On August 8, 1998, I sustained a severe traumatic brain injury after falling 180 feet during a mountain bike race. I nearly died and was comatose for four weeks. I suffered from extreme Anterograde amnesia and Retrograde amnesia and was unable to add, read, speak clearly or walk in a straight line. Experts told me recovery from such an injury was impossible. They said I would be obtuse and unable to achieve much in life. Any contrary thought was considered delusional. Never would I be able to bicycle, maintain employment, or graduate from high school, let alone obtain a post-secondary education.
On September 4, 1998, I laid down after therapy in the hospital. I was depressed, sad, and without any desire to live one moment. The next, I was in heaven. At that moment, my depression, sadness, and mental fogginess vanished. I could see every square inch of earth and how all things work together at all times, and the joy that overcame me was unexplainable. I was told that my life mission was to share my experience of heaven with all humanity. That I would recover and help others do have similar experiences.
After that time, I had to learn to recover from the brain injury so I could teach others to recover from whatever they were experiencing. Through extremely hard work and determination, I overcame every obstacle. First, I graduated from high school on time, in the top quarter of my class, and then at the University of Northern Colorado. In college, I enrolled in an advanced directed study course in Neurocognition and joined Psi-Chi, as an office of the national honor’s society for psychology students. I also gladly accepted the responsibility of representing all students with disabilities at various meetings regarding student affairs. Throughout college, I battled the extreme cognitive/social challenges associated with a severe traumatic brain injury and maintained full-time employment while simultaneously completing my degrees in Psychology in four years.
After college, I elected to take a break from formal education. I knew I would have to experience a full recovery if I was ever going to help people to the extent to which I thought I could. Everything I learned in text books and lectures regarding the brain and neurologic rehabilitation suggested my cognitive ability was as good as it could get, but I felt differently. I thought full recovery must be possible, so I chose to figure out how rather than succumbing to the circumstances of life.
Between 2005 and 2013, I shifted focus from classical education to developing an original treatment method to help myself and others. Stepping out of the classroom allowed me to grow, and my mind to expand. As a result, I learned far more than I could have in the classroom. Not only did my understanding increase, I recovered from the severe traumatic brain injury symptoms and even held a bicycling world record for three years.
A massive leap forward in my recovery occurred in the summer of 2008 when I discovered how to absolve my emotional attachment to the “brain injury survivor” identity. As a result, I experienced an entirely new conception of reality and possibility. I thought that releasing emotional attachment might be a pivotal component to recovery from most ailments, not just TBI. I worked with approximately 30 people, and by the end of that year, I had gained an intense laser-like focus on specifically neutralizing emotional triggers. I began thinking that everyone naturally possessed the ability to overcome a vast majority of their health challenges and wanted to test my beliefs. Beginning January 2, 2009, I traveled the country assisting people by first considering the possibility of recovery and then experiencing it.
As time passed, I worked directly with over 1000 individuals from all over the northern hemisphere, in person and over the phone. I found that psychological distress (ie. worry, anxiety, stress, doubt, fear, and guilt) was a vital factor in the onset and persistence of nearly every physical ailment. My practical research resulted in a guided focus technique that eliminates negative emotions in a lasting way by balancing interhemispheric communication. Since my process eliminated all sense of fear, I called it the Raef Technique (Raef is fear spelled backward)