Psycho-Spiritual Guide. Licensed clinician. Someone who has crossed the dissolution that teaches you what is real — and built a practice around helping others do the same.
The authority is not institutional.
It is earned, in the body.
James nearly died on a ferry in Bangladesh. On the other side of that silence, something in him shifted permanently. That moment did not start a spiritual journey — it clarified one already underway.
He gave two years to the Peace Corps in Bangladesh, crossed Thailand with his best friend, raised two children through a divorce, and showed up for himself and others through every phase of it. His training at Johns Hopkins and UC San Diego gave him clinical and methodological rigor. But his formation — the thing that actually makes him different — came from twenty years of living inside the questions his clients now bring to him.
Through all of it, he held onto something most clinicians quietly abandon: the belief that the soul is real, and that it cannot be healed by the mind alone. Psychology, after all, means knowledge of the soul. Psyche. Logos. Somewhere along the way, the field forgot that. James remembered.
"Come home to yourself."
How James works.
He is not a therapist in the traditional sense, not a coach, not a wellness guide. He is something Western culture does not yet have a clean word for. The closest: a Psycho-Spiritual Guide.
Most practitioners live on one side of the line — either clinical or spiritual, either evidence-based or contemplative. James does not acknowledge the line. He cites Jon Kabat-Zinn and the Tao Te Ching in the same breath. In his presence, these are not contradictions. They are complements.
The people who work with James describe sitting across from someone who is genuinely there — not performing empathy from behind a professional mask, but actually moved by what moves them. People do not feel managed by him. They feel met.
James does not soothe people into comfort. He creates the conditions in which they wake up. He asks the question nobody else is asking. He names what is present in the room before they have words for it. He loves people enough to tell them the truth — with enough warmth that they can actually hear it.
James works with the Adult Self, the Child Self, and the Higher Self simultaneously — the present-tense mind, the stored wisdom of early experience, and the deeper soul-intelligence that holds both. Most approaches work at only one level. He works at all three, which is why the results tend to be lasting, not temporary.
The training behind the work.
Two years of volunteer service that stripped away every comfortable assumption about the world and his place in it. The dissolution that teaches you what is real.
Graduate training in clinical psychotherapy, evidence-based practice, and the science of human behavior. A rigorous Western foundation that backs every conversation.
Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor. Over twenty years of practice sitting with people at their absolute worst — and holding something most clinicians quietly abandon.
Trained in the original 8-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction curriculum developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn. One of the most rigorous mindfulness certifications in the world.
Certified in Mindfulness, Performance Enhancement, Awareness & Knowledge — an evidence-based peak performance program built for athletes, executives, and high-achievers.
They come home to themselves.
This is not for someone who wants to feel slightly better.
James works with people who have already done the work — the therapy, the retreats, the self-development — and still feel a hollowness they cannot explain. People who are ready to be fundamentally changed, not managed.
He works with a small number of clients at a time. He reads every email himself. If something here resonates, that is usually a sign.