Bridging Meditation, Ecology, and Mental Health to integrate the holistic systems understanding of ourselves and our place in the biosphere.
I am a human being on planet Earth. Growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, I was left to my own devices. I was, and still am, empathic and sensitive. I’m also a little anxious, inquisitive, and curious. I need to know about the world around me. I often don’t have the information I need to feel safe. Fortunately, I figured out how to navigate my world. If you’re reading this, I’ll bet you can relate.
My adaptive behaviors helped assuage feeling different. I learned to be hypervigilant to get the information I needed. I learned to blend in and mask myself to suit other people’s needs. I found safety in matching my behavior to others.
I rebelled against conformity. I followed rules that made sense but was angered by things that didn’t. I discovered nicotine, weed, and skateboarding. I sought out underground music and art. I defined myself as ‘not that’, as most kids do.
As a young adult, I started to come into my own. I began to accept myself and my place in the world. I identified as a hippie counterculturist. Though very shy around women, I started building confidence. Once I got into a relationship, however, all of that changed.
At 24 I entered a relationship that would become my first marriage and generate my first three daughters. Unfortunately, this stimulated my old beliefs around information, trauma, and people-pleasing. I backtracked on my confidence and became an exaggerated version of my younger self. I threw everything I could into being the hypervigilant people-pleaser because I thought that’s how relationships worked. No communication, just me mind reading and adjusting.
Though I completed a doctorate and got a tenure-track position, I could not do it all. I quit the career I spent 15 years building to be a stay-at-home dad. Part of that is commendable, but part of it is my maladaptive trauma. My first marriage ended and I entered the next phase of introspective healing.
For over twenty years I tried to become the person I felt like I should be. The person my family, educators, employers, and culture wanted me to be. As a result, I neglected the person I am.
I may have left the tenure track but remain a highly skilled researcher and learner. Coupled with my need for information, my ability to scour the world of information and teach myself complex subjects was suddenly incredibly important. Essentially, I took a damn-the-torpedoes approach to understanding myself, my past, my relationships, and human psychology. This eventually led to me identifying as Neurodivergent – Autism and ADHD.
Throughout my forties, I experienced just about every healing modality. I followed the systems approach I had always believed in, coupled with my training in evolutionary ecology, and completed the puzzle with the human element, indigenous knowledge, and anthropology. I developed the explanation I needed to understand what happened to me. The explanation I share with you today.
My degrees illustrate that I can do hard things. I can assimilate seemingly disparate pieces into an integrated explanation. In short, I take a systems approach to organize the big picture. Turns out, this is a better way to heal than reductionism. For too long, humans have tried specializing in the pieces while missing the important interactions. My strong understanding of Natural Law helps me sort the wheat from the chaff.
My systems approach is built on mindfulness meditation. After decades of research, I concede that this ancient modality is necessary to suspend old beliefs, make choices, and be free from our domestication. It is a superb model for doing anything. Meditation is the foundation of all human understanding.
Once a meditation practice is established, you can build out your system. This process includes revisiting your past, remembering experiences, and connecting the dots between your beliefs and behaviors. This reassembly helps you decide what belongs to you and what is not yours. This cleansing results in more accurate values, beliefs, and feelings. In short, you become yourself instead of your culture. You become the person you are and release yourself from who you think you should be. Once yue are whole, you can reintegrate more effectively into your social groups and communities.
The process is simple but far from easy. It has taken me a lifetime to learn, and I still struggle. Suffering is inevitable, but we can learn to minimize suffering and maximize life. My article and video series describe the processes in varying levels of detail. I have hundreds of articles and videos supporting the parts and ideas that build the system. You can decide what to consume and what helps. Mostly for free.
I also offer group classes that walk through the process step-by-step. You can even work with me 1:1 if you are interested. It’s up to you. I was very conservative about paying for help, and have tried to build my system so that you can work through it solo and still see benefits. I will say that once I started paying for courses, workshops, and 1:1 help my understanding and healing accelerated. I get it.
I’m glad you’re here and came to check me out. Who am I to claim to know anything? Hopefully, I provided the information to help you decide if my content will work for you. Most of it is free. I specialize in teaching, by sharing things smarter people have told me or that I have found in my research adventures. All I did was integrate several sensible ideas into a system that works.
Join my email list and I will send links to the free information regarding the Natural System.