About

The Team

  • Ezekiel (he/him) is the co-founding director of Deep Belonging. He is fiercely committed to creating culture that honors the sacred dimension of the universe, supports the full flowering and liberation of all people, and celebrates joy, beauty, and laughter along the way.

    He was born and raised on the lands of the Tsalaguwetiyi (Eastern Band Cherokee) and S’atsoyaha (Yuchi) in what is now called Hiltons, Virginia, where the mountains, rivers, streams, and other-than-humans quite literally saved his life.

    In his late 20s, while following a call to regenerate healthy culture, Ezekiel co-founded and directed Springhouse Community School, an intergenerational, soulcentric learning community that includes a day school for students in grades 7-12.

    Since leaving Springhouse, he has been working on his PhD in the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness program at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS), where his research focuses on human experience and evolutionary cosmology. Brian Thomas Swimme is his dissertation adviser. At CIIS, he co-teaches a course called Nature and Eros with Geneen Marie Haugen. He also co-teaches a course called Living Waters at Schumacher College alongside Andreas Weber, Freya Mathews, Stephan Harding, Peter Reason, and Sandra Wooltorton.

    Ezekiel is a long-time student of yoga and permaculture. He has an undergraduate degree in environmental engineering from the University of Virginia and a master’s degree in environmental engineering from Yale University, where his research focused on socio-ecological metabolism and industrial ecology.

    He lives with the love of his life and their two daughters on a small permaculture homestead and native plant sanctuary on Tutelo/Saponi land in the Appalachian Mountains of Floyd County, Virginia.

    Read more about Ezekiel on this blog post.

  • Nathan Kuan (he/they) is a descendant of the Cebuano and Ilonggo peoples of the Visayan islands in the Philippine archipelago, as well as the Celtic peoples of the British Isles and the Azores. He is a child of the colonized as well as the colonizers, a bridge between worlds. His work is centered in re-imagining the human within a more-than-human world, guided by the question: what does it mean to decolonize and re-indigenize as a diasporan?

    Born and raised in the lands of the Nisenan and Northern Sierra Miwok in what is now known as Shingle Springs, CA he was raised alongside Oak & Pine, Coyote & Deer, Gray Fox & Nuthatch. Wandering through the valleys and hills of the American River Watershed, he developed a love for place in the depth of his bones.

    When he was 18 years old, Nathan attended a 9-month immersion program at Alderleaf Wilderness College. In that wild space, he engaged in the arts of Tracking, Bird Language, Ethnobotany, Wildcrafting, Surthrival Skills, Permaculture Design, and Rites of Passage. After stepping into the role of Apprentice-Instructor, he discovered a passion for mentorship and cultivating deep connections between people and place.

    He continued his education at The Evergreen State College (TESC) where he received his BA in Integral Ecology, the intersection of Ecosophy, Ecopsychology, and Ecological Education. After graduating from TESC, he received his MA at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) in the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness program and also received two Master’s Certifications in Integral Ecology and Eco-Resilience Leadership.

    He has worked for a number of wilderness schools throughout the West including Vashon Wilderness Program, Wilderness Awareness School, Weaving Earth, Twin Eagles Wilderness School, Raven’s Roots Naturalist School, Tracker’s Earth, and Alderleaf Wilderness College. Throughout the years he has mentored hundreds of students from as young as 4 to as old as 62 and every age in between, helping others discover their authentic relations to Self, Community, Earth, and Cosmos.

  • Kim (she/her) spent the first several decades of her early adult life working in the legal profession as a lawyer and then as a judge. During her time on the bench, she worked tirelessly to provide therapeutic alternatives for young people and adults battling addiction. She presided over two drug treatment courts in the City of Richmond, Virginia—one for parents at risk of losing their children and one for juveniles at risk of incarceration. She was an adjunct faculty member at the University of Richmond Law School for a number of years, served as a Leader in Residence at the Jepson School of Leadership Studies, and was a member of the MacArthur Foundation’s Research Network on Adolescent Development and Juvenile Justice.

    Kim took early retirement from the bench in 2007 after feeling a deep sense of psychic exhaustion and experiencing a longing to live a simpler life. In the nearly fourteen years since returning to her childhood home in southwest Virginia, Kim has devoted herself to building a life oriented around deep and authentic connection—with herself, her community, and the natural world.  She thrives in communal settings and is fiercely passionate about showing up for and being present to her life and the people in it. She is a graduate of Tara Brach and Jack Kornfield's Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification Program and is a long time member of the Board of Trustees at Springhouse Community School. She is currently enrolled in Springhouse's Cultural Design Program where she is studying the transition from adulthood to elderhood.

    Kim lives just down the road from Ezekiel. Buried in the woods near her home is the black cat that taught her to love wandering in the wild.

  • Ari (he/him) has been teaching high school and college students about the universe for over twenty five years. Through his homeschooling courses, he has introduced hundreds of students to the wonders of a time-developmental universe. In 2018 and 2021, Ari served as a lecturer at UC Berkeley, teaching classes that supported students in developing their own worldviews. At its heart, all of Ari’s teaching is oriented towards helping people find their unique place in the great unfolding journey of the universe. As many ancient cultures understood, this knowledge is essential for awakening the enormous vitality, resilience, and joy of which humans are capable.

    Since 2016, Ari has been a student in the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness program at the California Institute of Integral Studies. He is currently completing a dissertation under the mentorship of Brian Swimme which examines the role of possibilities in the universe’s developmental process. At its core, this dissertation explores how the discipline of systems theory can shed further light on the universe’s evolution and humanity’s role in that journey.

    In addition to being a teacher and student, Ari is also a visual artist. He attended the San Francisco Art Institute after college, and since then, he has ceaselessly created drawings, paintings and digital, interactive art. As part of that path, he has spent a large part of the last decade making improvised video art in collaboration with The Polish Ambassador, an electronic musician. Together, the two have played hundreds of shows across the country to audiences as big as 10,000 people. Staying committed to his creative pursuits has made Ari both a more fulfilled person and, hopefully, a more inspiring teacher — when students feel his creative passion, it helps them to connect to their own dreams and visions.