ABOUT MIKE
Inner Training for Real Life
My work is for people who already know better — but still get pulled into old patterns when it matters.
You may have insight, values, and experience. You may function well in certain areas of life. And yet, under pressure, uncertainty, conflict, disappointment, closeness, or emotional intensity, you notice a gap between what you know and how you actually show up.
That gap is where my work begins.
I teach Inner Alignment Training — practice-based inner state training for self-trust, relationships, and personal transformation.
What makes this work distinct is that I treat your inner state as something you can train directly — not just understand, manage, or think about. The aim is to train what shapes how you perceive, relate, choose, and create results in real life.
This work is not about collecting more insight, forcing yourself to stay calm, or endlessly analyzing yourself.
It is about training the inner patterns that shape how you relate, make choices, and create real-world results.
For nearly 30 years, I’ve trained in Kung Fu, Tai Chi, and Qigong. I don’t see these as only physical disciplines. At their depth, they are systems of attention, presence, emotional steadiness, and inner conditioning. They teach you how to meet pressure without collapsing, forcing, avoiding, or losing yourself.
Alongside that path, I built a corporate career in technology management and consulting after earning degrees from the University of Chicago and Northwestern University. So my work has always lived at the intersection of contemplative practice and practical life.
In 2007, while still working full-time, I opened a martial and healing arts studio in Boulder, Colorado. Over the years, that space became a place of real practice and transformation — where I helped students build awareness, steadiness, and capacity through direct training.
Eventually, I transitioned out of corporate work and devoted myself fully to this path.
Today, I continue to teach at my studio, while my coaching work focuses on helping people train the inner patterns that shape how they relate, make choices, take responsibility, and show up in everyday life.
This work is personal for me, too.
There was a time when my life looked good from the outside. I had good jobs, a beautiful home, and many of the markers people associate with success.
But inside, I felt disconnected.
I lived for weekends and vacations. I often imagined what it would be like to leave everything behind and start somewhere else. Not because my life was terrible, but because my everyday experience didn’t feel alive or deeply connected to what mattered.
That disconnect became a turning point.
I stopped looking only for better ideas and turned more fully toward practice — the kind of training that changes how you meet the moment, not just how you understand it afterward.
Over time, I integrated ancient wisdom traditions — including martial arts, meditation, and Chinese medicine training — with modern approaches drawn from psychology, neuroscience, somatic practice, emotional conditioning, and years of working directly with students and clients.
What emerged is the work I now call Inner Alignment Training.
It is not built on belief or dogma. It is built on direct training — tested in real life.
Your inner state shapes how you perceive.
How you perceive shapes how you feel.
How you feel shapes how you think, choose, relate, and act.
And with enough repetition, those patterns begin to feel automatic.
So if you want to change how you show up in real life, insight helps — but insight alone is not enough.
You have to practice.
That is what my work is about: training the inner conditions that allow you to stay connected, clear, and responsive when life actually tests you.
Not perfectly.
But with more honesty, steadiness, and inner reliability over time.
Whether you are navigating relationships, emotional patterns, self-trust, responsibility, or the gap between what you know and what you keep repeating, the aim is the same:
To build an inner state that holds when it matters.
My work helps people shift the inner patterns — identity, emotion, belief, conditioning, and relationship with self — that shape what they create, choose, tolerate, and repeat in their outer life.
A good place to begin is the Relationship Patterns Quiz. Or, if you’re drawn to direct inner training, explore the Inner Foundation Method.
Relationship Patterns Quiz
Inner Foundation Method
My Background
Sifu, Boulder Kung Fu Academy (2007)
Registered Psychotherapist (Colorado DORA NLC.0013772)
Registered Massage Therapist (Colorado DORA MT.0008637) - not currently practicing
Coursework in Chinese Medicine (Acupuncture, Herbs, Moxibustion) - Ruseto College
MS, CIS (Northwestern University)
BA, Psychology (University of Chicago)
ACIBM 6-Month Coaching Program for Highly Sensitive Entrepreneurs (2015)