About Tom
My interest in male development and the limiting stereotypes of manhood led me to earning a PhD in 1987 that investigated male rites of passage in contemporary culture. Using what I had learned in the PhD program I co-created the Men’s Council Project that for over 25 years offered adult men leadership training and support for life transitions in a remote Colorado wilderness setting. I continue to mentor, teach, facilitate groups, and support rites of passage for men & boys of all ages through the Men’s Leadership Alliance in Boulder, Colorado.
My personal search for deeper understanding about health and healing included study with many world-renowned teachers in psychology, shamanism, men’s work, coaching, family systems work, and spirituality.
In my coaching and mentoring practice and through group work, trainings, and retreats, I utilize that wide range of experiences that challenge clients to take the radical steps necessary to break the bonds of unconscious conditioning and move toward the freedom and joy of self-knowledge, radical soul-care, and service to others.
In my work with individuals and groups I utilize numerous and diverse healing techniques: 4 Gateways Coaching, Breathwork, Ritual Process Work, Systemic Constellation Work, Shamanic Journey, Qi Gong, Shadow Work, Medicine Ceremony, and Meditation.
In the late 1980s I co-created the Living Arts Foundation with my beloved wife and partner of three decades, Jude Blitz. LAF is dedicated to the awakening of consciousness and the well-being of people by using practical tools to help integrate the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual bodies. Providing many avenues for personal, group, and professional growth, LAF offers a variety of programs you will see on this site including: 4 Gateways Coaching, The Inner King and Inner Sovereign Training, Family Systems Work, Shadow Dance/Crazy Wisdom Theater, Ceremonial Work, and Radical Soul Care Programs.
I continue to deepen my own soul work as a husband, father, stepfather, father-in-law, grandfather, friend, and citizen of the earth.
My hobbies include a variety of creative arts including ceramics, woodworking, painting, and creative puttering. My love of being in nature still includes organic gardening which I view as one of my primary sources of inspiration for life in general and coaching and mentoring specifically.
Tom Daly, PhD
As with many others in the helping professions my life was shaped by traumatic events in early childhood. Born in Germany in 1944 my early years were stressful and chaotic. At the age of 3 my father died and my mother became the sole breadwinner of the family. On the advice of my grandmother and aunt my mother agreed to let me be adopted by an American couple. By the age of 5 was speaking another language and living with my new family in Omaha Nebraska. Fortunately my large adoptive family was very loving and accepting.
My childhood years were quite stable and middle class. At the age of 12 we moved from Nebraska to Colorado where my love of nature and adventure could totally flourish. By the mid 60’s I had completed my BA degree in Biology at the University of Colorado and began teaching Life Sciences in the Denver Public Schools. It was there that I began to experience first hand the impact of family systems on my students and to realize how my own early childhood wounds were still impacting me.
I returned to the university, got an MA in Counseling and Psychology and became a High School guidance counselor. During those years I came to fully realize that my path was to find the gifts in those early wounds and to serve others in finding their own paths to health and wholeness.
During that same period, I went through a divorce and began raising my son and daughter as a single father. When I attended my first parent-teacher conference for my first grade son, I was the only man in the room. I realized I was going to need male support. So in 1976 I co-created the Denver Area Men’s Network and have been in and leading men’s support groups continuously since then.