About Benji
I am a Relationship Coach and Retreat Facilitator. I have 20 years experience solving my own relationship challenges, and am happy in my relationships.
People working with me appreciate transparency, so feel free to click through the tabs below to get to know me.
I value serving as a transparent example of authentic, deeper living. A few things about me:
Currently, I reside in Durham, North Carolina. I travel regularly – 50+ cities in the last ten years – and bring an international perspective to my work. Having lived in Brazil and Guatemala (Peace Corps), I am proficient in Spanish, Portuguese and Kaqchikel Mayan. Spiritually, I study many traditions and have 20+ years of experience practicing meditation, breathwork, Tantra and other intuitive practices. I am active in the Integral Movement and am an enthusiastic proponent of Authentic Relating (“we-space”) practices such as Circling and T-Group.
I founded Navigate Change, LLC when I moved to North Carolina in 2015. My day-to-day work involves coaching, consulting, retreat facilitation, and back-end administrative work related to producing close to 200 events and groups per year. I love my work!
I have a calm, meditative presence. You’ll find me to be one of the rare people who remains centered during intense conflict or periods of chaotic change. As a systems thinker, I love working with complexity, chaos and conflict. On the Enneagram, I test as a Type 1 (“The Reformer”); and on the Myers-Briggs, I test as type INTJ (“The Mastermind”).
I devour 40+ non-fiction books per year, especially in the areas of psychology, spirituality, business, and personal development. For 22 years, I have been reading and implementing Integral Theory, including Ken Wilber’s work on Integral Spirituality, Robert Kegan’s work on Deliberately Developmental Organizations, and Frederic Laloux’s work on Reinventing Organizations (Teal Organizations). I’m the guy who has read it all and can digest it into practical applications for you during our coaching sessions or retreats.
For nearly 20 years, I struggled to find a partner—I couldn’t even land a dead-end relationship! Part of my life journey has been to learn how to overcome grief, loneliness, anxiety, self-acceptance and pretty much every other block to relationship you could imagine. After nearly 20 years of personal development work, I’m in a happy long-term relationship with my tantra partner, and am deeply grateful for this! And I’m happy to help you find your path to a satisfying relationship, even if you’ve spent your entire life alone.
When I’m not working, I love to garden, explore tantra, work out at the gym, and do movement meditation practices such as yoga and qigong. I also bring out my karaoke machine at every opportunity!
I want to see people feel liberated to be their full selves at work, at play, and with family… and to have the skills to be 10x more effective than they were when they were repressed and living from fear and shame. I believe in abundance.
Throughout my life, I have had the blessing to experience intentional communities where this is a reality. Where people are able to be 100% alive, radiant beings, free from fear and conditioning. I want this for you, for your sex life, for your workplace, and for the world.
I have spent 20 years developing the skills to make this a reality, both soft skills and business skills. I have two Master’s degrees and have read hundreds of books. I have attended over 40 retreats. And I feel increasingly driven to bring everything I’ve learned into this world, to make life better for everyone around me.
I also feel inspired by organizations and coaches leading the way… Teal Organizations implementing technologies such as Holacracy; Robert Kegan’s retreats for Deliberately Develomental Organizations; Authentic Relating Communities exploring the peaks of what is possible in connection with others.
It’s time to make these Relational Leadership & consciousness-based practices widely available here in the Raleigh-Durham area. And I am committed to building it with you.
I am an avid learner and continuously seek out the most challenging training available:
2014: I completed a rigorous 3-year, in-person Master of Transpersonal Counseling Psychology at Naropa University, including a 900-hour internship focused on group psychotherapy.
2015: I studied the application of systems theory to group leadership with the 17-Day Comprehensive Training at the Matrix Leadership Institute in Boulder, Colorado.
2017: I completed the 9-month Train-The-Trainer (T3) Circling Immersion at the Integral Center in Boulder, Colorado, a pinnacle training in the field of Authentic Relating.
2022: I completed a 3-year, 21-day Diploma in Tantra in 2022 with Tantra4GayMen at Easton Mountain in Albany, New York.
I also have extensive training in modalities such as yoga, qigong, breathwork, sitting meditation, mediumship, dreamwork, and Spiritist energy healing.
2025: I am currently enrolled in the in-person Jenkins MBA Program at North Carolina State University, where I am developing a business plan to open a center in Durham which will be called HeartFire Center for the Visionary Arts™. I also use my MBA training to support coaching clients who are developing similar businesses.
My leadership style is both professional and relational. I incorporate cutting-edge authentic relating practices and a sensitivity to cultural dynamics into my work, for a level of support you can rely on. Whether you are seeking private relationship coaching with your partner, or for consulting to improve the dynamics in your team or community, Navigate Change, LLC has the rock-solid skills to guide you toward success.
In my experience, focusing on problems and solutions has limited success. If a simple mechanical solution were all that was needed, you would have already achieved your desired change. You don’t simply need to push harder or be more disciplined, stressing yourself out to implement new behaviors. You have already tried that, and your personal change project did not work. It’s the same with organizations: forced change achieves little more than stress and resentment. And it’s the same in relationships: you definitely don’t need more of the same, with more discipline, to revive your love life!
Most people perceive the world today in the same way they did in high school, through a lens of struggle and fitting in. This is like insisting on using a computer from the 1980’s, and wondering why you’re so far behind! The intractable problems of your life – relationship problems, difficulties at work, emotional overwhelm – do not require solutions, inasmuch as new ways of being. A core upgrade, not a superficial change in habits.
The coaching and retreats I offer provide this core upgrade. I will work with you to upgrade not just your habits (the role of a traditional coach), but also how you exist and perceive the world around you.
To use a different metaphor, the next step is not to change the glasses you wear, but rather to acquire the glasses factory. Any consultant can sell you a new pair of glasses—perhaps a rose-tinted pair with a stronger prescription. Such temporary solutions are helpful but do not lead to the highest results. Working with Navigate Change, LLC is the equivalent of acquiring the glasses factory: Not only will you always have the most cutting-edge frames in town, but you’ll also see much more clearly, no matter what the situation.
If you like what you’re reading, make sure to set up a free 30-minute consultation today!