From Silicon Valley to Bali: How Pain Led Me to Purpose

I used to live in Silicon Valley. I was a software architect, a developer, and I was really good at it. I built systems, scaled infrastructure, and lived in the world of deadlines, laptops, and fluorescent lighting. But I also lived in pain. A lot of it.

One day, my body gave out. I had two herniated discs in my lower back, one pressing hard against a nerve. Overnight, I lost my ability to walk comfortably. I couldn’t put on pants without wincing. Stairs were out of the question. I couldn’t sit, lie down, or stand for long without pain slicing through me. It became the darkest and most physically difficult chapter of my life.

I went on medical leave. In search of answers, I visited 14 different Western doctors. Most of them looked at my MRI, shrugged gently, and told me the same thing: surgery. "It's the only way you'll walk properly again," they said. I remember sitting in waiting rooms next to people twice my age—60, 70, even 80 years old—with the same diagnosis. I couldn’t shake the thought: they’ve lived their lives... but mine felt like it hadn’t even started yet.

Something in me refused to settle. I didn’t believe that surgery was my only option. I believed that the body could do something miraculous—if given the right conditions. So I left. I packed up everything, walked away from the screens, the stress, the systems... and I came to Bali. I wasn’t chasing paradise—I was chasing healing. What I found was something much bigger.

Yoga became my gateway. I paired it with physical therapy, deep breathwork, and a kind of patience I had never needed before. And somewhere in that journey, something cracked open in me. I realized I didn’t want to go back. I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life coding someone else’s dream from a cubicle. I wanted to reinvent myself—build a life around what I love, not a job that drained me. I didn’t just heal my back. I re-engineered my life.

Then I found acroyoga—and fell in love all over again. The connection, the play, the trust... it lit something up in me. But my body still wasn’t fully on board. My lower back needed support. And what people were using—rolled-up yoga mats, generic pillows, weird bolsters—just wasn’t working. It was painful, awkward, and definitely not ergonomic. So I did what any inventor with a sore spine and a background in systems would do: I made a better solution.

That first prototype was just a wedge of foam. But it worked. It cradled my lower back perfectly and let me join the practice I loved without hurting myself. I started bringing it to jams, classes, festivals. People saw it and asked where I got it. So I made a few more. Then a few more. Five at a time, then ten. Before I knew it, The AcroBack was born.

What began as a solution to my personal pain turned into something much bigger: a tool that helped others feel safe and included in their acroyoga practice. That’s always been the heart of it. I didn’t make this to make money. I made it to survive. And in doing so, I helped others thrive.

I believe the world would be a better place if everyone practiced acroyoga. I really do. It teaches us to trust, to play, to communicate. My goal now is to make that practice more accessible—one back at a time. That’s how The AcroBack came to life. Not from a business plan. But from pain, passion, and a deep desire to build something that matters.