Join us as we delve into the fascinating journey of Alexander Kugler, a former opera singer turned spiritual mentor. In this candid conversation, Alexander shares how personal loss guided him towards a path of men’s work and spiritual healing, revealing the transformative power of inner exploration. Learn more in his exclusive MysticMag interview below.
Who is Alexander Kugler? What is your story and background?
The most honest and direct answer I can give to this question, which I’ve been asked many times, is suffering. Suffering got me onto this path. I was living in Brooklyn as an opera singer. I was engaged to a woman I loved. In 2011, both of my grandparents died quite suddenly, within five weeks of each other. They had been married for 69 years. I remember going to my grandmother’s house after the funeral and opening her nightstand, where I found letters from my grandfather written during the Korean War. The bedrock of the old-world love they had staggered me. I realized I didn’t have this. That week, I ended my engagement to the woman I had been with for six years. Soon thereafter, I met Medicine — ayahuasca. At that time, I was confused about my life and I was questioning why I was living in New York and doing opera. Ayahuasca slit me down the center and had me reevaluate my entire life and redirected me onto the healing path. Eight months later, I moved to California to be with a woman.
However, that relationship soon ended, and I found myself in a foreign land with no family, no community, and no career because my voice collapsed and I couldn’t sing for two years. I went through a dark night of the soul, and in that darkness, a few teachers grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and said, “Hey, we see you. We see what you’re carrying.” I didn’t know what they meant, but they saw my gifts and encouraged me to study my inner realms. I had been meditating and practicing yoga for years, navigating depressive cycles, and was committed to the healing path, but something triggered a whole new level once I moved to California and started working with plant medicines and indigenous wisdom traditions.
During that period, I was doing IT support, but I felt something had to shift. I came home from a retreat with Don Oscar Miro Quesada, and when I sat down at the computer, there was like a magnetic repulsion between my hands and the keyboard. I couldn’t make myself do the work anymore, so I took a leap of faith and quit. I lived off savings, couch-hopping between friends, and followed my prayer. Eventually, I started working with a business coach who told me to interview my friends about what I should be doing. One friend suggested I do men’s work. Initially, I was resistant because I found working with men difficult. However, I couldn’t get the thought out of my head, so I started experimenting with offering men’s work from a spiritual lens.
I iterated on these groups for a few years, calling them things like Evolutionary Men’s Work or Initiations into the Sacred Heart of the Masculine. The work really clicked when I partnered with Eliyahu Sills, a psychotherapist deep in the men’s and medicine work. Working with him, I started to find my way in men’s work, and my life began to stabilize. All the inner work I had engaged with, including plant medicine, divination training, and, more recently, Hakomi and Internal Family Systems, came together. This combination of psychological and spiritual training helped me feel clarity of purpose, and that’s when I felt my engine kick in. I understood why I am where I am and what I’m here to do.
How would you define Men’s Work and what’s your approach to it?
There is a great Henry David Thoreau quote, “There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.” The good and evil polarity doesn’t resonate with me, but there is something to be said about the illness of humanity and the way we treat our one-and-only home, each other, and all our relatives we share this planet with. There’s an insanity that has infiltrated humanity’s consciousness, building to a climax in the present day.
There is a unique way in which the internalized impulse to dominate, control, manipulate, and extract inhavits and shows itself through men. This illusion of separateness and scarcity really interests me. I’ve realized that I can have an impact on humanity, however small, if I address something specific so my purpose is to create environments for men to directly address the wounding of humanity as it is expressing through us. This means talking about the epidemic of male isolation, resulting in the fact that the number one cause of death for men in their 40s is suicide. That shows us that there’s an incredible need for men to experience support and healing. In that light, I see men’s work as crucial medicine for humanity.
We’re also addressing the perception that we need to fix rather than be with. People always want to fix things. We’re not slowing down to be with natural time and rhythm. We need to learn how to witness our discomfort, slow down, and be with what’s happening inside. We have to cultivate emotional vocabulary. That means that we have to actually be in touch with what’s happening inside ourselves and learn to be vulnerable. Vulnerability allows us to be authentic, to have empathy, to have connections with ourselves, each other, our beloveds, our children, the earth, nature, and our individual understanding of Spirit/God.
These wounds are not only men’s wounds but humanity’s. We need to address the inner critic, the habbit of comparison, and other specific issues and ruptures in our belongingness. Then we get to heal and also address codependence, which says things like: If I make this other person happy, then I get to be happy, which represents a habit of a child that wasn’t updated to our adulthood.
In group work, we learn how to be vulnerable, to have healthy conflict, to express our anger healthily, and to be kind but not nice, as “nice” is often an expression of an attempted manipulation of another. Learning to be with discomfort, learning to be with that which has been avoided because it’s uncomfortable. As we reckon with all of this and learn to soften to our inner reality, courageously turn towards our internalized expectations and demands of others, and heal this conflict avoidance, we discover soul accountability, which is the expression of one’s purpose. That’s crucial—to be clear and connected in one’s purpose and how that expresses into the world.
What are Internal Family Systems and how can you help people with anxiety, depression, confusion, or distraction with it?
Internal Family Systems (IFS) is a psychological modality developed by Dick Schwartz. It’s a results-based and constraint-release system. Essentially, IFS posits that we all have different Parts or sub-personalities, each with its unique brain wave signatures. This can seem a bit trippy, but these sub-personalities truly exist within us.
