"I
am
Practicing..."
--Deliberately Developmental Psychology--
What is Deliberately Developmental Psychology?
I regard you foremost as a Practitioner rather than a client or patient! Based on core developmental principles and oriented to leverage the breadth of your personhood, DDP addresses obstacles and pitfalls you'll likely encounter on your endeavor to both psychological maturity and transpersonal awakening. These two paths are traditionally addressed very separately, often causing a fractured human experience. When practiced effectively, these are understood and integrated holistically while increasing degrees of freedom, responsibility, love, power, and clarity of purpose unfold in alignment with your highest intention.
"Aim High, Aim Whole"
People who benefit the most from partnering with me have strong passion and capacity for deliberate development. In addition to healing your "worst" we do the even harder work of cultivating your "best". I'm direct and honest, gentle and receptive to the healing and compassion that emerge naturally from facing your suffering collaboratively and intelligently.
Think of me primarily as a mentor with a broad skillset in psychotherapy, coaching, and Buddhism. Hence, ideal practitioners are open to influence in three essential but distinct territories: cleaning up (healing), growing up (developing) and waking up (transcending). Because of the unconventional nature of my offerings, I don't accept insurance.
*I don't do long term, depth work with: suicide ideation, personality disorders, psychosis, or disabling addictions.
I offer mentorship based in the disciplines of:
*Psychotherapy- Gestalt, Transpersonal, Somatic Experiencing, Three Pillars, Mindfulness-Based, Integrally Informed.
*Teaching- Naropa University Adjunct Professor, Meditation Instructor, Integral Zen Denver Community Leader.
*Coaching- Conscious Death Coach, Immunity to Change Facilitator, Colorado Outward Bound Instructor Trainer.
*Zen Priesthood- 100+ weeks of retreat in Therevada, Vajrayana and Zen Buddhist schools
***I currently work online only***
What are you about?
Who do you want to be?
Enjoy who you're becoming.
It’s all workable...
Who’s to say what you should work on first? Not me or you! My approach trains you in the practice of actively engaging your experience in the here and now. If what is arising is strength, I encourage that to be because it is so. If you need to explore your victim parts, those too are welcomed because they're what awareness is presenting. If it suddenly becomes clear that all of your experience is emerging from the ground of Being, that too is honored and explored. “What we resist, persists” and when there is no resistance there is cause for freedom and any number of other self-transcendent qualities.
... In the Here and Now.
I keep six principles of deliberate development in mind: Engagement, Non-Interference, Character Development, Nourishment, Collaboration and Play. Ideally, I will mostly reflect your experience back to you as a clear mirror. At times I allow my curiosity to guide your attention in a particular way. And more rarely, I will follow my instinct to temporarily “join you” in your worldview as a resource, though ultimately I don’t lose the perspective that you are an autonomous being with your own particular knowing of the truth. As a rule of thumb, I can’t "help" you but I can train you to "self-help".
My approach will be a good fit if...
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You've taken up a sincere spiritual path for several years and still struggle with negative emotions, and core psychological issues which impact your relationships, and sense of meaning or direction.
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You have already done hours of psychotherapy or self-help and have come to the conclusion that “telling your story” again will not give you the satisfaction you are searching for. You know the body is key.
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You will do whatever it takes to awaken to a whole new level -and heal your deepest shadows, traumas and attachment wounds- rather than rewriting the same self-centered script.
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You're in a place where you’d rather risk feeling uncomfortable in order to grow, rather than hang out in “safe” places where people keep affirming you that you're "good enough as you are".
...you expect more from yourself.
Facilitator & Coach
"We cannot solve problems with the same [level of] thinking we used when creating them"
-Albert Einstein
I promise I will tell you directly what I believe your problem is. Here is why the Immunity to Change process is so powerful. The first step in the process impels you to find your kingpin issue and invites you to articulate the "One Big Thing" it is that would change everything. Second, it is simultaneously a research based tool to "Grow Up" your level of development while also "Clean Up" powerful shadows, the drivers of your behavior and psychology which you don't see. Finally, it is thorough. When your map is completed and you take home the insights, you'll have a path of where you can continue to uncover and grow, plus you'll have plenty of direction and motivation to make sustained changes that stick.
In a course of Life Coaching together, we assess your own level of development and leverage the edges of any limiting beliefs to discover your new potentials. I'm a certified Immunity to Change Facilitator and coach. Developed at Harvard University, ITC is one of the most rigorous, comprehensive and research based systems for making big and sustained developmental changes. I also have training in Career Counseling which I've taught in the Naropa University Graduate School of Psychology.
Zen Buddhism
The grand entrance fee for real transformation of our lives is an experienced understanding that no matter how much you Clean up and heal (in psychotherapy) and Grow up (through coaching or life experience), when really Showing up, a perspective even greater than ourself is revealed. Zen training unyieldingly disrupts our self-centeredness, pointing to a perspective that’s “beyond” the small and conventional life. Take a moment to inquire- when you look to find your “self“ what is actually here? Yes, there is thinking, there is emotion, there is sensation and there is the appearance of the world outside of you. But is that all? Where does the impulse to create something novel- art, love, entrepreneurship, even a galaxy- originate from? Some of the best moments of our lives occur when we tap into the dimension we call “spiritual”, a sense we might be connected to something much larger than we’d imagined.
Perhaps you’ve grown tired of popular feel good Buddhism where everything is flowing with “Zen”. If it is your time to stop kidding yourself and admit you are suffering, I’d like the opportunity to know you. Zen Buddhism is a confronting path which further and further reveals the ephemeral nature of our existence. It’s a steep climb and it's often difficult as our meditation reveals again and again how we limit ourselves by clinging to the familiarity of our narrative of autonomy, separateness and fear. This sense of separateness is the root of our alienation, our sense of angst and of our self-centeredness. We realize that rather than being players in loving reality, we’ve been sidelined in existential angst… (read more- link to a blog)
I was ordained as Zen priest in 2018 and I continue to train in and facilitate the Dharma under the guidance of the Rinzai Zen lineage.
