One Bicycle, One Breath, Many Books
Feature Interview With Nate Ewert — WeRide4 Cycling Through Books Series
Unsplash Photo Credit: Aditya Wardhana
Denver, Colorado breathwork facilitator, mindfulness coach, and energy practitioner Nate Ewert has arrived home from work, just in time for our afternoon call. He began our conversation by sharing with me a little about his daughter’s first volleyball game, saying “I’m so excited about going to see her play.”
“Nice,” I responded. “I know you will be there cheering loudly.”
What a great way to start our conversation for another one of my Cycling Through Books Series installments in conjunction with the non-profit cycling community WeRide4 where Nate’s firm is a Sponsor.
Nate started his journey as a healing practitioner back in 2000 after attending massage school in Denver. After working at an auto accident and workers compensation injury facility for his first five years as a practitioner, he began teaching massage therapy while also lending a hand at developing the curriculum for the massage program.
Over the course of his career, he amassed many certifications for bodywork related modalities, trauma release techniques and nervous system regulation, mindfulness coaching and breathwork facilitation.
Today, he’s the founder and owner of Denver metro/Lakewood, Colorado based Somatic Synergies which he started about 11 years ago. During our talk, he recounted the rocky re-start to his life, forming the company out of necessity after a divorce.
Recalling that period, he adds:
“I’d lost a good job, got divorced, and received a DUI —- these three things all at once and kind of hit a rock bottom. While I really didn’t know what I was going to do, I had the opportunity to rent a space a couple of days a week to offer some healing and massage sessions. So I took it.”
Fortuitously, he says, he had already secured the trade name Somatic Synergies, which he turned into an actual LLC so he could start a business. The name has gone through quite a few iterations over the years say Nate adding…….
“…. for a while it was Somatic Synergies Integrated Massage and then it was Somatic Synergies Performance Massage. And then I began operating as Intentional Path Wellness because I kind of had a big center with a lot of practitioners that were working with me.”
He says that he has now gotten back to the core of what he does, thus the current name Somatic Synergies Integrated Healing.
Reflecting on his journey, he adds:
“Over the years I’ve gotten certified in so many different things that were bodywork related including mindfulness-related therapy, trauma release, breathwork, Reiki, and all sorts of other energetic and spiritual healing modalities.”
“I’ve also studied Shamanism for many years with an amazing mentor. And all of these things have just led to this culmination, the simplicity of what I do and what I do well.”
Adding to this last point, he reiterated that what he does really, really well is intuitive bodywork….
“…..I am good at helping people process trauma through their bodies somatically. And I’m really good at walking people through big releases using breathwork or energy work. I do that through classes and workshops and that sort of stuff.”
At present he says that he’s kind of simplifying right now, adding:
“…..My big business has been whittled down to just me and one other practitioner. We're currently downsizing and just trying to do what we do best, which is bodywork, high level bodywork in fact that involves chronic pain management, athletic performance, injury recovery, trauma work healing, deep healing — really getting people to embody their healing process.”
In terms of how all of this connects with the cycling world, Nate had this to say:
“Before I started my business I was with a company that worked with a lot of cyclists along with a lot of runners and triathletes. So I had garnered a lot of experiences working with athletes over the course of my career. I’d been doing bodywork for almost 25 years, including teaching and all of these other things. But after leaving teaching and getting more into the work again, I started working a lot more with athletes. And I love working with cyclists” having worked with a lot of them over the years.
He added:
“I understand the body mechanics and how they work and how to really assist people in performing better. And that, again, started many years ago and it’s continued. So even with all the extra training and healing deep trauma release work that I have done, I’ve still always had a lot of endurance type athletes coming to see me, whether they’re runners, cyclists, triathletes. And I work really well with them.”
Nate says that his involvement with WeRide4 originally began with an invitation from his girlfriend to check out the group.
“She told me that there is this event coming up and they’re looking for sponsors. And at the time I was looking for a way to get my name out there. So I was like “yeah.” So I ended up becoming a sponsor, which then made me a member also. I then decided to become one of their domestique sponsors for 2024.”
Effusive in his praise for WeRide4, Nate offered this:
“I love their mission of keeping kids healthy, putting bikes in kids' hands. I think that’s great. I come from a family of very overweight, unhealthy people and luckily I haven’t fallen into those patterns. But I’ve seen it wreck families and take people’s lives too early.”
He says that he really appreciates what WeRide4 is doing to help kids at such an early age understand fitness and movement and the importance of just being active.
“I actually didn’t know about any of this when I first went to talk with the Executive Director Sharon Madison about the sponsorship. So the fact that they are doing all of this for kids just cemented it for me. It’s very important to me. I’m active. I run. I cycle. I lift weights. My daughter plays volleyball. I’ve always been supportive of her very active lifestyle. And so yea, those things are very important to me.”
“And you know what? Riding bikes is fun. So being able to ride with the group is a lot of fun. And especially one that’s not all about racing and performance. It’s like, let’s get out there and have fun and exercise together.”
A Man of Many Books
In our talk, it was now time to turn to the topic of books which seemed to bring a different level of excitement to Nate’s voice. Here’s what he had to share for this segment of our conversation
“So I think that one of the biggest books that has changed my mindset, especially for my business and journey, was The Surrender Experiment by Michael Singer . Singer was also the author of The Untethered Soul, which actually started as a PhD paper he wrote. As the story goes, his professor was like ‘well, this really isn’t a PhD thesis but it's an amazing book. You should publish it.’”
