About

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My name is Jeff Kelton.  I have a PhD and I have been licensed to practice clinical psychology in NY since 1983.  Yet as we all know we are more than our credentials.  I’ll share more about this at the end of what I am writing.

Professionally I was educated, trained and supported in following a career path that was prescribed by society in order to achieve success.  I am not sure this formula has produced the outcome family and friends expected of me.  As much as I have received a fair share of kudos, rewards and accomplishments, there has always been a parallel path of action underlying my intended focus. 

So while pursuing a professional status in the world another focus was also driving my actions.  I’ll call it the Wanderer/Traveler/Adventurer role.  In a word, I was being a Hero.  I mean this in the Joseph Campbell sense of the idea.  Something was calling me to connect with the kind of enterprise that a Hero would embark upon.  And I began to find my self wandering and moving about this planet stumbling upon all kinds of marvelous and impactful experiences.  I can’t say that I am finished with these journeys nor do I wish for this to be the case.  However, I have come to see that, as in all Hero’s journeys, there is a need to return to my community of origin gifts from the road.  One of these gifts is the GlobalWalkabouts™ Process and workshop, (an experiential workshop that explores how to revive a soulful connection to the Places we live in and travel to on the Earth). 

None of us really follows a direct path to becoming fully ourselves.  Rather than this occurring in a straight, linear fashion our paths zigzag back and forth, sometimes folding back on itself, sometimes spiraling in circles, and even on occasion leap frogging across spaces and time.  Lao Tse is quoted as saying “Great straightness seems twisted” (1).  The idea here is that there is a bigger process at play than how we intend to pursue preferred goals.  To know this larger pattern about what life is becoming, we need to detach from our ordinary consensus-reality identity and relax into a slightly altered, dream like state of mind.  This allows our creativity to occur and gives us the freedom to follow whatever path is coming up (2).

When I reflect back on where I have been and what I have accomplished I begin to see my path coming into greater focus.  We are all more than the sum of our parts.  The varied vocational and recreational activities we have engaged in act synergistically to create and propel our uniqueness into and onto the world.

In view of this I have had the good fortune to be more than what my professional resume may depict.  Even so I would like to provide a synopsis of what I have been doing since it has allowed me to gain an array of skills and experiences that are contributing to what the GlobalWalkabouts™ Process has become.

My career has now spanned more than 30 years, in which time I have straddled many different disciplines and pursuits.  This has afforded me a unique perspective on the ways we heal, develop ourselves, achieve performance excellence and align ourselves to the more transpersonal dimensions of our being.

I’ve worked with severely emotional and mental patients in psychiatric hospitals and outpatient clinics as well as a wide range of concerns in private practice more often associated with ‘normally adjusted’ clients.  I have had opportunities to provide training and consultations to business executives, aspiring Olympic athletes, performance artists and other creative people.  My engagement with people has spanned the entire life cycle from early childhood to the elderly.

In tandem with my ‘professional development’ I acquired skills in meditation practices (did research for my PhD and studied under a variety of spiritual masters in Yoga, Sufism, Taoism, Kabbalah, and Shamanism).  I also studied and continue to train in Tai Chi Chuan and Qi Gong for more than 30 years. 

My thirst for adventure and learning included global travels to more than 40 countries and gave me a perspective about how we live on this planet.  It was from these sojourns that I first developed the GlobalWalkabouts™  Process.

Throughout my professional career I have been blessed with opportunities to express myself as a musician and I have played my trumpet with a variety of musicians internationally. The desire has always been to establish deep communion with whom I played with and the audiences that heard us.  Along with the music I have also been a photographer and have had some success exhibiting images in galleries and presenting slide lectures about the Spirit of Places.

  1. Lao Tse, Tao Te Ching, trans. Gia-fu Feng and Jane English (New York: Vintage Books, 1972.
  2. Anrnold Mindell,  Earth-Based Psychology (Portland, OR: Lao Tse Press, 2007)

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