About me and the development of The Feeling Path

I’ve learned most of my coaching practice from my clients. By developing a very powerful set of questions that enable people to discover their own truth about whatever challenges them, I’ve had the opportunity to “listen in” on the most profound and wise teaching on the planet. Ordinary people have the capacity to tap into extraordinary wisdom when they are supported in trusting feeling and following it to the source. And I’ve been soaking up that wisdom – and using it to refine my practice – for a decade and a half.

My clients experience my style as overwhelmingly supportive. Many express gratitude and relief that they are no longer burdened by the expectations and labels of an “expert.” They feel buoyed by my demonstrated trust in their own capacity to find the answers they seek. And they find a certain comfort in my own easy way with even their most intensely distressing emotions. In my own explorations, I’ve been almost everywhere it’s possible to go inside a human psyche, so nothing surprises me, nothing concerns me, nothing for a moment gives me reason to doubt this client, right now, has the capacity to move beyond the struggle and into a state of grace once again. I think that comes across pretty clearly.

I believe it is the trust I have for my clients’ own inner wisdom which they find most valuable. And that makes me feel pretty good. I value that capacity in myself, and I like when it gives someone else the courage they need to face their darkest demons and find their way back to the light within.

In my coaching work as well as my development and research work, my prime directive is to seek truth through awareness and ease. The central theme is that struggle is a lie. If you’re having a hard time, it’s almost guaranteed that you’re not seeing things accurately. You’re missing something. You’re misinterpreting something. Your version of the world is in some way disconnected from reality.

Whenever I experience struggle, whether in my personal life, my professional efforts to design a new approach to growth and transformation, or in my one-on-one coaching with clients, my preferred response is to pause. After pausing, I turn to feeling as the best source of information about what is real and true. In dialog with feeling, inviting feeling to show the way back to center, I discover new ways of framing my experience or my understanding. Invariably, in those new ways lie greater ease in moving forward.

When you work with me, I’ll guide you in that same approach to growth. We’ll use feeling (yours) as our primary reference for what is true and good. You’ll learn to trust that feeling is your best source for authentic knowledge about what supports your highest good. And you’ll learn how to access feeling and engage with it in ways that bring that truth to the foreground easily and gracefully.

I have never rested easy with my understanding – or anyone’s – of human nature, consciousness, the mind, feeling, the soul. When I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 1987 after almost a decade of turbulence, I was faced with this disenchantment in a very personal way. The only available explanation for bipolar disorder amounted to a generic, “there’s something wrong with your brain.” The only treatment was toxic medication which simply crippled the capacity to feel as a means to disabling the mood swings. I had studied enough about the brain to know that the given explanation was a “best guess,” didn’t trust that guess, and set out to find the correct reason for my woes.

I knew I was taking a very big risk. I did indeed sport the full complement of diagnostic criteria for bipolar disorder (Bipolar II), which meant it was at times ridiculously difficult for me to negotiate an ordinary life. Just keeping a job was more than I had the capacity to do because of the mercurial nature of my passions. Maintaining consistency was impossible. And without the medication, statistics and medical advice suggested my outcome would not be pretty: continued degradation of my condition and deterioration of my quality of life, with a very good chance of culminating in suicide.

Still, I chose to take on the challenge. From earlier studies in consciousness and some training in neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), I had a glimmer. Some truth about my condition lay just within my grasp, if I could only find which way to reach. I ditched the lithium prescription and never looked back.

After my diagnosis, I became obsessed with finding the truth about my condition. And my primary assumption was that I would not find an answer anywhere in the existing literature of psychology, neuroscience, spirituality, or anywhere else. My best data was available on the ground, in real life, in the heart of my own inner experience and in the first-hand, reported experiences of other people. So I stopped reading anything but fiction, interviews, and documentaries that focused on the inner experiences of actual (or imagined/projected) people.

I went through several cycles of deep, introspective investigation. At one point, I moved across the country to a place where nobody knew me and abandoned contact with family and friends. Much of my inner work was pretty conventional: processing memories, journaling, exploring dreams. Some of it was a little more “out there,” the most unconventional of which was using self hypnosis to track feelings to their origins in my early life.

In the early ’90s I did further training in NLP as a way to strengthen my skills in investigating the structure of inner experience, including a 10-day intensive with Richard Bandler in San Diego and a month-long advanced training with NLP Comprehensive in Colorado.

It took seven years in all, but I finally cracked through. In 1994 I discovered the kernel that would grow into The Feeling Path Mapping System. The following year, I used mapping to completely halt my bipolar disorder in its tracks.

