Faced with problems that had no existing answer, he built new ones.
Steve's path wasn't a straight climb. It was a series of obstacles most people would have given up on. He met this with the same response each time: study it deeply, then continually ask himself 'what questions have been overlooked here? What other ways might work?'
The first problems Steve solved were his own body, and being viciously bullied. As a severely overweight child, Steve would come home beaten up almost daily. His father didn't want him to study martial arts, but in desperation, at age 8, Steve convinced his Dad to let him take a Tai Chi class at the local university. From that experience he learned something that reshaped his life: the body responds to disciplined, deliberate focus. He lost over sixty pounds, and his Tai Chi teacher taught him other martial arts to deal with his bullies, in ways they would understand. From that point on both martial arts, and the question of why he lost (and sometimes regained) weight became a calling. It led to more than fifty years of study in martial arts, QiGong, massage, and Asian health modalities, and to a deliberate decision to study nutritional biochemistry at UNC-Chapel Hill so he could understand, in rigorous Western terms, what Eastern practice had already shown him.
That same instinct, study the mechanism, then build the solution, carried him through neuroscience research at Wake Forest School of Medicine, a doctorate in human sexuality focused on clinical sexology and reproductive physiology, and nearly a decade researching and teaching at the IASHS in San Francisco. There he characterized the role of the sacral plexus in pelvic trauma and extended Masters & Johnson's Sensate Focus technique by mapping it to surface regions that profoundly activate the parasympathetic nervous system.
He also co-founded a government software company in 1995 and, over fifteen years, built it into an 8-figure company, hard-won proof that he could take an idea from nothing to scale.
But the defining challenge came when he and his wife lost their son, when Wendy was exposed to an antibiotic resistant infection. Wendy nearly died and was left with tissue adhesions that surgery could only worsen. Steve found a physical therapy technique that might help, but no local physical therapist would do it because it hadn't been standardized.
With no physical therapists, or existing devices able to help, Steve spent a year building prototypes in their garage. The result became hi®, now protected by six US and international patents and the first documented method of transcutaneous vagus nerve and sacral plexus stimulation through percussion.
Biochemist, neuroscience researcher, sexologist, founder, inventor, QiGong practitioner: Steve has lived an unusual life, but each discipline was acquired to deal with real problems. Together they let Steve answer questions at the intersection of body, science, human connection, and metaphysics that few others can address. Steve is living what for most is theory, which gives him a unique perspective on a wide array of areas.