IFS helps individuals reclaim their seat of consciousness. For example, if I allow the critical Part of me, shaped by childhood experiences and societal influences, to drive my life, it can lead me to dark and sad places. IFS supports us in building a relationship between our Self, that which we are at our essence, and our Parts. We learn to understand a Part’s story, fears, concerns, and needs. By doing this, we help the Part to update its response to our current life situation, rather than reacting based on outdated survival strategies formed in childhood.
As we build trust between our Self and our Parts, they often reveal surprising and understandable reasons for their behaviors. We validate and love these Parts instead of shaming them. We help them understand that we’re not trying to get rid of them but rather want them to engage in roles they love, benefiting the entire internal system. Through the unburdening process, Parts can choose new, more fitting roles.
For instance, I had a part my former partner would describe as “slamming my drawbridges shut,” meaning I would abruptly close off emotionally. Working with this protector Part, I realized it was guarding my younger self from repeated boundary violations. By updating this Part to my current self as a 42-year-old man, it transitioned from a protector to a guardian, helping me discern who is safe to let in. This shift allowed me to respond more thoughtfully in relationships rather than react defensively.
In men’s work, participants often discover that their anxiety, depression, confusion, and distraction are strategies developed in unsafe childhood environments. By helping these Parts recognize their current adult status, men gain more authority and empowerment. Instead of being ruled by these Parts, they collaborate with them, fostering a healthier internal dynamic.
You also practice the ancient art of Stick Divination. What can you tell me about that part of your work?
It’s amazing. About six years ago, my friend Madhu introduced me to Mark Bockley, who is now one of my main teachers, and who initiated me into the art of stick divination. Divination, as Mark describes it, involves the Diviner acting as a phone operator, listening to spiritual communication with ancestors, allies, and guides for the client, and delivering messages and spiritual homework to open the way for opportunities, clear ancestral baggage, and release old beliefs and pains.
During my first divination with Mark, he was reading me, banging a stick on a piece of wood, tossing cowry shells, and there was ash everywhere—it was beautifully messy. He said, “The spirits are telling me that you’re going to do this work.” I initially resisted, citing my Jewish ancestry and existing spiritual practices, but he simply replied, “I’m just telling you what they’re saying.” The assignments he gave me were so effective that I kept returning, month after month, for more. After six months, I conceded and asked what I needed to do to start my apprenticeship in this work. He responded, “What do you think we’ve been doing these past six months?” Two years later, I was initiated and have been offering divination ever since.
Recently, I was initiated into voice divination, which involves a different category of beings who now speak directly through me, not just through the stick. This system of divination, or spiritual technology was developed by the Dagara people of Burkina Faso. My lineage is from there, specifically from the town of Dano, through the House of Backye of the Bidifor clan, and is over 20,000 years old. I love how the divination kit has numerous checks and balances to keep the Diviner on track. Sometimes I’ll get a download and toss the shells to confirm what I’m hearing. The system will affirm if I’m correct or guide me to adjust if I’ve misheard. This relationship with the spirits, talking through both physical and intuitive means, is something I deeply love about the divination work.
What can people expect to learn through your Edgewalker Training Programs?
I really love the concept of the Edgewalker. It’s about existing between worlds. For those of us on a spiritual path, it’s crucial to recognize the importance of having a healthy body, maintaining good relationships, and being connected to elders, the land, our ancestry, and the unseen realm. I constantly feel like I’m walking this edge between worlds, which inspired me to develop the Edgewalker Training Program to help people through significant life transitions and navigate a life guided by prayer rather than exclusively by thought.
The Edgewalker trainings includes three different programs based on time investment. I bring my entire toolkit to these programs: we work with divination, Internal Family Systems, life coaching, and prayer walks. Prayer walks involve going into the forest and praying our way through conversations to discover what is being asked of the client and where they need support. We work with teachers and plant spirits to help people reconnect with the central prayer of their lives. There’s so much information and experience to navigate, and the Edgewalker program is designed to let our prayers guide us rather than relying solely on mental processes. Society overemphasizes the need to figure things out and fix problems with our minds. The Edgewalker program calls on all available support, allowing our prayers to guide our lives rather than being limited by our minds alone.
Do you have any special messages for our readers?
The pain and confusion you might be navigating, whether consciously or unconsciously, is not the problem. Where we are as humanity is not a problem. We’re at a moment of reckoning with the illusion of our separateness, the illusion that there’s not enough. What I believe and trust in is that by going inward and taking an honest inventory of how we treat ourselves, how we talk to ourselves, how we treat and talk to others, how we treat nature, and how we interface with our understanding of God, we can find a way forward out of the hell realm we’ve created on this planet for so many.
It’s not about proselytizing or convincing anybody else, but rather about taking radical accountability for ourselves and how we live our lives. This doesn’t mean that I have it all figured out. It’s not about that at all. Instead, it’s about walking this path with you, sharing this journey, and increasing our capacity for care. We stand at the meeting point of ancient wisdom and modern insight, and I see this intersection as a place of immense possibility.
Many spiritual and psychologically oriented communities have often missed the integration of spiritual truths and practical support. Finding or creating a community where the full dynamic spectrum of human experience is encouraged is crucial. I have dedicated myself to fostering spaces for the full expression of diverse masculinities. I’ve encountered several men’s groups or movements that were still authoritarian and militaristic, which was incredibly painful for me. It made me determined to create a space where people can discover who they are, what they stand for, and how they can serve.
I love the work I get to do. I’m inspired and surprised by the spiritual connections I witness. I’m thrilled to meet you, the reader, who is looking for something that is genuinely and measurably helpful. That’s what I’ve devoted myself to. I look forward to continuing this journey with you, in community, supporting one another in our growth and healing.
To learn more about Alexander and his work, you can visit AlexanderKugler.com
