Please pardon the errors, this was transcribed by a computer… gotta love artificial intelligence!
Kevin English: [00:00:00]

Hello. My guest today is Dean hall. Dean is a licensed marriage and family therapist, success coach, author, motivational speaker, and expert in the exciting new field of neuroacoustics. He is also a two-time cancer survivor and record-setting swimmer having become the first person in history to swim the entire length of the Williamette river and Oregon and the river Shannon in Ireland.

Dean, welcome to the show.

Dean Hall: [00:02:05] Hey, Kevin, thank you for having me. I'm looking forward to being here.

Kevin English: [00:02:09] I'm really excited to dig in and talk to you about what you're doing these days. Maybe even figure out what the heck neuro acoustics are and why that's exciting. But let's back up at the beginning. Tell us what were you like as a child? Were you an active boy?

Dean Hall: [00:02:25] Well, if you talk to my mom, she'd say Kevin, he was much too active. I'm a native of Portland, Oregon. And I was born in 1960. So I got to experience portland in the sixties and seventies. And I tell everybody before there were adventure athletes, there were Oregonians. You know, we were all running and trail running and mountain climbing and cross country skiing and snowshoeing and kayaking before anybody else seemed to hear of it.

And so both my mom and dad were mountain climbers and I was part of that culture from the time I was born. So I was very active.

I think I had about as heavenly a childhood as a boy like me could have had a, you know, when my buddies were watching the Scooby doo marathon all weekend, I was climbing Mount hood. And most of our weekends, we're out seven to 10 miles backpacking where back then you wouldn't see anyone

the whole weekend and then all summers long, every chance my parents got, we were somewhere out in the cascades and not seeing people for weeks at a time. So it was just absolutely phenomenal as far as I was concerned.

Kevin English: [00:03:48] And what about when you got into school?

Were you active in sports?

Dean Hall: [00:03:50] Oh, yeah. Every kind of sport that they would let me play. My only problem was I couldn't play two sports at a time. I even asked in my school, you either had to go out for track or baseball. I wanted to do both. I didn't see why I couldn't. But the, the coaches seem to differ. So yeah, anything you could get me in, I was in until

about six, seventh grade. It was all about basketball, even though I was the shortest kid there I just would play for hours and hours at a time. Anytime we weren't out in the woods, I was playing basketball. But then soccer, I was introduced to soccer. And about seventh, eighth grade, it just took over mostly because you get out there

and you had to be creative and you had to watch a field and coaches really couldn't tell you what to do. And I guess I was enough of a rebel. I loved there, it being fluid and no set plays. And the older I got, the more I realized he was kind of like a very physical form of chess. There was a real mental side to it and real strategy.

And your it's very, if you know much about soccer, it's very geometric. You're always trying to build triangles or collapsed triangles. And so you're always watching this thing happen. Plus this was before the AIDS epidemic and there were very few games where I didn't end up bleeding. And for me that was fun.

You know, I just, I just loved tearing it up. It probably kept me out of jail, Kevin, so, my time with sports as a kid was really fun.

Kevin English: [00:05:36] Yeah, it sounds like very formative years there. If you had all that outdoorsy kind of experience and then lots of sports, it's kind of interesting the way you described soccer, certainly as a kind of a physical chess game. And yeah, I certainly can see how that would be very appealing to somebody who's,

that enjoys that, like you said, that fluid kind of environment and that more strategic thinking part of the, of a very physical game. But to your point, it was, you knew it was a really good game if you ended up bleeding at the end. Right.

Dean Hall: [00:06:04] And like I said, it kept me out of jail because I, I got really bored with high school very, very quickly. And luckily enough, I was able to be one of the first junior timbers olympic development teams. The first Nike sponsored team, because Nike is up here in Portland and they took us to the West Midlands in England twice.

And so it was my first real experience of traveling outside of the country without my parents. And it was just thrilling, not only to be playing soccer over there, but mostly being introduced to a different culture. And this was in 76 and 77. So I was still pretty young. And it was just, we'd never heard of punk rock over here.

And when we were playing in London, we were introduced to all these crazy people that were punks. And we're like, yeah, well you look like punk, but then we went to a concert and it was just so insane. It kind of got me hooked. So it was just, sports opened up a whole world of travel and culture to me that I hadn't seen anywhere else.

Kevin English: [00:07:17] yeah. What an amazing opportunity to be able to travel over to England and go play soccer over there and broaden your cultural horizons there. Get punk rock and good there. That's

Dean Hall: [00:07:28] sure punk was broadening my cultural

Kevin English: [00:07:32] Well, I don't There's that might argue that that's right.

Okay. Fair enough. Fair enough. All right. So after high school, what happens? Where do you go

Dean Hall: [00:07:41] High school. I had several, you know, I, not long ago I saw an old guy like me wearing a t-shirt that said the older I get the better I was. And that's kind of the way I think of my soccer career. I had scholarships all over the West coast and some in the Midwest and Northeast but this tiny little church college in Kansas, and I'd gone to a couple church camps and had a great time.

So I thought. Okay. A tiny little Christian college has gotta be like year long church camp. Plus I get to play soccer and they're going to pay me to do so. So it sounded like a great idea. But it's probably because I was young and dumb. But I, I went to this tiny little college in Kansas, not knowing I'd meet this cute little Kansas girl and fall in love and put myself in exile for love.

And so after after high school, I played for this little college, they said they were good. They really weren't. And so it was kind of disappointing as far as sports go. But I learned a lot. Mostly I, you know, I'd seen Europe. And that was interesting and surprising, but culturally, it didn't feel that much different than Portland, but then I got to Kansas, especially small town, Kansas, and it felt like I'd been dropped on the moon. It was just so different.

kevin-english_1_02-24-2021_183317: [00:09:05] that's your culture shock,

dean_1_02-24-2021_153322: [00:09:06] Yeah, exactly. But fell in love and got married pretty early. I was not even, I was almost 21, so I was just a kid. But that's kind of what a lot of us did back then. And she was, she was real sweet and very honest with me.

She said, you know, just because you came back to Kansas, doesn't mean I'm going to follow you out to Oregon just because we're married. If you're going to marry me, I'm pretty close to my family. You're going to stay here. And so I thought about it for about eight months, and then I thought, no, okay, I'll do that.

And so that's what I did for 30, 30 years. Yeah. 33 actually.

Kevin English: [00:09:45] it spending all that time in Kansas

Dean Hall: [00:09:47] Yeah. Yeah.

Kevin English: [00:09:48] for most of that time. Yeah.

