THE FOLLOWING IS A NEWS-GAZETTE STORY BY DAVE HINTON
Michael Kasper needed to get his head right but didn’t know how to do it.
The Fargo, N.D., native who has lived in Danville since 1996, grew up in a middle class family but said he lacked direction and fell into substance abuse.
Sound familiar?
Many people fall into the same rut.
“I was going out and drinking every night,” Kasper said. “I thought that’s what everybody does.”
He married Sarah in 2019 and later quit a job he felt was “really negative.”
“Again I was left without direction,” Kasper said. “I was not sure where I wanted to go.”
Kasper met Hunter LaFave, who came back from even further depths to turn his life around. The founder of It’s In Your Head works with others to improve their mental, emotional and physical health.
A former underwater welder, LaFave was diagnosed with stage 3 colorectal cancer at age 30. He underwent 40 rounds of chemotherapy, 28 sessions of radiation and at least seven surgeries.
Three different oncologists gave LaFave different advice on recovery, so he “took the responsibility on myself to heal.”
He decided he needed to get his mind right, removed his dependency on prescription medications and began to jog three to five times a week, reaching up to 4 miles at a time.
LaFave also used other means to heal, including a plant-based diet, intermittent fasting, acupuncture and meditations such as the Wim Hof breathing technique.
It was not easy. Just the opposite, but LaFave would not quit and now counsels others, from students to educators to law enforcement personnel.
Kasper said LaFave’s tutelage changed his life.
He began doing two difficult workouts daily, one of them outdoors, maintains a strict diet, does not consume alcohol and reads 10 pages of a book daily, “which probably changed my life more than any of it,” Kasper said.
“At first (reading that much), it’s very hard to sit there for 30 minutes. It’s hard to sit still and not look at your phone and worry about anything.”
Not only did he get used to it, he began reading more and developed a hunger to learn. History is one of his favorites, and Kasper recently self-published a photo book on Danville’s historic Bresee Tower, which will be demolished.
Kasper said the entire purpose is to create discipline and develop a schedule that you know is going to be difficult.
I think that’s a lot of life lessons we should learn,” he said.
About 30 days in, Kasper decided to quit smoking and gave up drinking. That was in February 2021. He has stuck to both.
“The whole thing changed how I looked at life. I started running a lot. I found that was a solace for me.”
Kasper also began working for Dentsmart, a dent-repair business.
Inspired by how much LaFave’s program has helped him and meeting two men who were running separately across the United States from California, Kasper decided he wanted to do something to help LaFave’s outreach.
“He’s done so much for this community already,” Kasper said. “I wanted to do something crazy like run across the state similar to what those guys were doing running across America.”
Kasper will make the four-day run across Illinois, starting on the western border with Iowa, on Oct. 16, ending at Danville.
He will run regardless of the weather, as long as it’s not life-threatening.
“My wife, my parents, my family are all involved,” Kasper said.
An RV will follow him.
Kasper said he has more peace since following LaFave’s practices and wants others to find the same benefits.
“When Hunter presents to a school board, many times it’s the cost of these services” that stands in the way. “We want to have money in those cases because we believe in it,” Kasper said.
Said LaFave: “We provide mental, emotional, physical and social support to members of the community. We focus on daily habits, mindsets, nutrition and nervous system regulation, giving people the tools to know why they feel the way they feel and how they can get to feeling better.”
LaFave said much of the focus is on being able to slow down.
“I use the term ‘do hard things everyday.’ It’s that practice that things you don’t want to do … in smaller amounts daily can help when you are confronted with a bigger problem — building a tolerance to stress and discomfort. That way, when you’re in an uncontrolled situation, you don’t absolutely lose control and crumble.”
LaFave said in 2023 he gave talks to 2,200 students in Danville, teaching life skills and providing tools to understand their emotions and all the things (that affect) “how you think and feel — better rest, communication, forgiveness, social media, nutrition, mindset.
“All these things should be passed down from an elder, but many aren’t taught.”
LaFave said he also worked with the Urbana Police Department and received a 100 percent approval rating, and all the officers asked to work with him again.
Donations for Kasper’s run to benefit It’s In Your Head may be made at Rundanville.com or itsinyourhead.com.
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