Blake Hestir
Blake Hestir lives in Fort Worth, Texas, the sacred ancestral lands of the Wichita and Affiliated Tribes. He works as professor of philosophy and associate director of CALM Studies at TCU in Fort Worth, Texas.
His community service at the university includes serving as president and co-founder of the Mind Body Ecology Institute, 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 friendship, clean water and fresh air, land meandering, playing guitar, dancing, Texas sunsets, and doing what he can to be an excellent elder.
His current work is a philosophical inquiry into how emotional resilience and flourishing may be cultivated through expanding worldviews, mindsets, and values combined with nature-centered mindfulness, somatic practices, and community building. The core philosophical questions of his work include the nature of self, embodiment, interdependence, impermanence, flourishing, and regenerative sustainability.
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.
He is developing a book The Ecology of Flourishing (forthcoming 2027) and a journal article, “The Ecology of Self and Flourishing.” Relatedly, he has a co-authored paper with Mark Dennis (East Asian Studies, TCU Religion Department) “Flourishing as Practice and an Activism of Belonging,” in Women and Representation in Buddhist Asia (forthcoming SUNY).
Each of these projects centers on the patterns and contours of 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 University Press, 2016) and has two forthcoming papers on the interdependent dynamics of language and being at Cambridge University Press and Ancient Philosophy.
Certifications
Dual certified RYT-200 yoga instructor.
Certified mindfulness meditation teacher, Mindfulness Institute for Emerging Adults.
Trauma-Informed Mindfulness certification, Mindfulness Institute for Emerging Adults.
Trauma care facilitator, Healing with Nature.
Facilitator, Work that Reconnects.
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 steward TCU CALM Studies. MBEI Advisor Rhonda Magee, Mark, and he are members of the Flourishing Academic Network, a collective of academics dedicated to advancing pathways for flourishing in higher education through convening students, building strong connections between academic and student affairs, and working within and across institutions throughout North America.
