About Robert
While my work fits into categories of coach, catalyst, and guide, I don’t connect with any one label.What’s true is that everything I’ve done and been in my life has led me to the work I do now.
As a young altar boy, ripening early seeds of mysticism that guided me to the wise teachings of Michael Meade, David Whyte, and Francis Weller, and onto my own winding spiritual path.
As a ventriloquist and then songwriter, experimenting with voice and developing my own. Mentoring and coaching hundreds of people of all ages through creative challenges to find their voice, first in academia, and then through workshops of my own creation.
As a nature lover and dreamer, talking to salamanders and whispering my prayers up to the clouds on my way to a deeply rewarding relationship with the elements and indigenous teachings.
Long before I wrote poetry and made films, I saw through the lens of a poet and film-maker. In close-up. Through story, imagery, metaphor. Where other people might see creative or personal blocks, I see the in between, a way through.
Deep listening isn’t so much a skill I’ve learned, as a way of being I’ve tended.
Hearing what’s quiet and hidden, what wants to be said.
Through twelve-step work, I learned humility. Through men’s work, I learned ritual, leadership, and how to be on the right side of masculinity in a polarized world. Through breathwork, I learned how to let go, and come back home.
But whatever knowledge and life experience I have means far less than the knowing and life within you. That’s where we’ll go. Gently. Playfully.
Robert sees what is happening inside someone's life and uses it as a kind of mythology to call them into something deeper.
—J.T., embodiment coach
In coaching training I was asked, “What is a poem for you?” The question blew my mind, and made me stretch my perception of what a poem might be.
A poem can be a lush garden.
A poem can be your gaze out the window.
A poem can be the way you walk through a day, show up for a friend.
I saw that a poem was not so much a piece of writing but an approach one took to adding beauty and passion to the world. I realized, as the Spanish poet, Jaime Gil de Bieda, poignantly said:
Awake. Sensing and seeing. Feeling alive.
This is what I want for you, for us. It is my great privilege to walk with you on this adventure.
“I believed that I wanted to be a poet, but deep down I just wanted to be a poem.”
