The Most Direct, Unconventional Path to Excellence

Contemporary education shortchanges us. This happens at all levels, from primary school through university education, and including all forms of coaching, training, consulting, and personal and professional development.

A wisdom-based approach creates the possibility for evolutionary learning, for individuals, teams, and whole organizations.

This is a powerful, bespoke learning initiative, exclusively for those seeking personal transformation, culture change, and planetary healing, in accord with ecological and spiritual realities, and customized to your vision, values, and needs.

Get an overview of the wisdom-based approach by watching the presentation above. Then reach out for a free consultation.

Get Beyond the Buzz Words and Propaganda

Across the landscape of professional and personal training and development, we currently find a set of highly propagandized concepts: flow state, mindset, resilience, grit, habit hacking, empathy, and more—along with a host of sales pitches in the general realm of performance enhancement, team-building, productivity boosting, culture change, creativity development, and so on—all of it trying to convince us that the seller has the perfect and unprecedented combination of these hacks to guarantee our success. Once we apply some critical thinking, we can see how anemic these approaches are in comparison to what we find in the wisdom traditions.

We need to get beyond the buzz words, and even beyond the supposedly “evidence-based” claims made in support of these buzz words. The time has come to think about “science-based” and “evidence-based” claims the way we should think about codes: as the bare minimum standard. Would you buy a home advertised as, “built to the minimum standard, legally and scientifically defined”? Or would you prefer a home built to the highest standard possible?

All of the key wisdom-based principles have ample support in the best available science. But wisdom goes beyond what science can currently offer us. It’s the key to true excellence and success—not just in our professional life, but in our personal and social life as well.

Arriving at the Wisdom-Based Approach

Inspired by the wisdom traditions . . .

I spent many years in the university system going against the grain, doing everything I could to learn—and to learn how to teach—the very things our best science and our finest wisdom traditions see as missing from education of all kinds. That involved getting two master’s degrees and a PhD, as well as a graduating from a 3-year, full-time certification course in specialized educational theory and practice—along with countless hours of spiritual practice and years spent teaching inside and outside of the university system, including years spent working as a consulting philosopher and corporate trainer. It also included certification in permaculture, so I could better understand the way nature works at the most practical level.

Assembling the Team

A collaboration across the arts, sciences, and wisdom traditions . . .

I teamed up with two other PhD’s—one from the arts (Cathy Fitzgerald), the other from the sciences (Maureen McCarthy)—along with a research scientist (Jack Lester) with extensive experience in the field and in the lab. In fact, Cathy started out doing lab research in microbiology before she went on to get a PhD in the arts and then venture into ecoliteracy education; Jack is still finishing his PhD, but his practical knowledge allows him to sequence DNA as readily as he can fix your transmission; and Maureen has worked in field research and laboratory analysis, as well as teaching at the university level in psychology, anthropology, statistics, primatology, and human origins. They all have extensive experience in the field and in the lab.

All of my own experience together with collaboration across the sciences, the arts, and the wisdom traditions, helped me to understand that every form of teaching, training, coaching, and consulting suffers from at least some degree of obsolescence. This has become critical for the very survival of our species, to say nothing of our success in our personal and professional lives.

And this perspective allowed me to see what we need to do in order to create a genuine learning revolution that empowers individuals and teams like never before, while helping all of us to get back in tune with nature, so that we can think the way nature works. 

That’s not some feel-good notion. It goes beyond ordinary ecoliteracy and sustainability initiatives as it simultaneously goes beyond all the other kinds of training initiatives we’re used to seeing. That’s because we’re talking about wisdom—not just information, not just tactics and strategies, not just hacks like mindset training, flow states, empathy, and all the other fragmented approaches.

Wisdom is what works—without negative side-effects. This is training that changes lives.

Fully customized training delivered in person, online, and at utterly unique retreats.

The possibility for transformative insight.

When it comes to customizing a retreat experience, you will have the option to choose a customized equine-facilitated retreat what will create an extra-special experience. Your customized retreat may integrate meditation, dance, labyrinth walks, and more, all in an awe-inspiring natural setting.

Whatever form of retreat experience we design for you, it will surpass typical kinds of team-building retreat experiences—because your team will have been training for months, learning everything they need to make that retreat experience transformative for them.

Anybody can create an “experience” for you. All it takes is a little bit of “wow”: a ropes course with a zip line, a fire walk, or even an interaction with horses. These sorts of things can feel enthralling, and they can create a strong aesthetic impact without an equally strong visionary insights.

Wisdom-based learning goes beyond all of that. It empowers your team members to understand things they couldn’t possibly have understood otherwise. No short-term experience can replace a holistic education. 

It’s like building a solid foundation. We may want the view of from the penthouse apartment, but if we haven’t built the foundation first, we either have a penthouse apartment sitting on the ground, or someone has pushed us out of a helicopter from the height of a penthouse apartment, and we have to try to take it all in as we go speeding back to earth.

The Journey to Wisdom—

the Journey to a Better World

Imagine . . .

Imagine an organization in which the learning that happened there became fundamental—because learning itself is fundamental to all human activity, as are wisdom, compassion, and grace. 

Most of us haven’t received the kinds of teachings that really make us to feel that those teachings were some of the most valuable things we ever encountered. That’s what can happen when we root ourselves in the soil of wisdom. It’s how we change the world. 

No one wants to run an organization—or live a life—on the basis of ignorance. No one really wants to work with ignorant people, or say and do ignorant things. But we have only one way to ensure an end to ignorance: And that is to open up fully and deliberately to wisdom.