The Name

In my travels throughout Africa, one of the most memorable experiences was watching a heard of elephants rest around a baobab tree. As much as I love these pachyderms, I felt drawn to the immensity and magnificence of this tree, the oldest one in the world. This gentle giant didn’t hold back from its bigness, its beauty and its capacity to serve.

Baobabs have been a long-standing source of shelter, food, and water for animals and humans alike, as well as a space for ceremonies, conversation and conflict resolution for people and their communities. Some baobabs are so big and spacious inside that they’ve been used in a variety of creative ways, including post offices and pubs!

Sometimes referred to as the tree of life, the baobab’s iconic beauty has stayed with me as a metaphor to human flourishing. How can we cultivate more of our humanness, growing taller and wider into our unique potential? Into our creativity? Serving in the ways we are being called for? While staying grounded in who we authentically are?

The Red Baobab, with its human and pragmatic inner development approach, is inherently rich and nourishing to inner development. It is a space, a wide space, where leaders meet to touch into more of their humanness and cultivate more skillful means to function in the world.

I invite you to join me in sitting around the tree of life, perhaps touching it and stepping inside. You might be pleasantly surprised as to what you’ll find.