Jon
Handelman
For over a decade, Jon has coached, taught, and inspired people all over the world. With unwavering presence, a vast array of diverse tools and methods, and years of experience understanding how to thrive emotionally, physically and financially, working with him will energize your life and help you soar to your full potential.
During the year, Jon works privately with people and teaches classes and workshops on empowerment, goal setting, forgiveness, emotional fluency, vocal expression and trauma at various institutions, gatherings, and festivals around the world. He has trained school teachers on how to build more meaningful connections with their students and facilitates weekly men’s groups. He has been hired by Radford University to help design courses on leadership and emotional understanding. He also runs multiple all-gender all-ages free sport leagues to promote healthy living, cooperation, and community building.
Jon has a business degree from Concordia University, and has completed trainings in Coaching for Transformation, Non-Violent Communication, Robbins-Madanes Training, NLP, trauma healing, and Shadow work among many other disciplines. He is the creator of Breakthrough; a Childhood Healing Retreat, as well as Love Song, a 4 day communal singing and dancing event.
During his 20’s, Jon was the director of Montreal’s largest children’s day camp for 6 years and was a team building coach for high performance athletes for 5 years. When it was off-season, Jon traveled the world seeking timeless wisdom. He lived and worked on intentional communities, sought out and studied with indigenous peoples, apprenticed with elders, attended and organized alternative gatherings about more meaningful ways of living, and read voraciously about the human condition. Later on, he incorporated much of what he had learned into art, starting various traveling acrobatic and musical performance theaters and circuses, each focusing on cooperation, teamwork, inspiration and connection.
When he’s not running events, teaching, or coaching, Jon practices yoga, plays sports and music, enjoys acrobatics and Brazilian jiu jitsu, and relaxes by gardening, meditating and woodworking. He lives north of Asheville, as one of the founders of Sun Song Community, a land project that hosts workshops and immersions on growing food, personal development and creating resilient communities. You can find out more here.
Giving Back
Jon strives to be in integrity as a coach and to fully acknowledge the role his community has played as a solid foundation for his success. He is committed to supporting the health and prosperity of our society and particularly of marginalized peoples. He does this by:
- Giving 10% of his income to Racial justice charities (https://www.rjcavl.org/)
- Giving 10% of his coaching time to single parents, people of color, and lower income families
- Letting these same groups use his office for free for starting a business
- Running no cost, all inclusive (all ages and genders) non-competitive sport leagues