Dean Hall: [00:09:49] Right and became a teacher, taught for 20 years and really loved it just absolutely loved teaching, but as is true with most teachers in the U S I was going broke while I was doing this thing that I actually loved and Kansas had the second lowest salary in the US. And I just, once

we had our daughter. I just thought, you know, I I'm having a good time, but yeah, I don't think it's fair to my family. And so I went back to school and got my degree in marriage and family therapy, so that not only could I continue to do what I felt was important in the world and give back and maybe make a difference in some people's lives, but actually not be broke while I'm doing it.

So for 13 years I taught. And tried to build a private practice do one in the morning and the other at night. And that sounds pretty awful, but it really, it really was kind of fun. They kind of balanced each other out.

Kevin English: [00:10:53] So now you're out, you're out of school. You're teaching you're, you're married, you've got a young child. Were you still active? What about all that

Dean Hall: [00:10:59] Oh yeah,

Kevin English: [00:11:00] been so important in your life up until

Dean Hall: [00:11:01] Well, you know, my parents they were really unique in a lot of ways back in the sixties, growing up, no parents were really that into fitness, but mine were. My dad was a marathon runner. My mom always exercised because she wanted to stay in shape to climb mountains and hang with the boys, you know?

And so they were a fantastic model of fitness and they were the only parents I knew that actually were in love and they really liked each other and they really enjoyed spending time, time with each other. And they did a great job of showing me what a love relationship was. And so. when I saw them, one of my only goals in life was to kind of recreate their lifestyle.

And so I felt like I did it on the relationship end and I'd had a bad soccer injury my last year of college. Totally hyperextended one knee all the way. Backwards and tore everything imaginable in. It had several surgeries. And so I really couldn't run that much. I couldn't play soccer anyway.

And so I started doing triathlons and that's really what got me into swimming and loved it. However in order to be super competitive, at least back then you had to run a S sub six splits on the mile for you know, 24 miles. And I could never get sub six. I was doing good to run six, six fifteens, but I can never do sub

Kevin English: [00:12:35] Okay.

Dean Hall: [00:12:35] so,

Kevin English: [00:12:36] Got to interrupt you there because sure everybody listening is gonna is gonna appreciate what you're saying here. So you're talking about iron man triathlons. Is that right? okay. But you, the writing was on the wall. You apparently wanted to be pretty competitive because yeah.

If, you don't mind, let's back up first and just tell people what are those, what are the distances? Okay.

Dean Hall: [00:12:55] in an Ironman the it's swim bike run and the swim is 3.3 miles and that's considered a marathon. And so when I'm swimming these rivers, now I still use Ironman marathon distances to tell people how many marathons a day I'm swimming. And then 140 miles on the bike. Depends on the area. It's either 140 or 144 and then a full 26.2 to run.

Yeah.

Kevin English: [00:13:26] and then what you were referring to there before I, before I cut you off there is that in order to be really competitive there, you, you needed to be able to run sub six minute miles. On that marathon. So just wanted people to put that into, into perspective. We're going to have a very long swim. We're gonna have a ridiculously long bike ride.

And then I don't know how many folks out there listening to this, know what their mile time is for just one mile. But I'd say that if you're over 50 and you're running a sub six mile, that's, that's a pretty good, I mean, at that point you're not jogging, you're running. Right. That's a very brisk pace is my point.

And it's a torturous pace over 26.2 miles. So yeah. Hats off to you. I think you said you were, you were like six, 15 ish or something like that on your splits.

Dean Hall: [00:14:08] To be very clear, I was, I quit doing full marathons right around early thirties and started doing what they call sprint triathlons, you know where you're doing a 10 K and 40 mile bike. And then or a two mile, one to two miles swim. 40 mile bike and then run a 10 K. But it was, it was torturous for me because I usually come out of the pool or the Lake or wherever we're swimming in the top 10.

I pass everyone on the bike and then everyone would pass me on the run. And so it hit. Yeah, I just the that's my triathlon days, but I just absolutely loved it. I loved the mental side of that. Just like the soccer is finding that muscle where you're crawling back somewhere inside of your head and making your body continue to go when everything is screaming to stop.

Yeah. Especially a pace. You know, I never worried about finishing, but keeping a very brisk pace is always very mentally challenging.

Kevin English: [00:15:20] It certainly is. Yeah. And I think anybody who's done any endurance type exercise can absolutely relate to that. So it sounds like we had the, a soccer injury, which led to lead you into, triathlons. And is that the first time then that you started doing any real swimming. Is that what, where the swimming comes

Dean Hall: [00:15:41] Well, interestingly enough, I always loved swimming. Really where I was most introduced to swimming is up in the Alpine lakes and the cascades. And I became family, almost a family joke we'd backpack, and almost always, we try to find a nice, pristine Alpine Lake to stop and camp out at the night. And my dad had looked at it and he's like, bet, you can't do that one.

Bet you can't, we'd call it swimmable. He's like that doesn't look swimmable and swimmable meant swim all the way back, you know, across and back. And this started about when I was eight or nine. And I jumped in and I'd swim all the way across and back. And they'd cheer for me and congratulate me and warm me back up.

And I thought they were just celebrating that I was a champion, but I was such, such a talkative ADD little guy that I think they were doing it just for 30 minutes of quiet because they knew if they had my face in the water, they'd get some peace.

Kevin English: [00:16:47] Peace and quiet Yeah. So it sounds early on, you had that love of, of water and that sounds cold. I'm down here in coastal, North Carolina. And what I would consider cold, you're probably going to chuckle at, but that sounds like chilly water. Is that, is that

Dean Hall: [00:17:01] Yeah, usually. And that was part of the thing too. I was such a skinny little bony kid, but I've always been able to handle cold really well.

And most of those lakes in the summer, because that's mostly when I do the swims They're probably right around, anywhere from 42 to 49 degrees Fahrenheit. So they're cold. Yeah,

Kevin English: [00:17:23] Yeah, no, that's I would consider that cold. All right, well, so we've got, you know, now in Kansas, you've been active your entire life. You're married. You have a daughter you're living this kind of idyllic life. It sounds like you're being active. You're a teacher by day and you've got this private practice for, I think said family, marriage counseling that you're building up as you go along.

And now I think we're going to roll into the two thousands. Right. And things are getting ready to take pretty, pretty dark turn. Why don't you talk us through that. So I was around Christmas time in 2006.

Dean Hall: [00:17:58] Right. Yeah. Starting 2000, I got additional trainings in trauma and it was a real exciting time in therapy because the, they were really coming out with new approaches to psychological trauma. And I started learning some of these and being trained in them and being certified in them. And so very quickly, my business just exploded because using some of these mind, body techniques, People started recovering from trauma and so much so that when they go back to their doctor, even before they had a chance to say something, the doctor would be like, what's happened to you.

