I couldn't find a practice that fully honored both. So I built one.
About the Groundwork Collective
Ancient wisdom. Modern life.
BUILT FOR MODERN LIFE
GROUNDWORK
ROOTED IN TRADITION
01 / THE IDEA
I was looking for something I couldn't quite find.
For more than twenty years, contemplative practice has been part of my life.
I found extraordinary depth in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition—centuries of accumulated wisdom about attention, suffering, compassion and the human mind.
But I was also living a very modern life.
Work. Parenting. Relationships. Technology. Ambition. Constant information. A culture that rarely stops asking for our attention.
I wanted a way of practicing that could hold the depth of contemplative tradition and meet the realities of the life I was actually living.
I had practiced meditation for more than twenty years. I understood the teachings. And I was still overriding much of what I knew when life got full.
I could meditate in the morning and spend the rest of the day rushing. I could understand presence intellectually and still be absent from my own life.
That forced me to ask a different question:
What does practice look like when it has to survive contact with an actual life?
Not a retreat. Not an ideal morning. Work, children, relationships, uncertainty, exhaustion—the whole thing.
02 / My Story
EVENTUALLY,
THE QUESTIONS
BECAME
PERSONAL.
I wanted to understand how to actually live it.
I DIDN'T WANT ANCIENT WISDOM WATERED DOWN FOR MODERN LIFE.
I WASN'T LOOKING FOR AN ESCAPE FROM MODERN LIFE.
I WANTED A BETTER WAY TO INHABIT IT.
Systems matter. Institutions matter. Culture and circumstances matter. I've spent much of my career trying to change them.
But every system is ultimately inhabited by human beings.
And what we bring into those systems—our attention, fear, reactivity, judgment, courage and capacity—shapes what becomes possible.
PEACEBUILDING
HUMANITARIAN RESPONSE
FACILITATION
SYSTEMS CHANGE
COMMUNITY-BASED Practice
For nearly two decades, I've worked inside systems designed to respond to some of the world's hardest problems.
03 / The Fieldwork
From international peacebuilding to this.
02
01
WHAT I'VE LEARNED
Groundwork isn't about optimizing yourself into a better-performing version of who you already are. It's about becoming connected enough to yourself to know what matters—and steady enough to act on it.
The more grounded you become, the more clearly you can see what matters—and the more deliberately you can shape what comes next.
The goal isn't to eliminate difficulty. It's to build the ability to stay present, recover, discern and choose when difficulty arrives.
03
You don't need to become someone else.
Capacity is a skill.
A connection to your own core.
Knowing yourself clearly enough that you aren't constantly pushed around by everyone else's urgency and noise.
Enough ground beneath you to find the wider view—and choose from there.
A Groundwork Principle
Confidence
Connection
Clarity
Steadiness
Presence
COMMUNITY
CREATIVITY
MOVEMENT
MEDITATION
Four ordinary human practices for building the capacity to be more present, steady, clear and connected in the life you already have.
04 / The Practice
Build a life you can actually inhabit.
THE GOAL ISN'T
A CALMER LIFE.
IT'S MORE CAPACITY
INSIDE THE LIFE
YOU HAVE.
I'm here to help you build something that becomes available when you need it.
The capacity to stay present when things get difficult. To find steadiness when life gets noisy. To see clearly enough to know what matters. And to remain connected—to yourself and to other people—when your instinct is to pull away.
The Invitation
I'm not here to hand you one more thing to manage.
NOT SURE WHERE TO START?
The Energy Audit.
One hour. Free. See where your energy is actually going.
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