Award-Winning Chef, Author, Wellness Authority & Advocate for Health Freedom
Meet Seamus
By my early 30s I had achieved more in my career than I ever could have dreamed- I was a three time finalist for the James Beard Awards Best Chef New York City and Best New Restaurant in the Nation, I owned several critically acclaimed restaurants in the most competitive dining city in the world and I was recognized as one of the most prominent and influential young chefs of my generation. But my body was failing me. Or more accurately, I was failing my body. I was living in chronic pain, I was severely overweight and I didn’t think that I would live to be 40. My diagnosis was rheumatoid arthritis and my belief was that I was a victim.
In 2012 I had an acute health issue that took me to the ICU and, for nearly 2 minutes, I died. In that incredible, magical in-between-space of a Near Death Experience, I committed to no longer being a victim. After leaving the hospital, I threw myself into learning about all the ways that I could become my own doctor and reconnect to the brilliant, ancestral wisdom we all carry within. I learned to trust my body.
Since learning to trust my body’s wisdom and reclaiming my health, I have helped to guide hundreds of folks back to their path of strength and vibrancy.
My Core Beliefs:
We all have the ability to take control of our wellbeing through informed lifestyle choices, regardless of the challenges we face
Health is in Our Hands.
Healing Starts with Belief
If we can trust that nature doesn’t make mistakes, we can learn to believe in our own ability to heal.
Resilience is an Option if We Choose it
Through mindset, habits and trust it’s possible to reverse chronic illness and live life fully
The REgenerative HUman approach is the synthesis of this journey. It is the process that I developed as I learned my own way back to vitality.
What Does it Mean to be a REgenerative HUman?
“You are under no obligation to be the same person you were five minutes ago.”
Not only are we under no obligation to be the same person we were five minutes ago, in truth, it is physically impossible for us to actually be the same person since each one of us replaces roughly 330 billion cells a day, or 4 million cells a second. That means that the person you are now is physiologically different from the person you were when you started reading this very sentence! To be a REgeneritive HUman is to embrace and support that change in the direction of vitality.
The REgenerative HUman approach can be imagined as three outer orbits of conditions that progress towards an internal nucleus of Vitality. At the outermost orbit is an environment, both internal (inside the body) and external (outside the body), that is detoxified from physical and metaphysical toxins. The next orbit is a calm and attuned nervous system, and the following orbit within is a state of homeostasis. Nestled at the center of these three conditions, is health and vitality. How we do life- the choices we make, the beliefs we carry, the love we hold for ourselves and others- are the most effective ways we can support the body’s natural desire and capacity to heal, grow, recover and thrive.
This approach takes a biological view of wellbeing, learning from lessons in nature and applying them to the human experience. For far too long we have forgotten that we are not apart from nature, but rather we are a part of nature. Much of modern life has taught us to distrust our inner nature, while encouraging us to turn to “experts” and “authorities” when it comes to our health. I’m reminded of one of our goats, Sassafras. The first time she gave birth to two healthy kids, my wife and I were concerned she might not know what to do. But, somewhat to our surprise, she knew exactly what to do and delivered both kids, licked them clean, ate the placenta- to reclaim any nutrients she might have lost- and immediately started nursing. Sassafras was a bottle-fed goat, who had never been exposed to any birthing but her own, but the process was programmed into her nature.
The goal is to help us become more like Sassafras, to reconnect to our intuitive wisdom, but to do so we first have to unwind some of the friction caused by our modern lifestyle. The first step is to address the environmental and lifestyle factors that may be negatively impacting our health and then to suggest tactics to remediate them that work in support of the body’s natural systems. A body that is in a state of struggle with the environments that it occupies and that occupy it, will drive a hypervigilant nervous system. A hypervigilant and disharmonized nervous system will drive dissonant health. When all aspects start to interact harmoniously, vitality is inevitable. Health and vibrancy, however, are not destinations, but rather points we revisit throughout our journey. I believe that the goal should be to increase the frequency and ease with which we revisit this dynamic place of vitality. The more we do life like this, the easier it becomes to play within a state of vibrancy.