And they'd be like, well, I went and worked with this guy. And so a lot of the doctors started referring to me and I started specializing in, particularly in sexual trauma, because so much of depression and anxiety, particularly in the American female population, you can track right back to sexual trauma, many times childhood, but it doesn't matter.

And so I was working day in, day out with sexual trauma and not realizing that I was number one, overworking, number two, not exercising as much as I usually did because I'd gotten so busy. Number three, really not eating a very clean diet because I was always on the run. But mostly. I believe the biggest thing was I was being Second hand traumatized myself in order to really help these people. I had to hear their story and what a lot of people don't realize is when you hear a story, you imagine you're there. And I hadn't even realized that. And so you know, eight, 10 times a day, I was in the middle of the most awful rape and molestation incest situations and absorbing that stress myself.

And so four days before Christmas, on 2006 I was going to get a total knee operation. Finally, I've been waiting for it for years and they just did the blood test. Well, I'd never really even been sick before. Not really. I'd had the flu and a couple colds, you know, but nothing, nothing big. And I took the blood test and they called the clinic called the blood test to, you know, make sure I was okay for surgery.

Just a few days for the surgery. And the clinic called and they said, Hey, Dean something's wrong with your test? Some things came back wrong. So I came back in. Took the test. And then my doctor called that night and he'd become a really good friend and he was always stressed out.

So at least once a month, he'd show up at my office and I'd take him through some mind body kind of guided imagery exercises to help him de-stress. So that's what I thought he was doing. And I said, Hey, Aaron, what can I do for you? And he's like, it's not what you can do for me. It's what I got to tell you.

And I thought, Oh no, he's in trouble. I still, it still didn't occur to me what was going on. And so he got in my office and he was just ashen and he he, I knew he had something terrible to tell me. And he, his marriage had been real rocky and I thought, Oh, he's getting divorced or he's done something

he shouldn't. And so I was kind of gearing myself up to be okay with whatever mess he was in. And he's like, Dean, you got leukemia and it's not good. And my first thought, I don't know if it was shock or what, but my first thought was, Oh, good. He's okay. And then it was like, what, wait, and he says, you got leukemia.

And he's like I've talked to the oncologist. He said, we've never seen anything like it. You've got features of both acute and chronic and there, if we've never seen anything. So we've got some favors we're calling in, you know, one of the world's top leukemia experts, because we're afraid there's nothing that can be done if you've got both.

And if the numbers don't change in the next six weeks, you probably got maybe a month or two. I was like, Wow. And my first thought was for my, my daughter, she was 14 at the time. And I don't know if you've been around 14 year old girls, but I, I kind of am of the belief that they need their daddies.

And so I had that, man, I gotta, I gotta do whatever I can to hang around. And so thankfully in a couple of weeks, The blood work changed and the way the blood was acting changed and it calmed down to just be chronic. And my father actually had had chronic lymphocytic leukemia. And so for me, even though I was very, very sick, I kind of breathed a sigh of relief because I knew I'd watched his journey.

And I knew that if he made it at his age, I probably could too. Even though there's not supposed to be any kind of genetic or hereditary link between for leukemia, between father and son. So yeah, just, it just literally dropped the bottom out of my life.

Kevin English: [00:23:43] Yeah. I mean, I want to say, I can imagine, I can't, but it sounds like up to that point, you'd been healthy your entire life. You've been active your entire life, and maybe they're towards the end to your point. You, maybe some of that activity had tailed off and it sounds like maybe your nutrition wasn't really on point.

And that's very interesting that you kind of led the story about your practice really growing and growing in the trauma field, especially with these victims of sexual abuse. And I I can picture how listening to those horror stories day after day can really take their toll from, from you know, internalizing that as stress for yourself.

And then for you to get this, you know, a bad blood test and it not even, not even come close to occurring to you that that's a red flag. And then again, when your doctor friend comes over, you're thinking, Oh no, what's wrong with what's wrong with my friend? And it turns out that's not at all what the case is.

So where do you go from there? So you've got this diagnosis now. You're you're sick. what happens next?

Dean Hall: [00:24:50] Really sick. I just struggled and but what happened then kevin is within weeks, I'm having to use the same muscle I developed in triathlons to keep myself going, just to get from the bed, the 10 steps to the bathroom.

And then I get on the toilet and I'd be like, I don't know how I'm going to make it the bedroom. And so I'd sit there for awhile and just try to gather strength. And make my body move and get back to the bedroom and then I'd sleep the whole rest of the day. It was just horrifying. I felt betrayed by my body.

And it had always been the one thing that I counted on. And so I didn't know kind of where to put my faith anymore. I didn't, you know, most of my self-confidence came from yeah, I'm so stubborn. I'm just going to do it. And I didn't, I didn't have the strength of that stubbornness anymore. I just I just didn't have any strength whatsoever.

So it was pretty bleak. Days that I could, I would get up and make it to the office. By this time my practice had boomed and was going so well that I quit teaching. And so I could, you know, make my own schedule. And, you know, it was a little town, so everybody knew I was sick. But the nice thing about people who are having problems is if their problems are big enough, they don't care if you're sick or not.

They'll come in. And so days I could I'd get up and I'd work two or three hours and go home and sleep for the next two days. And that's kind of, I don't remember much about 2007. That was kind of 2007, right? Yeah,

Kevin English: [00:26:47] And okay, so we've got you. You're really sick. Obviously we know how this story ends up. It's to some degrees we're sitting here talking today, but you're not done yet. What, where do you go from there?

Dean Hall: [00:27:01] Well, the way I got better, I didn't do any chemo or radiation. Thankfully when I was a kid they didn't have ADD or I'd have been heavily medicated. And so I'd never really slept. My entire life, but I really started making, even as I started feeling better and not needing just constant sleep, I would, instead of stay up to one and get up at four, I would go to bed at 10 and sleep till six or seven, really try to get eight or nine hours of sleep in.

I really just became a fanatic about trying to even drink a gallon of water a day. Good water and. I went, this is when the Atkins diet was really big and I didn't do many of their products, but I, I really started concentrating on protein, getting very careful, especially with sugar, because I heard that sugar just feeds cancer cells.

So I eliminated almost all, especially synthetic sugars from my diet. And even though I loved fruit, I kinda limited that intake as well. And then the other thing I did is I started a practice of meditation October of 2000. And I started meditating two and three times a day and not holding on to anybody stuff, especially my own.

And I found that being a male raised in the sixties, I did a lot of stuffing, especially if I was scared of something, worried about something I'm never going to let anybody know. But the body knew. And so, and then if I ever got angry because I was raised in a, in a very faith-based home, anger was the devil, you know, so, so I,

I tried my best, never to let that out either. And so I, I constantly would ask myself how much anger or fear am I holding in my body and meditating and finding ways of releasing those so that I'm not carrying that from one day to the next. And my numbers started to really improve. And about this time March February, March of 2008, I'm doing pretty well.

