Blake Hestir

Blake Hestir lives in Fort Worth, Texas, the sacred ancestral lands 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 mindfulness and somatic practices to deepen understanding of interdependence, impermanence, and collective flourishing.

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

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 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? The Ecology of Self and Flourishing Flourishing along with the papers “The Ecology of Self and Flourishing” and “Self and Sustainability.”

He also has a co-authored paper with Mark Dennis (East Asian Studies, TCU Religion Department) “Flourishing as 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 Mindfulness Meditation teacher with additional training in Trauma-Informed Mindfulness through Holly Rogers’ Mindfulness Institute for Emerging Adults. He is currently training in Rochelle Calvert’s Healing with Nature: Trauma Care, a 12 month certification training on healing the physiology and psychology of trauma with the Earth. He has also twice participated in Inner/Outer Nature ecodharma training and meditation retreat led by Johann Robbins, David Loy, Rochelle Calvert, Lin Wang Gordon, and Cornelia Santschi at the Rocky Mountain Ecodharma Retreat Center.

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.