We are on a mission to create a world where perspectival diversity and agility thrives

Our perspective, or our world view, is the most central component to the human experience and yet most of us feel like we have no control over it - or we categorize perspectives other than our own as wrong.

We are here to change that.

We envision a world where people are consciously curating their own perspective - examining bias, navigating shadow, and crafting internal processes that support a healthy and robust internal experience.

Doing this creates deeper peace within ones' self, and enriches communities, families, and relationships across contexts.

Our Core Values

Respect the Individual

We think that every individual is a full, unique world. When we engage with another, we are guests in both worlds. Mutual respect is an essential starting point for engagement.

Curious Introspection

Meangingful change often starts through curious introspection. Being willing to question, be wrong, and learn about oneself is essential for shifting, crafting, and developing perspective.

Committed to Results

We are committed to optimizing for client results. We strive to deliver simple, easy, and fast practices and results in our products. We do what works.

Yugen (N): A profound awareness of the universe, that allows one to view humanity in a new way. Contact with suffering, grace, and wholeness arise, creating an experience beyond language.

The Curriculum

At the Yugen Institute, we pull from countless bodies of work. The Yugen staff trained and studied under many teachers, with multiple specialties, certifications, degrees, and embodied understandings. The general break down of the curriculum we pull from looks like….

Adult Ego-Development Theory and Practice

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85%

Shadow Work and Integration

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85%

Relational and Communication Skill

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85%

Awareness / Presence Practice

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85%

Systems Thinking

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85%

Embodiment

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85%

Adult Ego-Development Theory and Practice

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85%

Shadow Work and Integration

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85%

Relational and Communication Skill

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85%

Awareness / Presence Practice

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85%

Subtle Energetics (systemic and individual)

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85%

Embodiment

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85%

Highly skilled coaches and consultants in our network bring decades of experience using a variety of diverse practices. These lenses serve as a meta-framework to suggest detailed, tangible ways to bring about enduring shifts in our clients and their systems. Within this broad methodology, we integrate multiple tools a to generate motivation, clarity, and results for our clients. The following list identifies technologies or psychometric systems we integrate across our services to achieve desired outcomes.

Enneagram Personality Map
STAGES Adult Development Map
Kegan's Ego-Development Map
Non-Violent Communication Mediation Skills
Relational Leadership Skills
Family Constellation Work

Somatic Psychology Techniques
Systems Thinking
Depth Psychology
Holocratic Organizational Thinking
Mindfulness and Meditation Technique
Internal Family Systems

Who we work with

Emerging students

Internal and external coaches

Leaders at all levels

You are just entering into the wide world of personal development and are wanting some support navigating these waters. You are possibly overwhelmed with all of the options out there and are seeking specific guidance, on where to focus in on your personal work and why. Perhaps you are hoping to become a coach, want to serve people in larger ways, and are just getting started on your professional journey in the personal development world. Joining a personal development community that has clear directionality, long-term support, and broad integrated experiences will be supportive for you.

You are an independent coach or part of a team of coaches. You offer coaching services to individuals and/or organizational clients. You may belong to an organization that offers its leaders the advantage of working with a coach. In each case, Yugen programs will significantly enhance the support you offer. We have certification programs for coaches to use our frameworks to more powerfully serve their clients’ development. We also coach coaches who would like to engage more fully with their own process and ever shifting perspective. One of the biggest benefits of engaging with us is gaining an entry into our community of vibrant and enthusiastic coaches who are actively applying, expanding on and learning from our frameworks.

We support leaders at all levels with a variety of offerings tailored for stage development. From emerging leaders, entrepreneurs, and those up and down the ladder, we offer layered services that progress over time in a structured way. We offer targeted coaching and workshops that calibrate shifts and evaluate potential for forward growth.

Who we are

Meet the humans behind the scenes!

Cat Gelinas

Co-Founder

Cat Gelinas is a Development Coach, Teacher, and the Co-Founder of the Yugen Institute. She's a professional nerd of the art & science of being human and teaches people how to create lives they love.

Since 2005, she has trained in consciousness development, shadow work, ancestral healing, relational skills, leadership, and more. She has coached and taught others on their journey to explore what it is to be a human, to expand capacities, & work with their humanity.

Her delight in life is to meet people where they are and, with welcoming and compassionate curiosity, bring to light what people are needing and support them in their evolution towards aliveness.

Shelby Robbins

Co-Founder

Shelby Robbins is a personal development coach in Boulder, Colorado. Her mission is to support the flourishing of all life and the deep potential of the human being. She supports ones transformation through many selves and a relaxing into more complex or whole ways of making meaning.

Shelby has trained in relational leadership and communication skills, developmental coaching, shadow work and integration, awareness and embodiment techniques, personality maps, systems thinking, and more… Her philosophy is rooted in over a decade of her personal self-development and her journey through several major life-upheavals. Her experience of both the empty and full aspects of life, support her and her clients towards the ever unfolding integration and expansion of ones awareness of our inherent wholeness.