Again, all the numbers are, are really healthy again. I'm not really feeling tired or the drag that friend, the doctor, Aaron he called leukemia mano on crack cause that's kinda how it feels. You're just super tired and no energy. And it, if I wasn't constantly feeling draggy. And so I thought, okay, I got this lick.

Hopefully I learned the lesson. I'm going to do a lot better self care from now on. And I thought, wow dodged that bullet. Let's go forward.

Kevin English: [00:30:02] And so at that point, 2008, 2009 ish or wherever we are in our story here are you, are you declared in remission? Are you,

Dean Hall: [00:30:11] Well, and

Kevin English: [00:30:12] cancer survivor?

Dean Hall: [00:30:13] Yeah. With chronic lymphocytic leukemia, all the books tell you that once you get it, you can never get rid of it. That the best you can do is manage it. And it'll probably cut down your life expectancy, but you need to constantly the closest you can get to remission is just keep your numbers really low of white blood cell counts.

And I never believed that. And the doctors used to get so frustrated with me because they'd be like, Hey, you're going to have this forever. And I'm like, no. I said, if my body created it, my body can heal it. And they'd just kind of pat me on the head like I was a stupid uneducated person. But no, they don't believe that you can ever go into remission with CLL, but

if there was a remission, it felt like I was in it at that time till really? July of 2010 is when my life took the next huge nosedive. Yeah.

Kevin English: [00:31:13] Yeah. So yeah, we're not done with this story yet, It gets worse, so yeah, I'm looking at your timeline. You've you've got this all on your, your website and your blog. It looked like you got really, really bad food poisoning. Kidney failure. You're in ICU for over a week. And then I think it's shortly after that, that things are going to get much worse, right?

Dean Hall: [00:31:35] right. Yeah. Yeah. I just was busy and being kind of stupid and not thinking Hmm. My wife who had always been super healthy. She was so Baptist that she'd never had even a taste of beer. If you can imagine that never had any alcohol, never taken any drugs refused most prescription drugs, even though she'd take them if she had to. Never smoked a cigarette, not even one puff always worked out.

That's what made me fall in love with her. She was as much into a fit, healthy lifestyle as I was. And she got sick and they, there had been pneumonia going around and in rural farming America, that's not unusual in the summer because there's so much dust and wheat and pesticides in the air that people often get some kind of a respiratory disorder or pneumonia.

And so she got it and she just never kept getting better. And so I was trying to take care of everything and left the sandwich and that I'd picked up at a convenience store. Cause I was in a hurry in a plastic carton in 108 degree heat. And I'm a guy, so I was hungry. I saw it. I'm like, this looks like a good idea.

And so I just nibbled on it real quickly and not thinking about what had happened to the mayonnaise in there. I'm in a hundred degree heat and yeah talk about stupid, but I got really severe food poisoning and really didn't know what it was because it wasn't acting like food poisoning. It was so much worse than any food poisoning I ever had.

My temperature's going way sky high to like 103 and I just projectile vomit, and then it would drop and I would sweat through the blankets and have severe chills. And so I started, I never really even taken Advil much in my life. And so to manage the temperature, I found a bottle of Advil.

And it said take two, every four hours. So that's what I did. The bottle didn't say don't take longer for longer than a day or two. I took it six days and because I was so dehydrated

and so I called my folks out in Portland, Oregon. I'm like, I don't know what's going on. And they they're friends with the nurse and she's like, he better get to the emergency room right away. So I went to the emergency room And the intern started acting really weird. He was running around and acting all alarmed, and I'm just sitting there and I know I'm sick, but come on, you know, have a little professionalism, you know, don't go crazy.

And so I called up my buddy, Aaron, who was chief of staff at this hospital. And I'm like, Aaron I'm, I'm going home, man. Just tell him that this is stupid and he's like, Dean, they just called me you're you're in total renal failure. He's like, don't go home. The reason he's running around is you could die. I thought, Oh, I am sick. So I was there and they shuttled me up to Wichita, Kansas a couple of days later because I kept getting worse and they couldn't find out what had happened until this brilliant Doctor from Croatia. He was so brilliant. The, I was almost happy to be in the hospital just to get to meet this guy.

And so he asked me all these questions and did all these tests. And finally he's like, Dean. I have one last question. I'm like, what's that? He's like, did you take Advil? And I'm like, yeah, every day, every four hours.

And he was like, yeah, that's it. He said, if you hadn't taken anything, you'd have been fine. And he says, good thing, you didn't take Tylenol that would have ruined your liver. He's like your kidneys will come back, but during this time, my wife's right side fell and she lost feeling in her right arm and a little bit in her right leg.

And by the time I got out of the hospital, she couldn't drive herself the 60 miles to Wichita and she was having a hard time speaking. And so I called up Aaron and I'm like, Hey, have you seen Mary? And he's like, I've heard, he's like, I'm going to get you going to do a brain scan tomorrow. So we did. And as soon as the brain scan was done, Aaron called up and he's like, Hey, when are you going to be home?

And I said, you're going to make me wait an hour to hear bad news. And he's like, well, and I said, I know you wouldn't have asked that if it wasn't really bad news and he's like, well, it is Dean. It's the biggest brain tumor I've ever heard of. And it's nestled way down in the back honor, brainstem with a lot of fingers.

He's like, I'm going to pull some favors and get you up to the world's number three in Kansas city in two days. And so we went up there in two days. By this time Mary's having a hard time even speaking and can hardly walk. And I knew something was desperately wrong. He looked at the film and he's like, we could do laser guided surgery and there's an 80% chance

we'd nick a nerve and she'd be a quadriplegic. And another 80% chance we could Nick a blood vessel, even with laser guided surgery and she'd bleed out on the table. And I said, if you had total success, What would the prognosis be? And he said it give her an extra six months and it'd be like, she had a migraine and the flu

the whole time. Like, what if we don't do anything? He said, well, she get worse and she's got about six months and she'll just lose more and more of her capacity to talk or to walk or to reason. And she'll sleep more and more and more, and then she'll die in her sleep and it won't be particularly painful.

And so I said, I guess that's what we do. And. That's what we decided to do. And only 52 days later, she was dead 15, 15 days for our 30th anniversary. So, yeah.

Kevin English: [00:38:10] All right. So you've had all these, all these challenges up to now, they're things that you could you could face down to your point you kind of had this stubborn part of you said Hey I can I can I can out last things You outlasted your leukemia You survived trying to poison yourself with with Advil and with bad mayonnaise now you're in this really dark place. Talk to us a little bit because I know that we, we still have another chapter to go on the leukemia here. But during that, during that time after Mary's death, I mean, w where, where are you at this point in your Headspace? I mean, what's going through your mind in the, in the months, or maybe even year after that, in terms of trying make sense of your life at that point.

