Our Beginnings
My journey has twisted and turned throughout life and lead me to some lows and highs. Along the way I found a deep passion for adventure, nature, and helping others.
Micah Shanser
Founder & CEO
As a boy I struggled with focus, impulse control, severe social anxiety, and depression. The battles I choose to fight lead me to get kicked out of several schools and end up in a Wilderness therapy program (a field I would return to work in, gain a MA in, and with my wife found our first company in.). Those low times lead to some deep work, rites of passage, and allowing myself to feel seen and supported in a way I had been craving for years. While the process wasn’t easy, fun, or gentle. It was a profound healing and life changing experience in a way that I nor my parents could not have imagined. It’s amazing how those turns lead to me meeting my wife when I was 14 in Oregon. And a high school I attended in Utah was my first job out of college where she and I reconnected and moved in together.
Bellingham remains a place of deep and powerful healing for me/us. A time of growing, learning, and being humbled. This is where we dove deep into rites of passage and ceremonial work. Discovered spiritual community, and roamed old growth forests learning about ethnobotany and remembering ancient times.
The decision to go back to school for a master’s was one that was contrasted with building a yurt in my parents’ yard in Squaw Valley CA so I could ski patrol. After much debating and reflecting my wife and I decided to attend Naropa me for a MA in Wilderness therapy and her for Somatic psychotherapy. I still remember my interview I had just guided a trip in 50-degree rain for 14 days on the Olympic Peninsula and was quite sick. I was ready to take the next step in my career and with my education.
At Naropa we dove in Transpersonal Psychology and Wilderness Therapy. These approaches are quite different from the classic behavioral modification and diagnosis used by the many iterations of the DSM. My time there was not always graceful as there were moments of conflict but what was different is that the lessons seemed to come easier and deeper at those moments.
As I got ready to graduate, I planned on doing my internship at a wilderness therapy company in Washington state where I had previously worked. Our program director challenged me to find an internship that would challenge me in a new way. That lead to being introduced to Dr. Nicole McGuffin my then supervisor and now business partner in Amazing Brains. I learned about brains and applied neurobiology in a way I could have only dreamed. The results for those we worked with where profound and lasting.
I spent the next 3 years learning the science and art of the processing adding in Biofeedback,
Neuromodulation, and Somatic Experiencing as we went.
I want all of us have a deep desire to be happy, safe, connected, and loved.
Let’s start the journey together.
– Micah
