet doesn’t do it for me. But just because it’s not to my liking doesn’t mean that if the opportunity was presented to me, I’d shy away from it. In fact, I’d probably give it a go because what a crazy, cool experience.
With that, I take my hat off to all those who are living the incredible van life. Go adventure the world and I can’t wait til we get to custom build Nate’s future van when the stars align yet again.
Final Pictures
2021-08-15: "Stay Wild" Artwork
During my high school and college years, it was very rare that my family received a picture of my brother with any inkling of a smile on his face. He always looked a disinterested in the ones we did receive and well we started to wonder if he was ever going to find his spark. It’s hard to know when these great interests of ours are going to be rediscovered, but the day my family saw a photo of my brother flying through the air on his snowboard, which was printed in a newsletter for the mountain resort he worked at, we knew that spark had been found. Most of Nate’s face was covered by his helmet and goggles and there was no smile as usual, but instead was this sense of contentment emitting from his being. He’d found that inherent enjoyment he had been searching for and it was wonderful to see.
I had this picture printed on the back of a t-shirt the following Christmas. Nate wore this shirt all the time and I think was quite proud of it. So when he decided to do a custom van build, I wanted to personalize it even further with a painting of this very picture.
Since we were constantly at Home Depot purchasing supplies, I decided to pick up a piece of plywood and char the edges to frame out the picture nicely.
From here, I added in the layered background consisting first of watercolor, then acrylic, followed my markers and sharpie.
Progress Photos
Nate had been wearing this shirt that said “Stay Wild” and I happened to be reading Cheryl Stray’s book, “Wild” at the same time so I took it as a confirmation that a saying along these lines was going to need to go in the painting.
At the time, we were putting up the framing and plywood in the van, and every time we drilled into the aluminum, we get these curly “q” shavings that were a must for this artwork. They were going to resemble the snow floating up into the air as Nate took his jump perfectly. It was also going to symbolize the foundation in the van that you couldn’t see, but was holding up the walls with a lightness and strength just like Nate looked in the painting.
After the artwork was finished, we needed a unique frame to give it a little more dimension. My dad helped me come up with this design out of about $14 worth of materials. This was far better than the $300+ charge a custom frame was going to cost us. I used a blue and reddish stain, sharpie, and a green powder that was sealed with polyurethane.
To finish it up, my mom wanted to add her special touch and sewed a forest green cloth we put on the back with a thin piece of decorative aluminum. If you actually put the painting up against a window, you can see the cool design in the aluminum showing through the green cloth giving it an even more uniqueness.
All in all, it was super fun and took almost a year to complete.
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