Modern American life is defined by rapid change, information overwhelm, artificial intelligence, excess, avoiding discomfort and pain at all costs, and illness rooted in chronic stress. People are finding it more challenging than ever to find their balance, a sense of security, and wellbeing perhaps because they are conditioned and manipulated to look everywhere else than inside of themselves.
I believe personal wellness and wellbeing can be cultivated by knowing oneself through self study.
To learn about human nature and one’s own specific, individual nature is the foundation for a high quality life in our modern world.
The Classic Wisdom for the Modern Human Self Study Guide is a lifelong, process-oriented program for individuals specifically designed to promote deep, authentic learning about oneself for wellness.
Other forms of self-help, education, and training programs rely on the foundation of one’s degree of self knowledge which can only come from introspection and deliberate self examination.
New Education for Wholeness & Wellness
While working as a high school teacher, I observed the increasing anxiety and depression among students, an over-indulgence in safe-space mentality among parents and school leaders, increasing problems with attention and a loss of deep focus, excessive social media use and its detrimental focus on social comparison, and an over-valuation of competition. School culture merely reflected wider culture’s excesses, illness, and imbalance.
I tried to leverage the traditional, standardized school curriculum the best I could to address the new needs of students. An English teacher, I regularly taught students to engage in understanding their own humanity through great archetypal stories of world literature but also through introspection (a form of listening to oneself), reflection (a way to “read” one’s own experiences), and writing (a modality for discovering what one is thinking and feeling).
Similarly, as a yoga teacher, I work to be present as a compassionate guide to help individuals work towards self-realization through their practice of focused attention, physical and mental discipline, and self control, trust, and faith in oneself despite one’s limitations. I watch people both struggling and thriving physically and psychologically when they face themselves in the mirror, learning about how their bodies and minds work and managing stress through pursuing balance. I wondered, how I could possibly bring the principles of yoga: integration, wholeness, and balance through the process of self-realization into my school to improve individual wellness among students?
The Classic Wisdom for the Modern Human Self Study Guide is my solution, which I hope inspires and motivates people to pursue personal meaning and fulfillment by deliberately developing their ‘human literacies.’
The Classic Wisdom for the Modern Human Self Study Guide is a new kind of curriculum created for students, but packaged and delivered in a way that scales to reach the masses of people I couldn’t otherwise possibly know or help if I were relegated to one brick and mortar classroom.
This Classic Wisdom for the Modern Human Self Study Guide is the new humanities curriculum specifically designed to promote the type of learning that’s necessary not just for young people but for all people in the modern world to become more human, more wise, whole, and well.
Classic and Unique
The five central tenets of the Classic Wisdom for the Modern Human Self Study Guide are derived from the humanities traditions of both East and West. There’s nothing original about the wisdom to “know thyself,” hence the moniker “classic.” What is unique and original is how this Guide interprets, simplifies, and delivers the classic wisdom in a way that’s accessible to the widest possible modern audience and is useful for every individual’s pragmatic application to their own unique lives.
It’s a new type of individual education plan for authentic learning about oneself that is foundational to all other types of learning, growth, fulfillment, achievement and success.
The Classic Wisdom for the Modern Human Self Study curriculum guides readers to:
(1) understand attention and it’s value and learn to manage one’s own,
(2) gain self-awareness,
(3) realize the value of embracing challenges to build resilience,
(4) make more intentional choices to respond to experiences rather than reacting unconsciously, and
(5) approach one’s life experiences with curiosity and as opportunities for authentic learning.
Living in a world where the power of artificial intelligence has radically changed how we think, feel, and relate to one another requires us to understand human nature and know our unique, individual nature to become more human than ever before, if we want to be optimally alive and well.
It is a mistake to assume that we know how to be our best and most complete human selves.
It turns out that we have to intentionally and consciously work hard to know who we are if we hope to have a high quality human experience for the short time we inhabit this planet.
I hope that explicit instruction for engaging in the process of self-study will help.
