About Wholebeing Institute

Wholebeing Institute is an educational organization focusing on research-based courses that help people live life to its fullest—spiritually, physically, intellectually, relationally, and emotionally. To lead a full and fulfilling life, to enjoy a deep and lasting sense of wellbeing, it is necessary to embrace the whole self. Wholebeing Institute’s research-based courses, create learning communities worldwide where dedicated practitioners learn—and then teach—the applied science of whole person well-being. These essentials create the acronym SPIRE, which is the cornerstone of Wholebeing curriculum.

Often, attempts at raising an individual’s or society’s well-being have, for practical reasons, focused on one or two of the above elements, reducing a person’s nature to one or two of its parts. These attempts have fallen short of fulfilling individual and societal potential, because rather than adhere to a person’s nature in all its glory and complexity, they have tried to forcefully fit human nature into a one-size-fits-all approach.

In Greek mythology, there’s a sordid story of force-fitting an individual to confirm to a standard. Procrustes was a son of Poseidon, and he presided over the sacred way between Athens and Eleusis where every traveler was invited to spend the night. His lodging consisted of an iron bed, whereby Procrustes worked on the unsuspecting traveler with his hammer to stretch a short body, or his saw to amputate the legs of a tall body, so that the person fit perfectly into the bed. Nobody ever fit exactly without stretching or sawing; Procrustes saw to that by choosing between two beds.

Rather than cutting off pieces of yourself, or squeezing yourself into too small of a space like a procrustean bed, we seek instead to honor the individual’s nature—the innate core. The 16th century philosopher Francis Bacon launched the scientific revolution with the understanding that “Nature to be commanded must be obeyed”. It is with a similar guiding value and belief that WBI was founded in 2013. Know yourself, and be yourself.

Read more about the SPIRE model.