Meet your guide: Joel van der Loon

why I walk this path…

Since I was a young boy, I always felt different. I couldn't explain why. It wasn't until much later that I began to understand what I was truly searching for—a life devoted to transformation, purpose, and spiritual growth.

For 14 years, I traveled the world, immersing myself in different cultures and wild places. I lived alongside the Hadza hunter-gatherers of East Africa, learning from one of the world's last remaining ancestral tribes. I trained and competed in combat sports, discovering that being a warrior has far more to do with humility, discipline, and presence than aggression. I spent countless days and nights alone in the wilderness, living from the land and allowing nature to become my greatest teacher. Those experiences eventually led me to spend 40 days alone on the television series Alone.

For more than a decade, my life has been grounded in wilderness, bowhunting, and spiritual practice. Meditation, shamanic drumming, and psychedelic medicines have all served as tools for self-inquiry, healing, and expanding awareness. Nature has remained my greatest teacher, my medicine, and my church.

Although I am a certified spiritual life coach, my deepest education didn't come from certifications. It came through divorce, failure, and confronting the beliefs, fears, and conditioning that had quietly shaped my life for decades. That inner work taught me that true strength isn't found in controlling life—it's found in surrendering to it.

Today, my mission is to help others reconnect with themselves through nature, challenge and honest self-reflection. I don't claim to have all the answers, but I know what it feels like to lose yourself—and I know the path that helped me find my way home.