The months after that were a complete remaking of my life. It was clear to me that this work was groundbreaking. According to conventional thought, bipolar disorder is a terminal condition, caused by faulty biology. There was no question I had it, no doubt my neuro-chemistry was as whacked out as that of anyone else with the diagnosis. But I had shifted it. Clearly, definitively, incontrovertibly.

At that time, because I had quit The University of Pennsylvania (after 6 years) without completing my core credit requirements, I did not have so much as a bachelors degree. That needed to be remedied. I also needed to figure out how to support myself while I continued to investigate this exciting new work. So I went back to school.

I chose Antioch University Seattle because it encouraged self-designed curricula and because it was across the street from my apartment. Student loans covered both school and my basic living expenses, and I had the perfect container for continuing my research. I went part time to give myself maximum freedom to explore outside the boundaries of school requirements, so completing a BA (in Natural Sciences and Consciousness Studies) took me two years.

After a year participating in a PhD program in Philosophy, Cosmology and Consciousness at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, I returned to Antioch to pursue my MA in Whole Systems Design. I had reached a plateau in my understanding of the work as it applied to the inner self, and I was curious to explore how it might apply to facilitating processes with groups and organizations. I developed my Three Simple Rules for Transformation which apply at any level of organization and complexity, and received my Whole Systems Design degree with a specialization in Facilitating Transformative Learning in 2002.

The subsequent 8 years I’ve been engaged in recursive cycles of investigating, putting it out there, digging deep, revising and refining. I’ll share much more about the journey when the book is done, but this day in 2010 marks a culmination of my efforts in The New Feeling Path.

So what is Whole Systems Design, anyway?

People often ask. The Antioch program is unique and I feel fortunate to have been a part of it. Whole Systems Design is not so much a body of knowledge as it is a way of being in the world. It is the embodiment of systemic and holistic thinking combined with an attitude of creating new opportunities rather than fixing old problems.

I recognized Whole Systems Design as a key framework for creating the new world I envision, and believe as a field of study it was best suited to my intention to develop this body of work, The New Feeling Psychology. I was free to apply the absolute best principles of thinking and design to the development of my work, drawing from the direct data of feeling experience as my raw material, without the encumbrances of old ways of thinking and perceiving the mind.

I’m grateful to the program, and particularly to my professors Farouk Seif, Sue Woehrlin, Harold Nelson, and others.

For those who are interested, here is a timeline of my formal education:

1977–1979: University of Pennsylvania, pre-med, bioengineering. Completed my medical school prerequisites with flying colors by the end of my sophomore year.

1979–1980: University of Edinburgh, Scotland. My junior year abroad, funded by a scholarship from the Andrew Mutch Foundation in Philadelphia. Credit-wise, this was a throwaway year as I chose to pursue independent studies rather than stay enrolled in the formal programs available to me. The glimmers of insights that led to The New Feeling Psychology came to me during this time.

1980–1984: Various fits and starts, attempting to complete my degree while unsuccessfully dealing with my mood swings. Finally dropped out with more credits than I needed, but lacking a few key engineering courses for which I had lost all interest.

1982: NLP Practitioner Certification with Joe Yeager and Linda Summer in Philadelphia, with advanced courses in beliefs and hypnosis by Robert Dilts and Richard Bandler.

1992: NLP Master Practitioner Certification with Connirae and Steve Andreas of NLP Comprehensive, Boulder, Colorado.

1992: DHE (Design Human Engineering) Certification with Richard Bandler in San Diego.

1996–1997: Antioch University Seattle, BA Completion Program. Awarded a BA in Natural Sciences and Consciousness Studies in December 1997.

1998: California Institute of Integral Studies, Philosophy, Cosmology and Consciousness Program, PhD track. Studies with Brian Swimme and others.

1999–2002: Antioch University Seattle, Whole Systems Design Program. Awarded an MA in Whole Systems Design with a focus in Facilitating Transformative Learning Processes in June 2002.

The fact is, what I offer you doesn’t exist anywhere else. I had to step completely outside the established system to create this new path. And so my background does not feature any formal training or certification in either psychology or coaching. I have to say, choosing to go a completely independent route hasn’t made things easy for me. But I’m grateful for having trusted my own muse and pursued my independent studies. I believe in time, The Feeling Path, (perhaps in a more academically rigorous form called feeling psychology), will take its place at the center of what is considered standard curriculum for both therapy and coaching training programs. For now, I’m the only place you’ll find it.