We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Michael Sudbury. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Michael below.

Michael, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Was there a defining moment in your professional career? A moment that changed the trajectory of your career?

Math and science were easy for me, and I loved them! But as I pursued a degree in Electrical Engineering, something in me just knew I didn’t want to go that way after all. I had no clue what I did want, but for maybe the first time in my life, I stopped following the track I was on just because I was on it.

It took me some time to find what I was going to pursue next. It was about six years before I stumbled across the thing that was going to consume me from then on. I had a vague thought that I’d like to do something that helped people. “How about you become a doctor?” was the thing family and others suggested, but no, that wasn’t it at all. Frankly, this thought of helping people was weird for me, It wasn’t that long ago that I was completely uncomfortable and awkward, socially. Me? Helping people?

I was the one who needed help, though I didn’t know it yet.

In that mental space, I found the thing that I wanted to do. I found a very cool, specialized, and relatively unknown approach to helping people and their bodies heal. I knew it in a moment. See, as good as doctors are, I knew somehow that something has been missing from Western medicine’s overall approach to health and that people are to this day suffering needlessly because of that. I knew I had just found that missing piece.

From then on it has been my purpose to help bring that missing piece to the people who are looking for it.

But doing so has not been easy at all. As I said above, I was the one who needed help.

Ironically, in my pursuit of mastering a healing and therapeutic approach that I wanted to provide, I found the healing and therapeutic approach I needed for myself. It’s been my observation that much of the problem with Western medicine is that it is administered largely by people who have studied lots, yet have experienced little. As I studied and practiced, I was also treated.

Being treated did several things for me, not least of which was to uncover and heal lower back trouble that might have had me crippled in pain by now, judging by what I’ve seen in other people. I also have addressed and healed recurring weekly, sometimes debilitating, headaches. But more than the many physical things that have been helped, I’ve found true compassion and joy.

Most people look at healing as the removal of pain and the return of strength and energy. And it is, but… when that pain or loss of vitality has built up or continued over time, there is a deeper need that Western medicine doesn’t begin to touch appropriately. Perhaps I can best describe that need as a need to return to ease, to self, to essence, and to know yourself as whole, confident, and capable—not with lip service and positive affirmations, but with a deep, visceral felt-sense and knowing.

This healed sense of self cannot come about with surgeries, drugs, or procedures that “take away” or “numb out” pain, or “fix” the broken part by replacing it but pay no respect to the ongoing situation that broke it in the first place. Luckily for me, I had stumbled upon an approach that was neither traditional Western medicine, nor alternative, it was what I like to think of as authentic healing. It was healing that treated the being of the human, as opposed to so many approaches that treat the symptoms.

In finding all this, I found what I was missing and likely never would have found had I continued in electrical engineering.
In finding all this, I found what I want to bring to the world, the ability to experience a deeper, true healing, to those who want something more than to just “not hurt.”

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Well I’ve already spoken about how I got into the discipline and craft of being a therapeutic artist, but I didn’t refer to it like that until now.

I see that as what I am, a therapeutic artist, so I’d better say a bit about that. By that I don’t mean that I heal or treat people with paintings, though I suppose I might, that’s an interesting idea… I mean that life, properly understood and embraced, is art. Too much of society’s expectations, rules, and bureaucracies are about strict protocols based on experience averaged over large groups of nameless, faceless statistics.

It’s not that there’s anything wrong with that, but there’s something very definitely wrong with that.

Life and meaning happen in the messy, individual, full of emotion places.

So does healing.

Our society’s current medical and health approach pretty much stifles all that in favor of standard protocols and cover your ass policies. What they do is good, it’s amazing and technically brilliant, and we need at least some of it. But they forget, or maybe they can no longer access, the heart of human beings.

Somehow they’ve missed that human beings have consciousness and no matter the words used, we protect ourselves subconsciously, including holding onto our now maladaptive and problem causing protections. Much of what doctors are trying to heal would be better dealt with if they understood, and cared about, that simple point. Instead, they use medications and procedures that overcome the body’s inherent wisdom and force externally determined “improved” behavior of internal systems.

They see the body as a machine doing things wrong and in need of correction.

I see the human being as a conscious entity that is protecting itself and attempting to navigate difficult circumstances, many of which have led to overwhelm. Human beings, none of them, are well served by standard protocols that force a different behavior. Instead, like a good story that touches us, just like it, in fact, healing, true healing, requires treating the being of the human being.

That’s what art does. That’s what art is. It speaks to the inner essence of each of us and it does so in unique to us but at the same time universal ways. Healing is not linear, it’s not served by rigid protocol, and it’s best done with the support of people who trust and recognize the inner wisdom of each of us.

What do I do? What do I help people with?

I help people heal from long term pains and problems.

Yes, that means elbows, shoulders, necks, heads, backs, hips, knees, feet, etc.
I help people recover a body that works right, feels great, and moves well, without medication, surgery, or their side-effects.
I help them learn a better way to approach their bodies and health for a long term, enjoyable experience.
More, I help people find their deeper selves again, along with the ability to play, though it’s been lost and they’ve been numb to the fact of it.

I’m not content to see that end with me though. My current focus is on building a clinic and team that helps people like I’ve described better than I can do on my own, and I’m proud of the people who work for me. I want to see them, and my clinic, grow as we help more people in even more significant ways.

Why? Because I need a project that inspires me and a path worth following.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

I think we all have to unlearn what we learned about perfection. Somehow, we think that if we can do everything “perfectly” then we are worthy of love, fame, and fortune.

But I’ve had more trouble with the belief that I have to be the best at everything I’m doing, and if I couldn’t be best then it wasn’t worth doing at all. That has included all the aspects and various components of business. I have had to be the best, at least in my organization, at marketing, sales, the admin/organizational stuff, and the best at treating. If I’m not, then how can I deserve to be the leader, let alone make any money?

Yikes! I’ve had to come to accept, and I’m still working on it, that I actually shouldn’t be the best at probably any of it. My role is to be a generalist, knowing just enough about everything to know if it’s being done well. Then, hire someone who’s better at it.

I think the belief came from early on in life. I missed the lesson where good enough was actually enough. I only had value in my eyes if I was top of the class. I wasn’t really able to make friends, and the only thing I had was being at the top.

It turns out, in order to be a good business owner and leader, you have to find some humility. I won’t claim I’ve found much, but the little I have found has been a very helpful and needed thing!

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

The past years dealing with COVID have been tough for everyone and I’m no exception there. The first month when everything shut down was the hardest on me. It was frustrating having my entire income completely disappear while I still had expenses to cover. It wasn’t long though before I made use of the time I’d been forced to have.

If business was going to be shut down, then it was time to get to some overdue retooling of the website! Before long, I was well engaged in that project. When the shutdown order was lifted after just a few weeks, I wasn’t ready to get back to customers.

Even though I had people who wanted to get in, I kept the place mostly closed for another month. Not because I was worried and thought I should be careful, but because my team and I were busy finishing the work on the website! I was, and still am, a bit amused at that…

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