Dr. Dave Maddux is a Psycho-Spiritual Mythologian with a passion to teach, share, and help others find their way to healing. He holds a Ph.D. and a Master’s in Mythological Studies with the emphasis in Depth Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute. He holds a Bachelor’s in Religious Studies from California State University, Fullerton. Since 2007, Dave has been teaching, lecturing, and consulting on health, spirituality, mythologies, religions, yoga, and personal healing. He currently collaborates with the SWEET Institute, based New York, on webinar courses on Science, Spirituality, and Mental Health.

Dave has also released a guided meditation, “Healing for Harmony,” designed to access one’s ability to heal by working with their own sacred symbol of love. The meditation guides one to examine psychosomatic complications that result from trauma, pain, and/or fear. The sacred symbol evokes the powerful force of love within the heart serving as a catalyst to help release emotional blockages within the energetic body. The goal of the “Healing for Harmony” meditation is to balance the body’s energy centers on the parasympathetic level for healing to naturally occur.

Since 2007, he has taught workshops on religions, mythologies, and archetypal psychology. He has spoken publicly at various spiritual organizations, including the satsungs of the Divine Light Awakening Mission. His workshops included topics on the power and meaning of archetypal mythology, the Hero’s Journey and its impact on us today, Hercules’ Twelve Labors, the psycho-spiritual meaning of Jesus’ death and resurrection, the life and impact of Buddha, Muhammad’s hero’s journey, the wisdom of the Bhagavad Gita, the Journey of Theseus and the Minotaur, on death and grieving, among others. Dave also moderated and contributed to the Religious Diversity Forum at the University of California, Irvine (UCI). 

Dave’s journey began in personal training where he became certified from the National Academy of Sports Medicine (N.A.S.M). While helping people achieve their fitness needs, he soon realized that fitness alone was not making them feel better if they were dealing with personal or emotional pains. His joy of helping others achieve their goals of overall well-being made him reach out to the modalities of yoga, reiki, and meditation. He became a certified Hatha yoga instructor, creating “Ultimate Energy Yoga: Spirituality Through Movement.” His experience includes being a meditation facilitator, Reiki master, spiritual counselor, life coach, yoga instructor, and Physical Therapist Assistant. By emphasizing the importance of balancing the mind, body, and spirit and addressing the spiritual and emotional ailments of the person first, Dave noticed the physical body was able to heal and strengthen in greater ways. 

His personal healing journey began when experienced the death of many loved ones. Over the years, having utilized all the modalities he specialized in helped him, on some level, deal with loss, but it wasn’t until the writing of Integrating the Mind, Body, & Spirit through the Journey of Hercules’ Twelve Labors that he was able to fully excavate the root pain and go through the hero’s healing process to find acceptance and peace.

Dave’s passion and specialty is in connecting symbolic interpretations of mythic and religious stories with their associations to the human experience and the psyche. His love of teaching propels him to share the wisdom found in ancient stories, poetry, mythologies, religions, and archetypal psychology and how it can be applied toward our own introspection and healing. His goal is to inspire others to discover their awareness and potential to become self-actualized individuals.

By combining his academia and research with personal experience and introspective deductions of various healing modalities, Dave aims to share the importance of connecting the mind, body, and spirit to find a wholeness in healing.