This is Not The Book
why I distilled ten years of work into something you can actually use
I have 120,000 words sitting in a Scrivener project on my laptop.
They’ve been piling up for years. Ideas, frameworks, stories from Alaska and men’s groups and retreats and years of working with men one on one. The neuroscience behind body-based therapy modalities, the nervous system frameworks that help heal trauma, lost cultural traditions in whose absence men suffer, how we relate to death. The full arc of what I’ve seen, what I’ve learned, what I keep returning to.
Writing a book seemed like the natural next move. I love writing. And there’s real material there — like so many substacks, enough for several books.
But I have a four-year-old who is currently on a “stupid papa” kick and who I am trying to be genuinely present for. My wife is in a PhD program. I run two businesses. The idea of spending the next two years editing this smoldering pile into a publishable manuscript, finding an agent, navigating the world of publishing — I couldn’t see it. Not right now. Not at this stage.
So I sat with a different question: what’s the most useful thing I can offer men right now, given the constraints of their lives and mine?
Because here’s what I keep seeing. Men come to this work - to groups and retreats, to 1:1 containers — with compromised attention, fractured time, and a phone that is simultaneously their most powerful tool and their most reliable escape route. The book that sits unread on the nightstand helps no one.
I wanted to meet men where they actually are.
Bowing In came from that question.
The title is a martial arts term — the ritual acknowledgment before training begins. The bow isn’t ceremony for ceremony’s sake. It’s the moment you cross the threshold from ordinary life into a container that asks something of you. Attention. Presence. Commitment to what you said you were here for.
It represents the quality of a relationship. The prayer before a meal. The breath before a difficult conversation. The texture of the ground under your feet on a morning walk.
It’s an invitation to notice all the layers — without getting so lost in contemplation that you forget to act. Because action is always required. Even if that action is stillness and silence.
That’s the spirit the guide is built in.
Forty-nine frameworks across eight domains of life.
Work and money. Relationship and intimacy. Fatherhood and leadership. Body, practice, and food. Mind, Heart, Inner Realms. Community and brotherhood. Spirituality and connection. Death and purpose.
It’s not a program or a course. It’s not a book you read front to back. Might be a curriculum. I’m working that one out.
It’s a guide. Something you pick up when a specific thing is hard. When the relationship is strained and you can’t figure out what’s actually happening. When your relationship with your body has been off for months and you’ve tried the obvious things. When you’re not sure if what you’re feeling about your work is burnout or misalignment or just a hard season.
One man told me the Body, Practice, and Food section worked him harder than he expected — he’s carried a lot of shame around staying fit and eating well, and seeing it laid out without judgment gave him something to work with.
Another man nearly put it down when he hit the “Nothing to Fix” and “Not Broken” frameworks. He’d been operating for years on the assumption that he was permanently damaged, that any growth work he did was damage control rather than actual change. He sat with those frameworks for a while. Something shifted.
Not fixed. Not transformed overnight. Just, a little more willing to consider his own wholeness.
That’s what I built this for.
This guide is not for men who think introspection is an obstacle to progress.
It’s for the man who suspects there’s more available to him than what he’s currently living. Who’s done some work, or is ready to start. Who wants something concrete to hold rather than another podcast to listen to on the commute.
Something to return to. Dog-ear. Put down and pick back up when a specific domain of life is asking for attention.
Ten years of work. Forty-nine frameworks. Eight domains. $49.
And if you’re ready to work directly — to bring this material into your actual life with support:
I love your question..."So I sat with a different question: what’s the most useful thing I can offer men right now, given the constraints of their lives and mine?"
I've come to understand that growth starts with deeper questions instead of the easy answers we so often seek. The better we get at asking ourselves questions about who we are, how we relate and how we can contribute to success on a broader level, the more whole and full we'll feel. "Bowing In" is such a worthwhile answer. I believe it can help a lot of men.