About

“Everyone wants to live on top of the mountain, but all the happiness and growth occur while you’re climbing it.”

Andy Rooney

About the Yellow Arrow Collective

The Yellow Arrow Collective is a safe and supportive community for transformation offering online programs and in-person events, workshops, and retreats. Here, people can gain profound insight, cultivate important skills, mindsets, and relationships, and realize their own vision for their lives. Because we all need each other, we do it together.

Founded by Mary Beth Leisen, Ph.D. after walking the Camino de Santiago, a 540-mile pilgrimage across Spain, the Yellow Arrow Collective adopts the three core tenets of the Camino: (1) the community support and compassion; (2) the Camino greeting ultreia that urges pilgrims to reach deeply and courageously move ever onwards; and (3) the ubiquitous yellow arrows that reassuringly guide the way, helping pilgrims sustain momentum in difficult times and witnessing their increasing confidence, empowerment, and joy on the path.

Journeys of growth aren’t easy. If they were, everyone would do so readily. Instead, we often don’t make change until we’re forced to – or until the way we’re living is so intolerable that we literally can’t go on.

During these times, we could all use a few yellow arrows to guide and encourage us.

In the incredible Camino spirit, the Yellow Arrow Collective supports brave people stepping forward into growth as they cultivate the intention, courage and skills to truly transform their lives. We include science and soul by incorporating the latest research findings in psychology, neuroscience, biology, and other disciplines, as well as timeless wisdom practices from around the world that connect us to ourselves, others, and the natural world.

We offer coaching, classes, workshops, and retreats, both online and in-person, utilizing the wisdom and growth of group support and connection to nature as much as possible. Our programs teach practical skills to help people manage stress and difficult emotions, cultivate mindsets for success, develop self-awareness and self-management, and become more resilient. Through guided experiences, we foster deep reflection and exploration to understand our clients’ vision for what they want to create in the world and to support them as they realize it. While we take this work seriously, we aren’t always serious: the more laughs we can have along the way, the better life’s journey.

We walk with our clients – literally when we can – guiding them through this powerful transformation, one step at a time, to realize their vision.

About Mary Beth Leisen, Ph.D., Founder

While the Yellow Arrow Collective came into being following my Camino de Santiago walk in 2018, it’s been my dream to do something like this my entire life. I’ve always had a passion for supporting people’s development, starting with my babysitting empire in Dubuque, Iowa, through a clinical psychology Ph.D. program, and now into leadership and personal development coaching.

I understand the power of this work from a very deep personal level. Having experienced adoption, trauma, divorce, and depression, I’ve walked the path of growth and know the terrain intimately. I deeply appreciate how hard it can be to step onto this path. That’s why I believe so strongly in the importance of these processes and tools: I know transformation IS possible, for every single one of us. When we follow our own inner wisdom and feed our souls with compassion, connection, healing, and joy, our messy, imperfect lives become beautiful and fulfilling.

I’ve always known that being in nature is magical. As a child, I explored backyards, woods, and creeks every day, and now I climb mountains and walk the Camino. Being in nature makes me feel alive, connected, and whole. Nature is universal medicine, which humans have intrinsically understood for millennia. I spend time each year in Peru with the indigenous Andean people to learn more about our powerful, healing interrelationship with nature. In this era of nature deficit disorder, true health requires mind-body-soul-nature integration – for us and for the world.

I believe that the other universal medicine is kindness and compassion, starting with oneself. I spent most of my life driving myself in school, career, and life so that I could prove I was ‘good enough.’ The criticism, judgment, and terror from my own inner critics literally qualified as abuse – and still sometimes do. As I’ve practiced self-compassion, however, I’ve noticed something interesting: I am just as (often more) successful than I was when I was beating myself up and pushing myself. Not only that, I am tremendously more joyful, energized, and happy (and more youthful – side benefit!). As the Dalai Lama said, “If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.” In today’s world, we could all use as much kindness and compassion as we can get.

Career-wise, I started out as a research and clinical psychologist. Most of my study focused on stress, trauma, depression, and PTSD, and I worked primarily with adolescents, women, and veterans. Following that, I worked in global brand strategy with Fortune 500 clients, based both in the US and in Asia, living in Hong Kong for 3 years. In 2010, I opened a small leadership development and strategic facilitation consultancy where I help leaders and teams to define their purpose and to develop emotional intelligence, mindfulness, and resilience skills. I still do some of this consulting, and you can find out more about it here.

I’m also a lifelong learner who loves to explore, reflect, challenge, and evolve. Some highlights:

  • Mindfulness & Meditation: Two-year mentorship and mindfulness teacher training with Jack Kornfield,, Ph.D., Tara Brach, Ph.D., and the Greater Good Science Center of UC Berkeley; Heart of Warriorship and Way of Shambhala training and teaching assistant role with Shambhala International
  • Self-Compassion: Intensive mindful self-compassion training with Kristin Neff, Ph.D., & Chris Germer, Ph.D.
  • Positive Neuroplasticity: A big name for looking at how we can change our brains to be more happy, healthy, and resilient, training with Rick Hanson, Ph.D.
  • Indigenous Worldview and Medicine: Healing the Light Body certification from The Four Winds; annual trips to Peru, and six years of intensive training with Jose Luis Herrera
  • Yoga: Yoga teacher training for healing and transformation with Ana Forrest
  • Wisdom Studies: Three decades of mindfulness, meditation, and personal study of world religions and philosophies
  • Coaching: Wayfinder Life Coach Training with Martha Beck, Ph.D. and Nature-Based Coach Training Program with Sagefire Institute
  • Facilitation: Creative Problem Solving Institute’s facilitation training program.
  • Improv Comedy: The Second City’s yearlong improv program and Main Stage performance.

Lastly, I’d rather be on a hiking trail that just about anywhere else and recently moved to Boulder so I can do it daily. In addition to walking the Camino de Santiago, I’ve trekked on some of the highest peaks in South America. I’ve worked and traveled in over fifty countries, absorbing as much of the culture, cuisine, and geography as possible. I believe a commitment to growth, curiosity, and openness is the key to a meaningful and fulfilling life, and in the spirit of Second City, I’m committed to living a “Yes, and” life with energy, laughter, and joy.

Photo credits: Watercolor painting (top image) © Didier Dupois, all rights reserved; all others ©Mary Beth Leisen, all rights reserved