Dean Hall: [00:39:01] I just absolutely, couldn't I just, you know, before I started specializing in sexual trauma, I specialized in grief. And so I knew a lot about grief had written several articles for newspapers and magazines around the Midwest. I had done several retreats and seminars on grief. I knew a lot about grief. I thought.

Until I was the one grieving. And for me it felt especially painful because I felt like I had given everything to this relationship, you know, living in Kansas, I, I tried to grow where I was at, but there wasn't a day and I rarely if ever told her, but I was lonely for Oregon and homesick every day.

And all I wanted to really be doing his hiking and backpacking and swimming and mountain climbing. And I don't know if you've been to Southern Kansas, but it's pretty hard to do any of those things. And so I felt like for 30 years I sacrificed and done my part and this is what I get. And I know that's a real victim kind of way of thinking, but I, I just couldn't shake it, Kevin, and, you know, knowing what happens in grief and then going through grief.

I just made all of the mistakes that you're not supposed to make. I was real angry. I let myself be very isolated. I tried to not think about it and kind of ignore it. I knew so much about it. I thought knowing about it was going to give me a pass on the pain which just made the pain more incredible.

Yeah, it was just, and, and living in this tiny little town being from the West coast, even though I'd taught there and lived there for 30 years, people still didn't call me by name. I was Mary's husband. They'd point to me and then I be like, Hey, there's Mary's husband. Now some of my students they'd say, Hey, there's Mr.

Hall. But everybody else in town there's Mary's husband. Cause Mary was from there. And when Mary was alive, that was fine with me. I didn't care. Yeah. I'm happy to be Mary's husband. It really hurt when they still would call me that and I wasn't anymore. And the town was so tiny. There wasn't a brick or a tree or a curb or anything

that didn't remind me of her that I didn't have a memory with her on, it was just like being in this sensory overwhelm tank where I just couldn't get away from it. Yeah. Complete misery.

kevin-english_1_02-24-2021_183317: [00:41:50] Complete misery. And I suppose to your point you know, most of our listeners being over 50 year we're, we're going to know something about grief. But. No, to your point, knowing intellectually about grief being maybe a grief counselor, or even being an expert on grief is not the same thing as going through grief.

And I think we can all relate to that. Okay. So, and this is 2010, is that right?

Dean Hall: [00:42:15] And I just turned 50 and was

Kevin English: [00:42:18] So you turned, turned 50?

Dean Hall: [00:42:20] really looking forward to this decade because we'd worked so hard, been so responsible. We were going to have fun. Yeah. So it felt

Kevin English: [00:42:32] getting ready to celebrate 50 year 50th and 30, 30 year anniversary, your daughter's 16

Dean Hall: [00:42:39] 18. It was October of her senior year, which made it extremely painful to, yeah. We wanted it to be a real celebratory year. Cause she's such a good kid and it just, you know, I was a walking zombie. Her mom was gone. It was, I don't know how she, she did her. She still maintained a 3.5. I don't know how.

I sure as heck wasn't maintaining a 3.5 in my life. I don't

Kevin English: [00:43:08] in life. Yeah, no. Incredible. All right. So now we're going to roll into 2011, but tell us what's what happens.

Dean Hall: [00:43:17] I moved back to

Kevin English: [00:43:18] We're ready for some good news,

Dean Hall: [00:43:19] Yeah.

kevin-english_1_02-24-2021_183317: [00:43:20] Yeah.
Dean Hall: [00:43:21] There isn't for a couple more years. I decided even though my practice was booming and I'd worked on it for 20 years and it made no sense to leave it. I just, I just couldn't stay. And I would always be Mary's husband and I knew at some point maybe life would come back and maybe I'd want to have another relationship.

I knew in that town that wouldn't be okay. And I wasn't even thinking that far ahead. I was just thinking I gotta get away. Things are miserable and Kansas without the cute little Kansas girl is, kansas. So I saw that chance to come back to Oregon thinking I'd build another practice and kind of start up where I left off and have a great time being around my family and getting to do the things I love to do, but it took me 18 months because of bureaucratic red tape to get my license in Oregon.

And it was just one thing after another. One frustration after another, with the state of Oregon to get my license to practice, it actually was a godsend because I was in, in no mental or emotional shape to practice. I needed, I needed a sabatical for sure. And problem is I just kept getting sicker.

And by 2011, the leukemia came back and this time brought with it lymphoma. Non-Hodgkin's small cell lymphoma. And I started losing weight and getting really emaciated. I was biking and still staying pretty active, but I was getting sicker and sicker all the time, mostly because of the grief,

I think. And my lymph nodes, especially around my jaw line swelled up so much. I, I had a hard time turning my head and I looked kind of disfigured and kind of like this weird chipmunk. And I got down I'm six, one and a half, and right now I'm 220. And I got down to 158 pounds. I looked like I'd stepped out of Auschwitz by 2013.

Yeah, and my parents were terrified that I was, I was dying. Yeah. And I really didn't care.

Kevin English: [00:45:40] I suppose that at this point we can say you're officially, is this rock bottom? I mean, at some point, at some point we're going to have to stop with these tragic stories here. We've been talking for the last 20 minutes and it's just gone from bad to worse progressively.

Dean Hall: [00:45:56] Yeah. In August of 2013, I'm living in this little duplex renting for the first time since I was in my twenties. And that felt weird and all alone. And when I left Kansas and gave up my practice, I didn't realize I was incurring another huge loss you know, for us men, so many times our identities wrapped up in our career.

And so, so my real identity was being a husband, Mary's husband, that was gone. And now being a therapist was gone too. And then all of my adult friends and all of the kids I'd taught that knew me and loved me. And I loved them. That was all gone. Nobody knew me, nobody cared. I am truly all alone.

And so August of 2013, I get up. And I made a practice of not trying to look at myself because I've never thought I was good looking Kevin, but at this point I was ugly with a capital ug. It was not a pretty sight. And I accidentally caught my eyes in the mirror and that guy didn't even recognize him.

He had red rimmed eyes with big bags under him. He was so skinny. I could see every rib and even my pelvis bone, my pelvic bones. And he just looked so sad and I'd never seen that sad. I'd never looked at myself when I felt sad and it just broke my heart. I was just like who is that guy? And the thought occurred to me.

I mean, you know, if I let this take me, it'll be a sad story, but nobody will know nobody will blame me. I can let this, I've had a good run. I've accomplished everything I wanted to in life I'm done. And just the very next thought was by this time, my daughter is 21. I'm like what an entirely selfish thought, you know, she just lost her mom, are you gonna gonna go out like that?