The Surrender Experiment, according to Nate, tells Singer’s life story from the moment he decides to go out on his own and figure out what he wants to do with his life.
“While he really wants to just meditate under a tree, he eventually ends up running this huge software company before getting into the construction business. But all the while he is building this network of people that just want to be good humans. They just want to live better, they want to better understand their minds.”
The whole idea behind The Surrender Experiment says Nate is to just surrender into whatever the present moment is giving you and throw yourself into it fully adding…
“… and so Singer talks in the book about the challenges he’s experienced over the course of his life. At one point, he gets federally indicted because an employee at one of his big companies has to face federal charges involving his company. This is where he begins to recognize the importance of just showing up and being present in the moment.”
Nate asserts that the biggest value that he brings to his business is presence, noting that “he’s constantly inviting clients to merge into their presence.”
“I’m always asking my clients, what's going on in your system right now? What can we look at? It’s here where the breathwork and the somatic stuff is such a big part of that. Singer’s book so skillfully encapsulates the idea of this, namely, what it looks like to stand in the presence of whatever is in front of you and be with it.”
With this, Nate and I veered into a chat about all of the attention being given these days to books about breathwork. Says Nate….
“…..there is a book called Breath by James Nestor which I read while I was going through my breathwork training. One of the main things I now do is breathwork classes tied to this really powerful and amazing practice of being present with whatever is inside of you, whatever emotions you haven’t processed, whatever sensations need to come up and be felt.”
What’s really good about Nester’s book is he talks just about the importance of breath and that we’ve forgotten about it in our busy society. What’s really cool about the breath is no matter what, it will always work. We won’t ever have to think about it. We won’t ever have to do anything with it. Our body will just breathe.”
Nate continues….
“… if you take a conscious hold of it, your breath, that is, a lot of really amazing things can happen. And so what Nestor talks about in that book is the importance of understanding your breath and how important it is to your health, your sleep, your diet, all of these things. And the best ways to breathe on a daily basis, like being aware of it all the time, trying to breathe through your nose, and the benefits you get from that.”
Another book that Nate recommends is “The Oxygen Advantage” by Patrick McKeown which he says gets a lot more into the science side of breathing, along with sports performance. And then he cited another one called “Breath In, Breath Out” by Stuart Sandeman, noting:
“That latter book has a lot of really cool simple practices for being conscious with your breath. And I think that what all of them have in common is, hey, we forgot to breathe correctly. And here are some ways to do it. Here’s some way to take conscious hold of your breath so that you can have a little more ease and control with what's going on in your system. So it kind of takes meditation a step forward.”
On the broader topic of the importance of community to our well being, Nate cited the book “Together: The Power of Human Connection In A Sometimes Lonely World” by Vivek Murthy as a book he highly recommends that people read.
“While there’s not a ton of solutions in it, Murthy talks a lot about how important community is along with the importance of getting out there to be with fellow human beings given that our world has become more and more isolated.”
Nate says that there is an underlying piece in the book “Together” that speaks to the fact that as social beings we are made to co-regulate and be together. Doing this, he says, can kind of solve a lot of these things.
As far as health, just general health and things like that, Nate says that there is also the issue of unprocessed trauma in society, whether it be due to financial issues or loneliness or health issues.
Whatever it is, says Nate, because our nervous systems are unregulated, the more regulated we can keep it the better.
In this realm, Nate cites an older book by Peter Levine called “Walking The Tiger,” a kind of a self-help book for processing one’s own trauma, for dealing with your own PTSD when your system is still stuck in fight, flight or in freeze response. Says Nate:
“When our system is working so hard to focus on threat detection or on fleeing from a scary situation, and because our body doesn’t understand the difference between our mind’s projections and being chased by a tiger, it’s going to respond in the same way. And so I think there’s actually a real serious need for people to start to understand how to regulate their nervous system.”
He continues:
“There has definitely been a great emphasis on incorporating these kinds of practices, whether it be breathwork or meditation or ways to calm the system when we kind of get stuck in it. This then allows the process of trauma to begin to finish its course……:
“……..So that book is really amazing for people to kind of work with it within themselves and understand how when the nervous system is so kicked up in all of these ways how it affects everything. Once you have a better understanding of how it looks and feels, then how you can actually work with it.”
Nate also mentioned the book “The Body Keeps The Score” by Bessel van der Kolk that reached New York Times bestseller status after years in relative obscurity. He calls that book “a little more heady,” adding “I like the way that Peter Levine in “Walking The Tiger” approaches trauma better. His book is a bit more approachable.
To conclude, I asked Nate about his preferred method of taking in a good book, whether it was traditional hardback, paperback, audio or digital? He had this to say in closing:
“It depends on what I’m reading. Yes, I do a lot of audiobooks. And I do love a good hardback. In fact, I have several sitting on my nightstand. Most of the time if I’m getting into fiction or a novel, I’ll try to read it in hardback version.
The Surrender Experiment I did on audiobook and it was great. I listened to it twice. So a lot of times with self-help books I’ll turn to the audio version. On the other hand, if it’s just really, really good raw information, I’ll typically end up buying the paperback or hardback, just so I can reference it. So my preferred reading involves a combination of different approaches.”
Singer's books, Nestor's Breath and 'The Body Keeps the Score,' have been impactful in my life. Thanks, for bringing them up.