One of my biggest passions as a health and wellness professional has been designing more innovative ways to deliver psychological services and supports so that they’re more widely accessible to as diverse a group of people as possible; and so that any individual or organization can reach their fullest potential, regardless of whether challenges are present or not. This has included emphasizing the important relationships between a) well-being and the natural world, b) well-being and outdoor recreation, and c) well-being and play/creativity.

My career has taken me to serving in leadership roles as an Executive Director overseeing integrated health departments on college campuses; working in private hospitals, county and federal correctional centers, and in private practice; providing professional consulting; and teaching college courses. I’ve also given numerous presentations and provided workshops on a wide-range of topics in the area of psychological wellness at regional and national gatherings. I received a doctorate in clinical psychology from Texas A&M University, completed an APA accredited predoctoral residency at Montefiore Hospital in the Bronx, New York, and I’m licensed as a psychologist in the State of New Hampshire.

About Peak Experiences

Peak experiences is a special concept to me because it can have meaning on multiple levels:

• Reaching your peak abilities in an important area of your life, for example as an athlete, performer, professional, friend, romantic partner, etc.

• Reaching your peak in life, the place where you find meaning, purpose, and a sense of fulfillment

• Having the experience of something performing at its best, at its peak, such as processes at your place of work or within your organization/group.

• And, having deeply profound experiences described by well-known psychologist Abraham Maslow who coined the term “peak experience”- transformational moments when you know authentically who you are, your place in the bigger scheme of things, and what is meaningful and matters to you most.

My personal discovery of Peak Experiences

Years ago, I found myself feeling restless, stuck, and going through the motions. I didn’t know how to shift my perspective, what needed to change, or whether there was any actual means or need to change anything for me. It just felt like life was a predictable routine, not bad just ok, and I found myself recognizing a lack of fulfillment, purpose, and meaning. Also at that time, I was living right in New York City and randomly decided to get out of the big city for a trip to try out hiking in nature. This decision to go hiking was unrelated to how I was feeling stuck; it was just something my partner and I decided we’d try out as an “experimental interest,” having taken a few small day hikes while in Europe several years prior and enjoyed our experience. So, given I have a tendency to go a bit too big with new interests, we planned a 6-day backcountry expedition in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Why not…6 days…Carrying all your own gear, food, and supplies…Navigating by map…Surviving in the wild…That’s a good way to slowly dip your toe in the water, right?

While we were on that trip, we experienced a breadth of experiences from physical exhaustion, to anxious discomfort of being ill-prepared and poorly-equipped, to feeling completely out of place and in a space of drastic unfamiliarity, to abject terror that the black bears we’d regularly see in the distance over the course of the trip may attack us as we slept in a thin nylon tent! However, to this day I also can recall with rich detail what were several spiritual and transformational moments, which I had difficulty putting into words for a long time afterwards. These were moments when I was fully alive, present, and keenly in tune with nothing but the moment I was in. All the trappings of my daily existence- the worries, the obligations, the schedules, the attention to time, the stressors, the pains of the past, the roles and responsibilities, the plans, the goals and anxieties for our future, the daily chores and routines, and so much more were surprisingly absent. At other times, these “spiritual awakenings” would happen as I’d stand on the tops of mountains we’d climbed and look out across the landscape to be moved almost to tears by the spectacular vistas, breathtaking views, and sublime panoramas.

Although no profound answers to life were suddenly made available or discovered, everything made sense in those moments and what was meaningful was somehow and suddenly crystal clear. Standing there in nature, silencing all other things that are amplified in volume in my “normal” life, and looking out at breathtaking views while feeling absolutely tiny and irrelevant in comparison gave me a transcendental experience where who I am, what matters to me, and what I want my life to be about was understood and obvious.

In those moments and for days and years after, I wasn’t able to understand or put into words what I’d experienced. I just knew something powerful had happened and admittedly, I struggled to retain these transcendental awakenings as the trappings of my daily life gradually took over again and with seeming authority and importance. To hold onto some of these profound awakenings, I started to take these multi-day hiking trips more regularly and spend time in nature as often as possible.

It wasn’t until years later I’d unintentionally came across a concept referenced in a psychology paper I was reading- the writer had mentioned “PEAK EXPERIENCES” and described these as transformational moments when the surface-level of who we are takes a back seat and instead we experience a feeling of unity of the self, being one with the world, and being aware of what is meaningful and matters. Although not necessary, these experiences can often happen when in the beauty of nature. Known more widely for his motivational theory termed “Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs” Abraham Maslow was a key figure in the development of Humanistic Psychology and the first to propose that Peak Experiences are the ultimate touchstone we strive for in life.

Delving deeper into this literature on the topic, I was delighted with what I’d discovered in these writings by Maslow and others as I was able to put a language and an understanding from psychological science to what I’d experienced those days in the Sierra Nevadas years earlier. I’ve continued to look to the outdoors and to outdoor recreation as a place to restore and re-experience peak experiences, but I’ve learned too that these experiences can happen in many other areas of our lives, not just in nature.

Since my personal discovery of peak experiences, my dedicated passion is to help others discover and sustain these profound moments and be awakened and transformed by the power they hold. I hope I have the privilege to help you on your own journey to reach your peak.

Best,

Brian Quigley, Ph.D.

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