And so I thought, no, I gotta, I gotta bring it back. And I knew I had worked with people bringing themselves back from trauma, from depression, from anxiety, even many suicidal folks. And if I could get them passionate about a purpose and it really didn't matter what purpose, anything it had the power to bring them back.

And so I started asking myself, what could I become passionate about? And all the things I've been passionate about before, I just couldn't get too excited about, I mean, it made sense to try to build a practice, but I didn't really want to, and I'd written a book and I could write another one, but I really didn't care.

And so, I didn't know. And so I, I'd been living there six months by this time and I looked around and I hadn't unpacked at all. And I thought, well, you know what? Until life answers and I get a real good idea of what I can be passionate about, maybe I should just clean this place up and unpack my boxes.

So the second or third box I opened, I came across a journal I was forced to keep in sixth grade. And at the very front of the journal, as soon as I opened it, it said, cause there weren't bucket lists in those days. But I had my own bucket list. He says, when I get old, I gotta climb Mount Everest, swim the English channel. And I don't know what about that, Kevin, but my whole body just lit up. And it was like, okay, I've had some friends that have climbed Everest and with my leukemia and my blood counts, I don't think my blood can handle altitude. And I'm pretty sure my immune system can't handle Katmandu. But I'm pretty sure I can swim the English channel and I got really excited about it.

And then I was going to bed that night. I thought, are you crazy? You got leukemia and lymphoma, man. You can't do that. But then I thought, yeah, yeah, I can. And then the very next day I searched to see if any active cancer patient had ever swum the English channel. And to my knowledge there hadn't been.

So I thought, okay, I'm going to be the very first person to get a chance to do that. And one of my majors in college was world history, and I thought I'll be the first person in history to swim the English channel as an active cancer patient. And that just got me super excited. And so that's what I decided to do.

Kevin English: [00:50:34] so you decided to swim the English channel cause you had written it It was sixth grade, I

kevin-english_1_02-24-2021_183317: [00:50:40] you

Dean Hall: [00:50:40] when I was 11.

Kevin English: [00:50:42] keep. That's fantastic. All right. So, but where we left off in this story, you were at rock bottom, you weren't in, it didn't sound like you were in any physical condition to swim the English channel.

How, how did you get into shape to eventually go on and do the things that these amazing physical feats that you're going to do? How'd you climb out of rock bottom?

Dean Hall: [00:51:01] Well, I told my parents and I mean, you're talking about the original adventures and it made my mom cry. She's like, that's going to kill you. Are you crazy? And my dad's like, well, you can't do that. Well, I think the fact that he told me I couldn't do it, it's like, okay, I'll show you. Then I called my buddy Aaron.

Wow man. I didn't realize until today how much he was a part of this story and he's like, Dean, you get in a public pool and it'll kill you, your immune system so bad. And I'm like, what am I going to do? Die watching wheel of fortune. I'm not going to go out like that. And so I gambled, it didn't really feel like a gamble because I was already kind of a little done already.

You know, I felt like this could kill me, but if I'm going to die, I want to go out swinging for the fence, not with a whimper. And so I got in the pool and I kicked off the wall and it was the first time in three years, I felt like myself. It's like, Oh, my whole body just kind of came awake. And it was like, I remember you.

I remember this and it was just blissful for about half a lap was in such bad shape. I promised myself to swim 10 laps, well, 10 laps that doesn't even take 10 minutes and it doesn't really even get you breathe in hard. Right? It took me over an hour. And one of the things my dad would always do when I was a kid is he'd make me run or we'd be climbing up a hill and he'd be like, you tired?

And I'd be like, yeah. And he's like, okay, do one more. And he would always teach me to go to the edge. Do as much as I possibly could and then find a way to do a little bit more. So I made it to my 10th lap and then I did an 11th and I went home. And for the first time I felt happy. And for the first time in three years, I felt like myself, at least a little bit.

And for the first time in three years, I slept that night. Yeah. So I just kept going every day and swimming and trying to add one more lap every day. Yeah,

Kevin English: [00:53:13] Yeah. Yeah. So you're putting that progressive overload the theory of progressive overload to, to use there. Swim one more lap every day. And eventually you're just going to find yourself, right. And you're going to start getting stronger. And so, we read out the, in the introduction, we know that you swam the entirety of the Williamette river, which is, I think has 184 miles.

You also swam the river Shannon in, Ireland. So tell us, so you, you had this goal. We were like, Hey. I couldn't be the first guy with leukemia active cancer patient to swim the English channel. Now you're actually in a pool and you're swimming even against doctor's orders, but you're starting to find yourself again.

how do we get from there from just swimming an extra lap each day to actually swimming 184 miles.

Dean Hall: [00:54:00] Yeah. Well, by Christmas I was swimming a mile or two a time and I built some muscle again. And I don't know if you know about the lymph system, but it doesn't work unless you're moving. There's nothing to pump it. The only thing that pumps it and the lymph system is such that your lymph nodes are tiny little kind of filter sacks that the blood runs through.

And as the blood pumps through there, it squeezes and expands those and kind of flushes those out. And so every day that I was getting cardio, it was flushing those out. And at first it kind of gave me like flu like symptoms. Cause they were so toxic. But after a while they got a little smaller, the ones around my neck and then under my right arm, my right arm had what my oncologist lovingly called my hockey puck.

It was the size and shape of an actual hockey puck. I couldn't really put down my right arm. Those, those were stubborn and those didn't change much, but all the other hundreds of other ones, they were like gravel all over my body started to go down. I started feeling really good in my head started to clear and one day right around Christmas, I got out of the pool and it hit me.

Who cares if another middle-age man puts on a Speedo and swims to France, it does the world no good. And in my case, it's not going to be a pretty picture. And so I started asking myself what would be even bigger? What would do the world some good. And it hit me. The, the longest river in Oregon is the Willamette river.

And I was born only four blocks from it. And growing up, I always called it mama river and I thought, okay, 21 miles across the English channel or 184 in a river. That nobody swam, not only will I be the first, I will be the only, and it was more me because I was born here. And so it just felt right.

And so I contacted the local leukemia and lymphoma society, and they were really excited to partner with me to raise money and awareness about leukemia and lymphoma. And so it just felt like a match made in heaven. So that's what I did. I got in the river June 3rd, 2014, and swam for 22 days in 40 degree water and came out into the Columbia and became the first person ever to swim the entire length.

Kevin English: [00:56:47] and as an active leukemia and lymphoma yeah, fantastic. So at this time, you're, cause it sounded like you had really lost your identity. You had said, you know, my identity was wrapped up in being Mary's husband. It was being a therapist. It was certainly being active and an athlete. Right. And all of that had been stripped away.

