I'm Ken Kirby.
I want to share with you how the name Here We Find Ourselves emerged. It is a phrase I shared regularly with my close friend and practice partner Will Siegel before he died. We met at a Dzogchen retreat and became close friends. We talked almost every week for years. This phrase surfaced in our conversations often — it pointed to what we were noticing in our contemplative practice. It helped us make sense of what we were feeling while standing in line at the grocery store or listening to a segment on the news. It helped bring compassion to our daily failures and triumphs. For us, it represented all aspects of our experiences of and participation in living. For me, it still does.
Since this is an About page on a website, something in me would like to tell you a romantic story of who I am and make some promise that I can help you. Something in me wants to present to you a shiny Ken. But that narrative wouldn't be true. There is no shiny Ken. I can’t promise that I can help everyone.
Most of who I hold myself to be today, and what has prepared me to offer this work with integrity, has emerged through my earnest wrestling with deep pain and the persistent effects of early trauma. Many of my early ideas of what I needed to do and who I needed to be in order to have life feel worth living were mistaken. Mistakes I came by honestly, but costly nonetheless. Perhaps you can relate?
Through much of my early and mid-life, I was consumed with the question, "What is the point?" Not as a philosophical exercise — it was a demand that lived in me, insisting on a reason to keep going. And it drained me. It inhibited my ability to be present, to be vulnerable, to be tender and warm in so many of the circumstances where that was wanted and longed for.
Fortunately, my wrestling with that question wasn't the whole truth. There were also aspects of me who were consistently curious and playful. Somehow, I kept looking — and I found people and practices that changed what I believed was possible. When I set out to answer the question "What is the point?", I thought I needed to rise above my human messiness. I thought if I could just find the right answer and implement it correctly, I would be free from pain.
That is not how it has turned out for me. I think I have found something much more life-affirming. I have recognized that I likely will always be a mess — sometimes a dreary mess, and hopefully more often, a funner mess. I have found that grief and delight can abide in the same body at the same time. I have found that my humiliations become the food for my compassion and tenderness for myself and others.
I have not found freedom from pain — I have found freedom in pain. I have found that no matter how perilous things seem, there is also always a stillness that cannot be disturbed. I am both the fear and the calm. Always.
I've worked for more than thirty years as a consultant — helping organizations develop, leaders grow, and systems work better. I have a PhD in civil and environmental engineering with a minor in economics and natural resources policy. And even though I have talent for it and I'm grateful for the opportunity to do that consulting work, I have frequently felt like an outsider visiting a foreign land — as though the uniform a person in this role wears doesn't quite fit. From an early age, I have seen myself more as an explorer, a learner, a teacher, a gentle companion, an artist.
Along the way, I trained and became certified as an Integral Coach, as a teacher of the Realization Process — an embodied approach to nondual awareness and holistic healing — and to teach Radiant Heart Qigong, a heart-centered energy cultivation practice. My work is also deeply informed by ancient Dzogchen and Taoist perspectives and practices. I also rely heavily on an applied understanding of neurobiology and adult development theory.
I've worked as a coach and developmental companion for individual clients for more than twenty years. That close, sustained relating and partnering with individuals to find ways of living that feel more resonant have affected me as much as any training. I've come to see that what we most hunger for — real, meaningful, appreciative contact — is also what nourishes our capacity to be present with ourselves and each other.
Today my practice — the practice of Here We Find Ourselves — integrates and draws from all of this. During a session we connect with whatever you are experiencing in the moment. Over time, we identify what you most want support with, and we hold those intentions together as a through line. We ask powerful questions. We sit with and sense into our embodied experiences. We experiment with relating to the different aspects of ourselves and the world through different perspectives and different behaviors. We do our best to identify and name what is true for us in that moment. We play with different practices. We laugh together. We cry together. And we do it again as long as it makes sense for both of us.
If you want to know more about what has helped give rise to this work, I invite you to listen to this conversation.