Hi, I'm Dave...PhD, RYT, TIYT

I've recycled a lot (and I really mean a lot) of the ideas, perspectives, and values I've acquired or encountered over the years. However, through four years of college, nine years of graduate school, and a couple decades of professional experience in a wide range of vocations and industries (see below), a few key themes have emerged from my research and experience. Prime among these, and the one that undergirds this whole adventure of Living Heart Intelligence, is: never underestimate the power and intelligence of the human body when it's cultivated as a welcome home for the human spirit. In today's tech-obsessed and machine-dependent age, many of us have lost touch with what this really means. I had my own experience with this, through nearly a decade earning my PhD, which was particularly ironic because my doctoral research was all about embodied cognition!

Truly, it was mind-bending. In the institutional context of formal schooling, earning a credential meant developing a conceptual command of a large body (don't miss the ironic pun here) of technical, and often abstract, facts. Yet, in my field of study -- embodied cognition and critical education -- all those concepts revealed that 99% of human cognition is non-conceptual!

So there I was, diligently consulting research reports from the world's best scholars and scientists in an effort to demonstrate my understanding of embodied cognition, only to conclude what I knew long before I started any such study...the body knows, because the body is the mind. All our best sciences -- literally all of them -- are converging on this basic truth, which of course has been known since antiquity and only forgotten in recent configurations of human/societal living. Through years of experience with a variety of tangible practices -- mindfulness, contemplative practices, medicinal movement, fitness, sports, and various other kinesthetically challenging activities -- my own direct, embodied experience has confirmed this. The body knows. The body is not just "the body," separate from yet somehow connected to "the mind." It is all one. My research and practice is grounded in this fact, and my mission is to support others in recovering this primordial truth we all hold deep within the wordless consciousness of our bones, blood, and breath.

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What I uniquely bring to the table is a dynamic synthesis of high-level academic/scientific research and the direct knowledge of life that can only come from literal hands-on experience. In addition to previously owning and operating a psychotherapy practice in Denver, I have lived and worked in a wide range of occupations, professions, and industries, including:

• retail and customer service
• food service
• private sector, government, non-profit, and independent contract work
• produce farming, animal farming, and agricultural ecology
• publishing/editing
• backpacking guide
• heavy equipment operation
• public, private, non-profit, and for-profit colleges and universities (as instructor, researcher, staff, and academic advisor)
• sexual assault survivor advocacy
• manual labor (masonry, carpentry, construction, permaculture landscaping, trail building)
• high ropes course facilitator
• summer camp counselor
• gig economy (Lyft driver, food delivery driver)
• cannabis (retail and cultivation)
• non-profit animal sanctuary
• custodial work

My professional training spans a wide range of practices, theories, and modalities. I am trained in:

• Trauma Informed Yoga Therapy™ (Sundara Yoga Therapy Academy)
• trauma-sensitive mindfulness
• sexual assault survivor advocacy
• intergroup and interfaith/interreligious dialogue
• mindfulness and embodied cognition
• Registered Yoga Teacher - certified in Hatha, Vinyasa, and Yin Yoga

Through a Doctoral Research Fellowship, I earned my PhD from the School of Education at Syracuse University. My doctoral dissertation advances the current paradigm shift in the life-mind sciences that leaves behind the obsolete mind-body/mental-physical dualism in favor of what's called the "deep continuity of life and mind" at the core of the emerging paradigm of embodied cognition. In short, this means that mind is not inside the head; we are inside mind. Everything humans do, think, feel, perceive, and experience is a cognitive phenomenon. Cognition is in no way whatsoever separate from our physicality: literally everything in human existence is cognition! Cognition/mind is a dynamic, multidimensional phenomenon that pervades not only our personal and individual lives, but also our social and collective lives and the entirety of life on Earth. 

In my research, writing, and embodied practices, I draw from a variety of ancient and contemporary traditions including the Tzʼutujil Maya; Taoism; contemplative and mystical Christianity; modern postural yoga; and secular traditions/practices including Eugene Gendlin's "Focusing" method; American pragmatic psychology (specifically Deweyan); and postsecular mindfulness.