Great Plains Guide Co.

I love my job. Helping people who feel stuck, lost, or adrift in life find their true path and begin walking that path with confidence and strength. It’s fascinating work, deeply rewarding, and I’m good at it.  

I should be. I’m a veteran spiritual guide with forty years’ experience helping thousands of people across the U.S. and overseas navigate life’s most difficult situations. 

This role did not come easy for me. I was really lost after college, and spent four years earning a law degree before admitting to myself I would not be happy as an attorney. I left the legal profession and set out on a blind, half-panicked search to find a new career, stumbled into the ministry profession, returned to graduate school and then spent the next twenty years as a university campus minister, hospital chaplain, and pastoral counselor. It was meaningful work and I helped a lot of people. But I still felt like something was missing. Like I wasn’t living the life I was really supposed to be living. It was a confusing, stressful, and lonesome place to be. 

Then one day at age 49 I met a shamanic healer in my area, a Cherokee man trained as a psychologist, who invited me to participate in a traditional wilderness vision quest program. The experience was staggering, a deep life-changing encounter with the wisdom of indigenous healing and the living spirits of nature all around us.  I felt like I’d found myself, buried under years of education, social expectations, and family obligations. I promptly left my twenty-year career in health care and began a seven-year journey studying with two world-renowned shamanic healers, traveling, learning, and eventually creating my own  programs you see here on this website Great Plains Guide Company.  

I don’t call myself a shaman. I’m no charismatic self-help guru or TED-Talk persona selling DVDs and certification programs at luxury retreat centers. I’m a contemplative soul, creative, good with my hands, a husband, father, and grandfather. I like solitude. I’m a runner and a cyclist and I practice Zen meditation. I raised my family in an inner city neighborhood for twenty years and then moved to a quiet three acres in rural southwest Michigan to continue my work in a more natural setting. When our 3 year old grandson lost his parents in 2023 we took him in, and have since moved to the wide open prairie of Belle Plaine, Minnesota to better raise him with the nearby support of family in Minneapolis.  

I’m big on encouraging self-empowerment for my clients. I want people to get up and walk, as Jesus said to the man lame for 38 years, not grow dependent on me or any other so-called spiritual healer. I want my clients to stand up and fly, to go make their own magic and not keep paying me for mine. To vitalize others through the influence of their own vitality. That’s how we really heal ourselves, find our tribe, and save the world. 

I believe it’s better to live a love-based life aligned with one’s authentic heart than a fear-based life of social conformity, risk avoidance, and financial grasping. In our dominant consumer culture, that’s a radical shift. One that can revive your soul. Maybe even the planet. 

If you’re ready for a real shift in your life, consider scheduling a Fire Talk with me. You can check out the process here, and see if it’s a good fit for you.