Now you've got this purpose, you've got this crazy idea. Hey, maybe I could swim them. English channel and then, well, you know, what would be even more meaningful to me? And so you've got this accomplishment under your belt. Where is your head space now?

Dean Hall: [00:57:22] really, I would say 75% better. I felt really good. And it's something that first occurred to me. I was out here for a triathlon in 1984. And I said to my dad, you know, I was feeling full myself cause I'd done pretty well in this triathlon. I said, Hey, anybody ever swam this whole thing?

And he's like, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. He's like, where do you come up with that? He's like, that's, that's just stupid. And it, it sunk a hook in me and I thought, okay, I'm going to do that someday. And I put, I'd forgotten about it and it had come back to me. And so it felt like I'd gotten a dream back.

And one of the things I didn't tell you is a lot of, I had six guide boaters because when you swim a river, you can see about 10 yards and about a half a mile. But especially if the river's going fast at all dangerous, usually 20 or 30 yards ahead. And in Oregon, we've got so many big trees and they fall the the first 60 miles is really pretty

scary because there were a lot of log jams and huge Douglas firs in the water that if I got pushed up against them, I, there would have been 2000 pounds of pressure that didn't ever got me off of them or with their limbs underwater. They're what's called strainers. If I had gone under I'd have been caught in that.

And so you've got to have a guide boater that you follow and about a month before the swim. One by one, my guy boaters, bailed. And so my dad who was 79 at the time, he was like, why don't I guide boat? I said, I said, you're 79. I can do it. Okay. Dad. You've never kayaked. Oh, I've done a lot of rafting. I've done a lot of canoe and kayak.

Can't be that hard. And so it was one of the blessings and I, I tell everybody, when you follow your dreams, miracles happen, the gifts are given to you that you just wouldn't ever imagine or makeup. One of the coolest things was just doing this adventure with my dad for 22 days. It was, it was something we'll always remember.

Yeah.

Kevin English: [00:59:41] Yeah. I bet it would be. Yeah. That's, that is amazing. I realize that your dad joins you on, on that. And then a couple of years later, well, hang on, because I think there's also a part in your, in your bio here. You had some more good news in March of 2016, is that

Dean Hall: [00:59:58] Well, yeah, I had a lot of good news. I knew I was feeling really good. And when I did the Willamette, I'd never heard of cold water immersion and never heard of Wim Hoff. But after I gave quite a few talks to different public groups afterwards and always had a question and answer time and people would always raise their hand.

Hey, have you heard of Wim Hoff? No. And so I thought I better. And then a lot of people would also ask me, have you heard of Wallace, J Nichols and the blue mind? No. And so I looked at both these people. And they both use science to explain why I was feeling so much better. Wim Hof has done a lot of research that if you're in a, even a slight state of hypothermia, it boosts your immune system, it gets your metabolism going.

It really does all sorts of wonderful things for the body. And then WallaceJ Nichols is a Marine biologist down in Southern California, and he did a lot of work with neuropsychologists proving that it doesn't matter who you are, gender age, race culture, a universal instinctive reflex in the human brain is that if you're in, on, around by under water within about a minute or two, your brain goes down to a relaxed state.

And so unbeknownst to me, this crazy dream I had was really the largest part of what healed me. The first blood test I took the leukemia was gone. And by this time I was going down to the world's number three oncologist university of California, San Diego. His name is Dr. Castro, a world's expert, and he was like, Dean, I've never S I've done this for 30 years.

I've written papers on this. I've never seen this happen. But if I hadn't been the one to really confirm your diagnosis, I would have thought you were misdiagnosed. And so by swimming and being hypothermic eight to 10 hours a day for 22 days, it burned out the leukemia. Evidently. Yeah.

Kevin English: [01:02:17] wow. That is amazing. What an incredible story. Just from where we started the story where you are now. You're right. You're in you're now going to be declared cancer free And I think I read I can't remember it might've been one of your Instagram posts but you described yourself as cancer patient, cancer survivor, cancer thriver, to cancer adventurer so I think at this stage we're in your cancer adventurer stage, and then you're going to go on a year later and you're going to swim another big river. This time, the river Shannon in Ireland, is that right?

Dean Hall: [01:02:52] That's right. my daughter was still really grieving and really hurting. And I, I had noticed what being on the river for that amount of time did for me and the leukemia lymphoma society said, Dean, this was so cool. You need to take your message worldwide. why don't you do another swim, but why don't you make it outside of the U S? Well, in Portland, so many of us had

parents or grandparents from Ireland. There were a lot of, we've got a heavy contingent of Western European, at least in the sixties and seventies. We did have Western European and UK folks who came and settled here because the scenery and the weather is so much like you'd find in the UK.

And so I think they naturally just settled here. And so all my growing up years Ireland sounded like the land of dreams. I always wanted to go to Ireland. And right after I finished the Willamette, I turned on PBS and there was this PBS special on the river shannon. And it looked so cool and it looked a lot like the Willamette.

So I thought I started looking into it. I found out that it was Ireland's longest river it's about 180 miles long. And so I thought it's about the same as the Willamette, actually it's 220, but the last 40 are called a sea estuary. So it's really not counted as part of the river. But I thought, okay, here we go.

And so I was going to do that in 2016 but this beautiful yoga instructor, personal trainer came into my life and my family and friends were pretty awestruck by her kindness and her strength and her beauty and really kind of wondered why she was interested in me and I wasn't dumb enough to ask that question.

I was just going to enjoy it for as long as I could. And we just fell madly in love, which was surprising to me. You know, I'd had a good run in a good marriage and I thought, you know, when you have that kind of marriage, you're not going to have another one. And even though Bobby is very different than Mary she's just

wonderful. And I'm just so lucky to have her. And so we fell madly in love. And so instead of going and swimming, I just chased her all at 2016. And, and we got married December 10th of 2016 then, and, and I'm glad we did because then she went with us to Ireland too. And my daughter was the guide boater. And by now breeze 24.

And I don't know what I was thinking, Kevin, to take a 24 Oh four year old girl, take her to a foreign land, a place she'd never been put her in a kayak and say, okay, you're pretty much responsible to lead me 180 miles. But I did. And she did, and it was the hardest thing I've ever done. It made the Willamette look like a cakewalk.

We had a 20 mile an hour headwinds at least 23 out of the 25 days it took me to swim it. And it's pretty much a set of lakes tied together. Two of them are so large. They're considered inland seas. We got blown off of them several times and the, the river bed is shale and Flint. And when they break, they create razor sharp edges.

And so I, if I ever try to crawl onto the river bank, it was just slicing me up. I bled in, in the river shannon. I tell everybody I'm part Irish now because I got so much in my blood, in the river, Shannon and river Shannon in me. Yeah, but we just had an amazing time and we raised quite a bit of money for their local cancer charity.

