Blake Hestir

Blake Hestir lives in Fort Worth, Texas, the unceded sacred ancestral land of the Wichita and Affiliated Tribes. He is professor of philosophy and associate director of CALM Studies at TCU in Fort Worth, Texas.

He is president and co-founder of The Mind Body Ecology Institute and an advisor for the Dallas Movement Collective. His teaching and scholarship are in the areas of ancient Greek philosophy, philosophy of mind, and phenomenology, as well as ecology and contemplative research.

He enjoys nature wandering, guiding eco programs, playing guitar, storytelling, and dancing, and has journeyed throughout North America, Japan, South Korea, Europe, and Central America.

His current work is a philosophical inquiry into how inner transformation may be cultivated through expanding worldviews, mindsets, and values combined with nature-centered embodiment and meditation practices to deepen understanding of interdependence, foster equity, and promote collective flourishing.

At the university, he teaches Mind Consciousness Self , The Art and Science of Flourishing, as well as Mindfulness and Modern Life. And he offers the upper-level courses Mind Body Ecology, Existentialism, and Self and Sustainability.

The “experiential philosophy” courses weave discussions of theory, worldviews, equity, Indigenous wisdom, and the lived experiences of individuals with exploration of practices like meditation, journaling, storytelling, and mindful movement to help students understand and think impactfully about the conceptual, cultural, and structural waters within which they swim. 

Related to his work with the Institute, he is developing a book, Are We Experiencing? Self, Sustainability, and Flourishing along with the papers “The Ecology of Self and Flourishing,” “Flourishing as Practice,” and “Self and Sustainability.”

He also has a co-authored paper with Mark Dennis (East Asian Studies, TCU Religion Department) “Flourishing as a Practice and an Activism of Belonging.”

Each of these projects centers on the patterns and contours of inner transformation and flourishing based on the fact that we “inter-are” with all living beings and the land, rather than existing as somehow separate from nature.

He is also author of Plato on the Metaphysical Foundation of Meaning and Truth (Cambridge, 2016) and has two forthcoming papers on the interdependent dynamics of language and being.

He is a certified dual RYT-200 yoga instructor and a certified Koru Mindfulness Meditation teacher with additional training in Koru Trauma-Informed Mindfulness and training at the Rocky Mountain Ecodharma Retreat Center through their Inner/Outer Nature ecodharma training and meditation retreat led by Johann Robbins, David Loy, and Lin Wang Gordon.

He along with Mark Dennis (Religion, East Asian Studies) steward TCU CALM Studies, and Mark, MBEI Advisor Rhonda Magee, and he are members of the Flourishing Academic Network, a collective of academics at the University of Virginia, the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Penn State, Stanford, the University of Colorado–Boulder, UCLA, the University of San Francisco, the University of California–Berkeley, the University of Washington, Johns Hopkins, Brown University, the University of Toronto, and others, dedicated to remaking higher education under a flourishing model.