The childhood cancer foundation of Ireland, which made it just really wonderful.

Kevin English: [01:06:55] Yeah, that's fantastic. that's beautiful that you had that experience first with your father and then with your daughter on these really amazing life changing events. And so what are you doing today? I see you on Instagram. It looks like you're still doing a lot of kind of that cold water immersion kind of Wim Hoff type what's keeping you busy today?

Dean Hall: [01:07:17] Well I know I was going to swim my longest swim last summer and then COVID hit and my sponsors, cause it was going to take me 90 to 120 days. I won't tell you which river. Yeah, I'll go ahead. I'll just tell you the river. I was going to swim the Columbia. It's a 1,243 miles long. A guy says he swam it

in 2003, he was mid to late twenties, I think, but he didn't document it. And that's kind of like saying, you know, you beat Michael Jordan, but you didn't keep score. And so I want to become the first documented person to swim the entire length of the Columbia river.And it seemed like perfect timing because this year I turned 60. And one of my missions is to tell people, not by my words, but by my actions that you can get older, but you don't have to grow old. You can just through staying fit and keeping a good outlook in life, optimize and stay as young as you possibly can for as long as you can. And I believe so much of thatis mental, I believe after 50, most people quit dreaming

and pushing themselves and challenging themselves to do more. They just decide to retire. And it seems like they retire their dreams at that point too. And I think that's a mistake.At least I've found in my return to health. I'm almost as well, I am fitter than I was in my forties and fifties and almost more fit than I was in my thirties.

And I sure I hope I'm a lot wiser and I'm sure a lot happier. And so I w we don't have to lose those things just because we're losing hair and eyesight and hearing ability and that kind of stuff that just happens with age. So I was hoping to do that that all my sponsors pulled out in the first week after COVID.

And it didn't even seem like it would be appropriate, you know, none of us knew how it was going to go. And so I'm still waiting to do that this summer, I hope. I'm working with a film crew that wants to create a documentary about my life. And we're going to do a trial run over in the UK with one of the longest rivers over there.

Hopefully, if I can travel. And then next January, we're hoping to go to New Zealand and swim the three longest rivers there in a row. Yeah,

Kevin English: [01:10:04] Yeah. So you're not letting up. this is what you do now, swim long rivers. That's amazing. And I guess all of these, you had mentioned sponsors and whatnot and all of these, I'm sure there's a charity tied to them as well. Is that correct?

Dean Hall: [01:10:16] Yeah. Usually I try it and I haven't planned any charities out yet. I'm thinking about starting my own nonprofit to make it easier for folks. But one of the things I like to do, particularly if I'm not in the US, is I like to find a nonprofit, like a childhood cancer foundation or something, because it feels really inappropriate to go to this beautiful country, have this wonderful time and make all sorts of lifelong friends and then take the money out of the country with me.

And so I like to leave the money there and do it for the place. And so usually I decide a little bit, a couple of months before. And so if people follow me and want to you know, be a part of this all they have to do is, is track me on Instagram and they'll, they'll be able to find the right places to give if, if they choose to

Kevin English: [01:11:11] Okay. Okay. Yeah. Thanks. And I'll make sure I drop both your website and your Instagram into the show notes. It's swimming and miracles. I believe.com. And that's your, your Instagram handle as well. All right. Well, Dean is we're kind of wrapping up here. I can't let you go without asking you what the heck is

neuroacoustics? I'm even saying that right. It sounds of sound therapy?

Dean Hall: [01:11:33] Yeah, it is. That's exactly what it is. It's the scientific study of the therapeutic use of sound. And so they found certain vibrational tones and Hertz have front vibrational frequencies that affect your brain in therapeutic ways. And then also out of the field of hypnotherapy, they've found certain musical cadences or verbal cadences, really calm

and soothe the mind. And so when you put all those together, particularly with stereo headphones, using certain tones in the right ear, and then in the left ear and get them going back and forth it can create a very healing state for mind and body. So that's what it is. Yeah. And I've played, played around a lot with that and had a lot of fun, but my swimming has kind of taken over everything now.

Kevin English: [01:12:31] swimming is all consuming. Yeah. And

that's

Dean Hall: [01:12:33] Kind of is.

Kevin English: [01:12:33] what the can see. Yeah. All right. Well, I guess right before we go, then talk to us a little bit about your coaching practices today. So kind of services do you offer?

Dean Hall: [01:12:47] One of my favorite services that I offer is with my wife bobby. She takes the body side. I take the mental, emotional side. And I use a lot of my clinical techniques, but both what we both use more than anything is we combine those with our life experiences. We call it comeback coaching by the time you're past or into your fifties, most of us have had something

devastating happen, be it a divorce or a loss of some sort or now with COVID job changes, who knows what? And it feels, especially after your fifties, it feels devastating. Like you can't go on. And one of the things I'm absolutely convinced Kevin, cause I've seen it hundreds of times now is I'm nothing special.

I'm nothing special. The beauty of it is if you do what I did, you'll get what I got and probably better. And Bobby came from a 30 year marriage as well, but sadly for her, it was constantly a negative experience and she just held on and held on and held on and held on so long. She felt like she could never build the life that she really wanted, especially a relationship.

And so she finally decided to leave the relationship and she a year or so before that really started working out and got in shape. And in her mid fifties decided to become a fitness model and did really well in some of those competitions. And it, she thought, how could I be in better shape and be doing well in these competitions in my mid fifties and feeling better than ever.

And then once we met, we couldn't believe that at our age, number one, we could fall in love and be, you know, acting like little kids and, and enjoying life this much at our age. And so if you do what we do, you'll get what we got. Of course, I use my 31 years of practice to kind of boost that too. So that's, that's one of my favorites, but a lot of my coaching is right now with men.

I've got a lot of men in my coaching practice that, and I just love that because again it's pretty easy to relate to them. And most of them you know, it's just learning the secrets of moving forward and overcoming the challenges and the losses in life.

Kevin English: [01:15:32] Yeah, I'd say you're, you're eminently qualified that type of life coaching certainly for overcoming loss with between your personal life experience and then your professional background. Well, Dean. I want to thank you again so much for coming on and sharing, you know, just opening up and sharing your story.

You're an amazing inspiration. You're a fantastic ambassador for healthy aging. I love what you're doing and I wish you all the best in all your future endeavors.

Dean Hall: [01:16:01] Kevin, it's been a privilege and an honor, and I'd really like to thank you for being the spokesperson for all of us who are over 50 and wanting to show other friends and family members, you don't have to give up just because you're aging. It can be a wonderful experience. So thank you for being the spokesperson that's promoting that out in the world.